The 10 Greatest Slasher Films Ever Made
From masked killers to final girls, we countdown the definitive slasher films that shaped the genre and continue to influence horror cinema today.
Spookums
The slasher film is horror at its most primal: a killer, victims, and the desperate struggle to survive. Since the genre's golden age in the late 1970s and 1980s, slashers have given us some of cinema's most iconic villains and most resourceful heroines. Here are the ten films that define the genre.
10. A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (1984)
Wes Craven's masterstroke was making sleep itself the enemy. Freddy Krueger, with his razor-fingered glove and burned visage, attacks teenagers in their dreams—where they're most vulnerable. Robert Englund's darkly comedic performance created an icon, while Heather Langenkamp's Nancy remains one of horror's most capable final girls.
9. FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980)
Sean S. Cunningham's camp slasher launched a juggernaut franchise. While the first film's killer isn't Jason (spoiler alert for a 44-year-old movie), it established Camp Crystal Lake as hallowed slasher ground and Tom Savini's practical effects set a new standard for creative kills.
8. THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (1974)
Tobe Hooper's relentless assault on the senses predates the slasher boom but contains all the essential elements. Leatherface and his cannibalistic family remain genuinely disturbing fifty years later. The film's documentary-style grittiness creates a sense of real danger unmatched by glossier successors.
7. SCREAM (1996)
Kevin Williamson's script and Wes Craven's direction created a slasher that was both sincere and self-aware. The "rules" of horror became text rather than subtext, but Scream never forgot to be genuinely thrilling. Ghostface's iconic opening attack on Drew Barrymore signaled that no one was safe.
6. BLACK CHRISTMAS (1974)
Bob Clark's proto-slasher predates Halloween by four years and establishes many genre conventions: the killer's POV, threatening phone calls, a holiday setting. The sorority sisters are more complex than later slasher victims, and the genuinely unnerving ending avoids easy resolution.
5. THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991)
Jonathan Demme's prestige horror elevated the slasher into Oscar territory. Jodie Foster's Clarice Starling and Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lecter redefined what the genre could achieve, proving that slasher elements—killer, investigation, final confrontation—could support genuine art.
4. PEEPING TOM (1960)
Michael Powell's career-destroying masterpiece was decades ahead of its time. Its sympathetic portrayal of a killer, its interrogation of voyeurism, and its meta-commentary on cinema itself make it endlessly fascinating. Where Psycho entertained, Peeping Tom implicated its audience.
3. PSYCHO (1960)
Hitchcock's shocker invented the modern slasher's DNA: the sympathetic killer with a twisted backstory, the iconic murder set-piece, the violation of assumed safety. The shower scene remains cinema's most analyzed sequence, and Anthony Perkins' Norman Bates is the template for every troubled slasher villain since.
2. HALLOWEEN (1978)
John Carpenter's lean, mean classic codified the slasher formula that would dominate the 1980s. Michael Myers—The Shape—is evil incarnate, a force of nature in a William Shatner mask. Jamie Lee Curtis's Laurie Strode became the definitive final girl, and Carpenter's synthesizer score is the genre's most recognizable theme.
1. THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 (1986)
Just kidding. Halloween holds the crown.
HONORABLE MENTIONS: My Bloody Valentine, The Prowler, Sleepaway Camp, Happy Death Day, Terrifier