A sexually empowered, beautiful woman cowering in a closet as a knife-wielding psycho killer bursts into the room. Sound familiar? Since the first rendition of the final girl trope in the 1980s, horror cinema – particularly slasher films – has become a paradoxical lens: a medium through which the struggles of women are both spotlighted and exploited. These films offer graphic depictions of gendered violence, simultaneously raising awareness and pandering to the male gaze.  As horror theorist Carol J. Clover asserts in Men, Women and Chainsaws, slasher films rely on “tits and a scream”.[1]

In horror and thriller movies, especially slashers, female victimhood takes center stage. Taking the slasher as an example, described by Clover as at the bottom of the horror heap, this sub-genre typically explores the all too familiar story of a psycho killer who stalks and brutally murders a string of predominantly female victims until subdued, evaded or killed, usually by the sole female survivor, or the “final girl”.[2]

While cinema didn’t invent the trope of the suffering woman, it certainly pays homage to Edgar Allen Poe’s famous formula, that the death or torment of a woman, especially a beautiful one, is the “most poetical topic in the world.”[3] The genre capitalizes on this idea, catering to the male gaze and providing a voyeuristic lens that objectifies women and frames their suffering as gratifying entertainment. 

Though men die in horror films too, their deaths are typically swift, impersonal and distant. In contrast, women’s deaths and suffering are slow, intimate, and hyper-visible. As horror director Dario Argento once remarked: “I like women, especially beautiful ones. If they have a good face and figure, I would much prefer to watch them being murdered than an ugly girl or man.”[4]

Similarly, the reasons characters die diverge along gender lines. While men are frequently killed due to reckless decisions or bad luck, female characters are punished for their femininity.[5] The brutalization, trauma and humiliation they endure mirrors real-world gendered violence, often veering on “too close to real life for comfort.”[6] In Blink Twice, for example, a group of women are invited to a tech billionaire’s private island where they are drugged, raped and tortured, only to be made to forget the next day. Compare this to Terrifier 2, where Allie’s extended, graphic dismembering and murder at the hands of Art the clown feels less like critique and more like pure spectacle.

When reflecting on these depictions, it becomes apparent that this tension – between exposure and exploitation – lies at the heart of the treatment of women in the horror genre. The violence against women teeters precariously between representing women’s struggles and sadomasochistically fetishizing them. Linda William’s notes that slasher killers represent “not just ‘an eruption of the normally repressed animal sexual energy of the civilized male’ but also the power and potency of non-phallic sexuality.”[7] In other words, the violence directed at women isn’t merely sadistic, it reflects a deeper cultural anxiety around female sexuality, autonomy and power. The final girl may exist partly to serve the expectations of a male audience, but she also subverts them.

Yet, despite this misogynistic sexualization of women being preyed upon, the choice of victim does also provide an accurate window into the real world, shedding light on the realities of womanhood. Whilst the femaleness of the final girl arguably exists because of the maleness of the audience, it also remains true to real life – with the fact remaining that 90% of adult rape victims[8] and over 80% of high frequency abuse victims are female.[9] As Clover states: “One is deeply reluctant to make progressive claims for a body of cinema as spectacularly nasty towards women as the slasher film is, but the fact is that the slasher does, in its own perverse way and for better or worse, constitute a visible adjustment in the terms of gender representations.”[10]

That is to say, the horrors women face in horror movies are rarely fantastical, merely exaggerated and provide the audience with “spectatorial identification with females.”[11] For example, showcased through the common exploration of the colonized female body in horror: possession via oral penetration; killers thrusting drills or knives into trembling women’s bodies; stalking and predation of women and girls such as in Halloween, Scream and Longlegs; rape and sexual violence such as that depicted in Barbarian and I Spit on Your Grave; the recurring theme of non-consensual conception in antichrist movies, I.e., in Immaculate and The First Omen, two movies where nuns end up being forcibly impregnated whilst unconscious or intoxicated; even the horrors of menstruation as shown in Carrie. These are not abstract fears – they are hyper-realities of the female experience.

Thus, horror movies, by favoring the predominantly female hero/victim whilst catering to male investment into the torment of the female body, also highlights the “most quintessentially feminine of experiences – the […] case of powerlessness and degradation.”[12] As Freud said in The Economic Problem of Masochism: “They place the subject in a characteristically female situation; […] that is being castrated, or copulated with, or giving birth to a baby. For this reason, I have called this form of masochism […] the feminine form.”[13] 

Contemporary horror films have started to complicate these portrayals, with the rise of the “good for her” subgenre, which includes Fresh, Blink Twice, Promising Young Woman, Companion and Ready or Not which all explore female rage and revenge. Similarly, the slasher genre has also evolved with female protagonists such as Maxine from X and Maxxine and the emergence of iconic female slasher antagonists like Pearl from Pearl and Amanda from Saw, highlighting a reclamation of female agency, whilst also simultaneously still providing a sanitized vessel of the male survival fantasy.

The genre also holds the predominantly male perpetrator accountable for their actions. As highlighted by Clover, horror “for all its disturbing qualities at least problematizes the issue of male (sexual) violence.”[14] While not without flaws, these films push towards a more conscious discussion with the realities they portray – where the final girl’s survival is not just a trope but a feminist victory.  

To conclude, horror’s obsession with the female body – as both a site of suffering and source of strength – offers a complicated but compelling mirror to society’s relationship with women. While the genre often exploits and sexualizes women’s pain and suffering, it also reveals enduring truths about gender, power and fear. As Clover highlights, “the real investment of the genre is in the reactive or introjective position, figured as both painful and feminine.”[15]

Similarly, the genre simultaneously idealizes and identifies male sadism towards women, holding men at least semi-culpable for the violence they inflict.[16] Whether viewed as sadomasochistic fetishization or female truth and empowerment, horror films continue to reflect the most haunting reality of all – the persistent vulnerability and resilience of being a woman.

[1] Carol J, Clover, “Men Women and Chainsaws,” p35.

[2] Carol J, Clover, “Men Women and Chainsaws,” p21.

[3] Edgar Allen Poe, “The Philosophy of Composition,” p. 55, Carol J, Clover, “Men Women and Chainsaws”, p. 42.

[4] Argento as quoted by Schoell, “Stay out of the Shower”, p.54, Carol J, Clover, “Men Women and Chainsaws”, p42.

[5] Carol J, Clover, “Men Women and Chainsaws,” p35.

[6] Carol J, Clover, “Men Women and Chainsaws”, p42.

[7] Carol J, Clover, “Men Women and Chainsaws”, p47.

[8] Rainn.org, <https://rainn.org/statistics/victims-sexual-violence#:~:text=90%25%20of%20adult%20rape%20victims%20are%20female.&text=Females%20ages%2016%2D19%20are,attempted%20rape%2C%20or%20sexual%20assault.&text=Women%20ages%2018%2D24%20who,general%20to%20experience%20sexual%20violence.

[9] Women’s aid, <https://www.womensaid.org.uk/information-support/what-is-domestic-abuse/domestic-abuse-is-a-gendered-crime/&gt;

[10] Carol J, Clover, Men Women and Chainsaws, p.64

[11] Carol J, Clover, Men Women and Chainsaws, p152.

[12] Carol J, Clover, Men Women and Chainsaws, p154.

[13] Freud, “The Economic Problem of Masochism,” p.162, Carol J, Clover, “Men Women and Chainsaws”, p214.

[14] Carol J, Clover, Men Women and Chainsaws, p115

[15] Carol J, Clover, Men Women and Chainsaws, p212.

[16] Carol J, Clover, Men Women and Chainsaws, p226