From Postmodern to Metamodern Slasher Film

There is a critical consensus that the slasher subgenre has gone through different phases. After its heyday in the mid-1980s, the interest in slashers declined a bit with audiences tiring of the existing franchises and the constant repetition of slasher conventions. Consequently, in the mid-1990s, the slasher turned towards the postmodern: the films of this period openly referred to the genre classics of the 1980s, thereby self-reflectively questioning slasher conventions. One of their main characteristics is a mocking and cynical tone provided by the sarcastic and emotionally numb characters. At the beginning of the new millennium, slashers shifted towards a more overt sensibility, combining “postmodern” irony and knowingness with nostalgia and sincerity. “Metamodern slasher” is becoming increasingly more established
as a term for this new phase of development. By comparing Scream (1996), Getting Schooled (2017) and Axe Murdering with Hackley (2016), the author explains in what way the metamodern slasher functions and how it differs from the earlier phases of the slasher’s development.

The integral version of this article can be found in the printed KINO!