I have remarked before that I love the “horror” genre in film but think about 99% of actual horror movies are complete and utter crap. (Yes, I know that violates Sturgeon’s Law. Shut up.)
For me, the ability of film to evoke particular emotions is fascinating, and that includes feelings of fear or dread. It’s just that very few movies do it effectively, and a few might do it too well in one way or another. To give an example, I find movies like Hostel and Wolf Creek to be terrifying, not because they actually evoke a feeling of fear in me personally, but because it scares me that people actually made those movies and that others found them entertaining enough to warrant sequels.
I am mostly talking about the “slasher” genre here, which may have started with 1974’s Black Christmas, a genuinely creepy movie. The genre has a few highlights, at least in an iconic sense, such as Halloween and A Nightmare on Elm Street, but they mostly fall into the old, tired tropes that were parodied (not very effectively, in my opinion) in the Scream movies. The one truly great slasher film is almost never even considered to be part of the genre at all: Alien, in which a killer picks off the crew members of a ship one by one until only one woman is left (as it happens, in her underwear.) It’s just that the movie is phenomenal, with a good story, well-written characters, and superb actors; the killer is an alien creature; and it all happens in outer space. Plus, if you pretend the ending hasn’t been spoiled for the entire universe, it’s not at all clear throughout the film who’s going to make it.
Other horror genres have produced some excellent films, like ghost stories (The Shining, 1963’s The Haunting), religious-themed horror (The Exorcist, The Omen), and films that blend horror with genres like mysteries or thrillers (Psycho, The Silence of the Lambs). It’s the slasher films that interest me on a weird intellectual level, though, because they disturb me from both a moral standpoint (why is this entertaining?) and a narrative one (you’re running up the stairs???) Besides that, slasher films seem to occupy a privileged place in our cultural concept of “horror.” There are far more slasher franchises (Friday the 13th, Elm Street, Halloween, Saw, etc.) than there are ghost story franchises (The Amityville Horror, Paranormal Activity, and I’m sure there are more.)
This film, Cam Girl by Vishus Films, may be the perfect embodiment of the slasher genre. It avoids almost all of the most annoying tropes while still hitting all of the major elements: a beautiful woman in her underwear, a deranged killer, some bizarre humor, and the killer’s final comeuppance by the last woman standing.
Because it eliminates all of the unnecessary and silly fluff found in most slasher movies, Cam Girl manages to make its point in only 90 seconds.
Postscript: Because I like to make GIFs, here are a couple:
