Final Girls Final girls are the girls who manage to defeat the monster/baddie of the slasher film. The girls are presumably masculine, they usually wear boyish clothes, and are very bookish. The final girls are purposely shown like this because as Karl Marx states, power resides with those who have ownership and control. The media is owned by conservative, middle aged men and they promote these girls in a subliminal message stating that if a young girl doesn’t engage in promiscuous activities, excels in her studies and doesn’t show a keen interest in what she looks like she will survive and do well in life. This is a theory by Clover.

First Girls The first girls are the girls that get killed by the monster first in the slasher movie. The girls are normally shown as promiscuous, they usually wear revealing clothes and are not that involved in her studies. She is normally seen with a boyfriend, or talking about the male species. Again, as Karl Marx states power resides with those who have ownership and control. The media is owned by conservative, middle aged men and they promote these girls in a subliminal message stating that if these girls engage in sexual activities and do not care about their education they will constantly suffer set backs and possibly die as a result of their careless ways.

Locations Typical horror films are normally set in suburban areas, normally surrounding a school. They normally surround a school as the story of the film is usually set amongst a group of young teens who meet up at their school. Such as in the film Halloween, there is a group of students who are friends from school, they walk back and forth from school on quiet suburban streets – this is usually where the attacks start to take place. The reason directors place the films in areas we can relate to is so we automatically feel scared when walking to school, when walking on quiet suburban streets. The trick the directors want to perform is to keep the audience scared when they are not in the cinema, and by placing the film in these recognisable areas allows them to achieve this.

German Expressionism In the very early stages of film, German expressionism was used as there wasn’t the technology available as there is nowadays to create effects with lighting such as shadows. Often the creators of films used black and grey paint on set to create shadows, these helped convey a deeper meaning within the film. The shadows helped the film makers create a greater sense of emotion in the film. It was German Expressionism that influenced film noir, theses effects and ideas are still used to this day in modern films.

Film Noir After German Expressionism, film noir reared its head between the 1940s and the 1950s. Film noir is associated with a low-key black and white style, and has roots in the style of German Expressionist. Many film noir movies follow the story of crime fiction, this emerged in America during the great depression.The first who applied the name ‘film noir’ to Hollywood films was a French critic Nino Frank in 1946, this was unknown to the most American film industry professionals of the classic era. Many of the classic film noirs were referred to as melodramas, specifically focusing private eye detectives.

Gothic Horror Gothic horror is a genre that combines elements of both horror and romance. The gothic horror started between the 1760s and the 1770s. Gothic Horror started due to the German Expressionism and the Film Noir eras, Gothic Horror stole the style of both German Expressionism and Film Noir movies to create dark images.

Modern HorrorThroughout the decades horror has become less about the lightening and more about the gore. From Scream to Saw the films have become a lot more modernised, they mirror any other genre of films such as comedy or action. However they show many different aspects of horror films, in the eras such as gothic and German Expressionism flesh and actual killings didn’t take place it was left to the audiences imagination. Whereas in more recent films such as ‘Halloween’, and ‘The Last House on the Left’ the killings are vulgarly shown creating a big controversy surrounding slasher films.