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Notes -
I've just learned that the sixth(!) Scream movie is due to be released shortly. This made me wonder: how is it possible that the slasher horror film genre, of all film genres, is apparently enjoying a second revival/renaissance in the span of roughly 20 years? How does this make any sense?
The setting of the slasher film of the 80s-90s (Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer were already semi ironic works) are built around groups of high school friends, who are close, who explore the world together, who are normally in love or in sexual relationships to each other, who share secrets and mysteries, who have third spaces outside the view of parents or schools where they get into hijinks. These are exactly the aspects of life that we currently feel we have lost significantly, that the youth of today have nostalgia for, and middle aged of today (hi) feel the loss of distinctly.
In the same way Westerns peaked at the moment in the 50-60s when my dad's generation keenly felt the loss of any new lands to explore or conquer, the end of any frontier; the slasher is still relevant because today's kids keenly feel the loss of the kind of adventures that slasher film victims get themselves into.
The first season of Stranger Things and the first season of the Serial podcast are great examples. They're nominally about murders, real or fake, they're really about teenage friendships in an era before cellphones. About times when suburban teenagers had their own shitbird geography, forts or hookup spots or smoking dens in empty woodlands, stuff I've been told has become much less common in the modern digital panopticon. The idea of losing touch with friends when you're with your parents, and of parents when you're with your friends, is the nostalgia.
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