Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
This historical and critical look at slasher films, which includes dozens of clips, begins with Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Prom Night. The films' directors, writers, producers, and special effects creators comment on the films' making and success. During the Reagan years, the films get gorier, budgets get smaller, and their appeal wanes. Then, Nightmare on Elm Street revives the genre. Jump to the late 90s, when Scream brings humor and TV stars into the mix.
A solid documentary covering the slasher genre's arc from Halloween through Scream, benefiting from enthusiastic first-hand interviews with directors, writers, and effects artists. The structure is chronological and functional rather than cinematically inventive — talking heads and clips dominate without much visual ambition, keeping cinematography squarely below average for a documentary. The novelty is moderate: it was one of the first comprehensive retrospectives on the slasher genre and remains a useful historical document, though the format itself is conventional. The ending, touching on Scream's meta-revival, wraps things up neatly but without a particularly strong concluding argument. Acting in documentary terms refers to the interviewees' presence, which is generally engaged and enthusiastic.