Clayton George Wickham - final thesis

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updated generic formula to it. Instead of Leatherface relegated to an easily
recognisable, awkward, menacing character in a family of characters equally
threatening, he became the central threat, with other characters facilitating his
bloodlust, and occasionally fulfilling their own. The genre’s tendency toward selfreferentiality
and cross-generic application was removed in favour of increasingly
unpleasant and dramatically tense set pieces, also discussed by Wharton. (2011)
Following this, multiple slasher properties were revived and adapted for
contemporary audiences, resulting in The Hills Have Eyes (2006; dir. Aja), Black
Christmas (2006; dir. Morgan), The Hitcher (2007; dir. Meyers), Halloween (2007;
dir. Zombie), Prom Night (2008; dir. McCormick), My Bloody Valentine 3-D (2009;
dir. Lussier), Friday the 13 th 2009, and A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010; dir.
Bayer), among others. Most of these films utilised more unpleasant narratives and
set pieces. Wharton’s paper articulates the tendency towards darker and more
uncomfortable narrative elements concisely, as does segments of her forthcoming
PhD thesis. Based on my analysis, some of the deaths that occur in these films
linger on the extreme brutality and violence, and sometimes highlight the fragility of
the body of the victim. This also tends to follow sequences that provide richer
character development than what can be seen in earlier slasher films. Examples of
this include many of the deaths in Rob Zombie’s remake of Halloween and its
sequel, particularly with regards to Annie and Lynda, whose attacks are shown with
extensive graphic and visceral detail, and their pain and fear is registered in extended
amounts of screen time. The deaths of Andy and Morgan in The Texas Chainsaw
Massacre create a similar effect, as do the deaths of Chewie and Amanda in Friday
the 13 th (2009). Amanda’s death is a particularly illustrative example as it
reimagines and adapts a famous death sequence in the series, which I will discuss in