The slasher genre desperately needs a makeover after the rise of self-awareness and irony has all but killed it.

Back in the early 1980s, if you were headed to a horror flick on a Friday night, statistically speaking, it was probably about a knife-wielding maniac murdering scantily-clad teenagers. In 1981 alone, My Bloody Valentine, The Burning, Friday the 13th Part II, The Prowler, Halloween II, Happy Birthday to Meand Graduation Day were all released in theaters within the span of a few months. And you thought superhero films were being driven into the ground. John Carpenter gave birth to a phenomenon with Halloween, and for better or worse, the genre was changed forever as studios became wise to our thirst for cheap, trashy fun – the scary movie equivalent of fast food.

Flash forward to 2016, and the slasher movie is nowhere to be found. Various studios are currently scrambling to revive Jason, Freddy and Michael Myers with new reboots, but so far it doesn’t seem to be working out. The latest Friday the 13th has been a production nightmare, undergoing countless rewrites and being delayed three times in the past two years. A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) was a moderate box office success, but no plans for a sequel have been put in place. Halloween Returns,which was meant to re-start Michael Myers’ killing spree after the utter disaster of Halloween II, was recently cancelled a few months after production was announced. What the hell happened?

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