Women in the horror genre.

So I just been thinking about a thought/question about women in the horror genre.

I mean what is it about women in the horror genre? Say for example, on a lot of* covers for horror/monster movies contains the monster and a woman screaming scared. You rarely see the cover for horror/monster genre where it's a man yelling scared.

Another is the villain/horror genre. For example the friday the 13th series [which I hate that series by the way] where jason voorhees is chasing the last woman around, and she's scared and screaming. But yet it is the last woman that put down the villain. I mean seriously, why it be a man that puts down the villain, because the woman is already scared.

Also I was on tiktok last night and it was a channel that was acting like someone catching monsters on film and jump scares. One of the sound effects was a woman screaming, and one he videos was one of the monsters chasing a woman. [the monsters were stupid and jump scares are cheap and stupid by the way.]

I know that both men and women plays in the horror genre, but it just something about when women plays in them. Is it some kind of dominance and submissive thing going on here? Is there even some sort of sexual connotation going on here? Because women scream in sex also, especially in porn.


So what do you all think about this? Post as many thoughts as possible.

I love hilary swank in the resident, her sexiest role

Random and uplifting. She’s great.

I think there's definitely a cultural/sociological component where it's expected that women are the ones in danger in every story, like every serial killer series or what have you. If it was a man in danger instead, the audience might be more inclined to see him as a wuss or think that a more adequate man would be able to fight off the threat. In most horror movies where a man is in danger, there tends to be other men looking to fight him, or the movie slides somewhat into action-horror territory, with guns and all. Because, again, it's expected that women would be naturally endangered by monsters or or creatures, thus establishing them as threats, but the man needs to exhaust his options to demonstrate the same thing.

I think that Peeping Tom is probably the best single film to study the psychosexual template behind the slasher genre specifically. Hitchcockian voyeurism combined, more explicitly even than Psycho, with the dynamic of arousal and frustration and, ultimately, vicarious penetration. I suppose that may seem a bit heteronormative, but the slasher genre has traditionally been territory of frustrated young straight males, so I think this is an accurate explanation for the marketing enticement (woman in peril; monster = potency) that the OP is referring to. So, yes, there is a sexual component at work here, and the "sceam queen" is most certainly an orgasmic surrogate, while the "final girl" triumphs over virile aggression.



We could go into greater lengths into *cough* more broad essential feminine roles in horror, from Carmilla the classic gothic lesbian novel from which about 90% of the modern romantic vampire canon derives to the superstitious misogyny behind the concept of "the witch". I think that horror, more than other genres, is particularly fraught with carnal tension, and specifically the male fears around sexual control.

Hmm, I don’t know about that. I feel that’s the kind of urban myth that’s rarely explored in detail. Sure, it’s true when it comes to Psycho & Peeping Tom. Saw, Final Destination, Hostel, Scream, etc. (I’m deliberately picking ‘trashy’ horror for now) all ‘punish’ the characters engaging in sexual activity, which includes men and women. The premise of Hostel, in particular, rests on women luring men into mortal danger and usually escaping punishment. Women are definitely killed/dressed in highly sexualised ways and objectified, but I honestly think by now there is not such a discrepancy. There is evidence to this effect, the link below is not the best one, but the whole ‘women-are-excessively-abused-in-horror’ thing is always blown out of proportion.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00289865

In recent years, horror films where men are disproportionally killed have also become very fashionable. See Revenge (2017), I Spit On Your Grave, Death Proof, Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, etc, ad nauseam, ad infinitum.

As for the screaming, again, I don’t know. In older films, women were more obviously emotional, sure. By now, men scream just as much during torture scenes as women, if not more (maybe not from ‘pure fear’ as such, but is that so important? In Get Out, you have a man crying from fear/pain/emotional discomfort). Hostel and other ‘torture porn’ come to mind again.

To sum up: I don’t agree with the premise.

Yeah older movies did tend to go with the female-in-trouble thing.

It's the damsel in distress thing.
Movies back then as a general rule, didn't have today's more open thinking that women don't have to be simply fodder for the murderer or disposable characters that scream when the killer enters the room.

There were some exceptions... Terminator and T2, Alien franchise, Halloween franchise, Psycho had 2 female leads, G.I Jane, The Silence Of The Lambs, Kill Bill, Jackie Brown even... strong female leads from a bygone era...

Saying that though, there's a recency bias with movies today, that if the main role is a woman, it's seen as progressive, because apparently it's only recent movies that have strong female leads... sadly, the female leads we get today, are shallow invincible characters... known as Mary Sue.

... but people forget that movies have been lead by women for a long time, and female leads of old, though there was fewer of them back then, were still far better handled when they were utilised.

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...Psycho, Rodent?

Besides, how much do you get quote-unquote Mary Sues in modern horror anyway? The only one I can think of from recent memory is Laurie in Halloween (2018) because they basically turned her into Sarah Connor.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

Horror is a sprawling genre, and trying to talk about the role of women (or the role of men) in such a wide-ranging subset of movies is going to lead you down the path of sub-sub-genre, exceptions to the rule, etc.

Is sex and sexuality something that underlies a lot of our fears and anxieties? Absolutely. And so horror movies will often make direct or thematic use of these anxieties.

There are a lot of films that frame themselves around the fear of men--ie any horror film in which women are being killed by a sexually frustrated male character. A film I like in this sub-genre is Visiting Hours, in which the male killer is deeply misogynistic and this anger at women translates to his attacks on the three different female characters (a news reporter, a nurse, and a young woman he picks up at a bar). There is an unfortunate plethora of true crime stories of serial killers or rapists terrorizing women for films to draw on as inspiration.

But there are also horror films that center on women using their sexuality as a weapon against men. Something like Fascination or Decoys orSpecies. The cultural male fear of being "trapped" by a woman, or maybe sometimes the homophobic/transphobic fear that a sexy woman isn't a "real woman".

There are horror movies in which both genders hold a member of the opposite sex hostage (think Misery or The Loved Ones). Both genders seem to know the fear of someone thinking that you should be in a romantic/sexual relationship and not wanting to take no for an answer.

Many films also explore the fears that come along with pregnancy (Proxy, Shelley, Inside) and the vulnerability of pregnant women.

You can't deny, however, that horror has historically marketed itself on being shocking and sensational and flirting with the taboo, and female characters in horror movies are a quick way to get nudity and sex on screen. (So. Many. Showers.). See any number of IMDb movie reviews for petulant complaints that there wasn't enough nudity on screen (or gay-panic complaints about too much nudity if it's male flesh on display), a complaint you don't see in any other genre. For many horror fans, female nudity seems to be something they feel they are owed. On the commentary for Dog Soldiers, Neil Marshall talks about how the female lead was not allowed to wear a bra, despite it really not making sense that she wouldn't.

I would say that the stereotypical "final girl" model of horror or films with female characters who have clearly only been included to get nude is still a lazy go-to format, but very few of the films that I've watched in the last year or so fit this model. Many have male leads (The Lighthouse, Come to Daddy, Daniel Isn't Real), or the role of the female lead is more complex (The Invisible Man, Doctor Sleep, Sea Fever). I'm sure that a lot of the direct-to-streaming junk is still rife with unnecessary shower scenes, but those aren't the films I'm watching these days.

With such a large and varied genre, as I said earlier, it's complicated. And as horror filmmakers themselves wrestle with the tropes of their own genre and as more women writers/directors carve out a space for themselves, I think that gender roles in horror are getting more diverse and more interesting. That said, even a very stereotypical sounding dynamic (a woman with a disability being stalked by a sadistic, woman-hating killer alone in the house in the woods) can be a fresh and thrilling film in the right hands, as something like Hush demonstrates.

Now THAT was a ****ing answer.
I was waiting to see if you'd chime in and you did not disappoint me.

Well I never really chime in about gender or horror, so I figured this was my chance!

Oh i get it:
I like halle berry in Gothica
I like jamie lee curtis in halloween and the fog

Femme Fatales were in abundance in 40's and 50's noir. They attract a mass appeal as nothing sells a film better than sex and violence.

But noir really isn’t the same as horror and never was. The earliest horror came before noir, e.g. Nosferatu (1922). The earliest noir is probably The Maltese Falcon (1941), a whooping 20 years later.

Sorry my reply went slightly off kilter. My point was if you check out many noir posters, many are sexed up using seducing images of a Femme Fatale just to sell the movie. Horror uses this to its advantage also. If it was marketed differently people may not be so captivated.

Sure, I agree.