The Bloody Truth: Why the Victimization of Women in Horror Needs to End

It's Halloween time, and you’re trying to find a scary movie to watch to usher in the seasonal spirit. You can’t decide on what to watch, so you must go back to the classics- Halloween, Friday The 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, all the most iconic killers, but besides them, one constant remains present throughout every movie: the helpless female victim.

Over the course of several years, the horror movie industry has been using the objectification and exploitation of females to profit, allowing the studios to reap the benefits of the actresses’ hardships. By spreading the idea that women are no more than helpless victims who can do nothing but scream for help, allows deeply rooted misogynistic ideas to spread and fester throughout these pieces of cinema. Furthermore, because these movies are so popular and iconic, it allows audiences to believe that this twisted depiction of women is entertaining rather than harmful.

Throughout the horror genre, violence and brutality has become terrifyingly normalized. In the classic 1960 horror film, Psycho, the female protagonist, Marion Crane who is portrayed by Janet Leigh, is brutally murdered as the camera violates her body turning what should be a horrifying event into something close to torture porn. Throughout the film, Leigh is used as more of an object rather than a character with sway over the plot. Each scene keeps Leigh’s character passive and useless while her male counterpart has an active role, driving the whole narrative.

Psycho goes beyond issues seen primarily in horror, also sharing what’s present in cinema as a whole: misogyny. This movie is a prime example of misogyny in film, specifically that women are meant to be no more than objects of affection, something that Leigh captured perfectly. Furthering this idea, the whole movie is shot through the perspective of a man--which it is--while making things unrelatable and unrealistic when pertaining to women.

Another common theme throughout the genre is purity. Sometimes, it’s a purity in faith --which is its own discussion--but primarily, it’s purity in a sexual sense. There is a running idea throughout these horror movies that women who aren’t virgins will usually be some of the first to die, especially the blonde bimbo types or the more promiscuous characters. Adding more so to this idea is the fact that the final girl to survive the killer is almost always a virgin; implying that “impure” women don’t deserve to live. These ideas are the real horror of the genre, and they have become too normalized throughout this industry.

The 1996 slasher film, Scream, intended to be a self-aware satire on the genre, makes note to show that its final girl, Sidney Prescott played by Neve Campbell, is a virgin. Prescott’s boyfriend makes advances on her towards the beginning of the movie, but nothing ends up really happening as she portrays a very innocent, pure girl. Comparing this to this iconic movie’s killers, the infamous ghostface’s first victim (who is not directly stated to have previously had sex) is portrayed to have a boyfriend, yet lacks the innocence that Prescott has.

Some movies and shows have taken their spin on these overall ideas and stereotypes, reversing the roles with the aim at creating horror with a feminist approach. In 2020, Bulmhouse, a renowned horror film production company, released Freaky, which took a horror spin on the original movie Freaky Friday. Just like the iconic original, two people wake up in different bodies, the twist is that the two people that switch are a killer and his victim. Suddenly, rather than the larger older white man playing the killer, he becomes the killer in the victim’s body. This premise goes beyond norms, and throughout the whole movie, there are great themes of feminism, calling for societal change.

While this objectifying image of women has become more scarce in horror as of recent years, as seen in movies like Freaky, the most praised and respected movies of the genre continue to be watched daily, but it's these beloved movies that are the problem. Continuing to watch these movies furthers the normalization of what should be ended. By allowing film to victimize females, specific horror movies which have been put on a pedestal allows these misogynistic ideas to continue becoming accepted.

I am not saying that people should boycott the horror genre as a whole. There are plenty of horror movies, old and new, that feature strong female lead characters who stand up for themselves without any dramatic sex appeal or victimization. The problem lies in the many movies that focus on the objectification and exploitation of women to appeal to the male gaze and promote misogynistic ideals. It is these movies that need to stop being praised, these movies that need to stop being normalized, because until the day that all ends, women will never be treated with the same respect as men.