My unexpected Pride icon: as a bullied teenager, I found safety in slasher films

The Guardian

16-06-2025

I have always been morbidly obsessed with the horror film genre. As a small child, I'd gaze up at the posters of Freddy Krueger or Pinhead in our local video rental shop with a curious mix of fear and desire. I wanted to be scared, and I also did not. I was 11 when Channel 4 screened A Nightmare on Elm Street. My poor mum, assuming it couldn't be that bad if it was on TV, let me record it. I watched through my fingers, drunk on anxiety, the anticipation of the kills almost unbearable. There is, I would argue, something quite queer about this complicated urge. Horror is titillating.
The golden age of the slasher movie was the 1970s and 80s. I'm sure film-makers were inspired by the cultural austerity of the Reagan era, the Moral Majority and the unfolding Aids crisis. But, as a child, I was blissfully unaware of those things or my burgeoning queerness. I just knew I wanted to watch these films.
Some horror films are explicitly queer in tone. Hellraiser is quite clearly about anal sex ('The Cenobites gave me an experience beyond limits; pain and pleasure, indivisible'). Sleepaway Camp, from 1983, features a controversial reveal: the killer, 'Angela', turns out to be actually her brother, Peter – forced to live as a girl by her insane mother. FYI that's not usually how being transgender works.
As a suburban tween, I wasn't primed for queer subtext, even in the gayest one of all: A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (now the subject of its own (very good) documentary Scream, Queen!). I didn't even pick up on the none-too-subtle allegory of poor Jesse (Mark Patton) being 'entered' by Freddy and forced to kill his leather-clad PE teacher in the gym showers. When the female love interest attempts to comfort the understandably distressed Jesse, he rejects her and instead cries on a strapping male friend instead.
I'd argue that the queerness of slasher films is more compelling when it's less obvious, usually through: the killer and the final girl.
At first glance, there's an obvious 'otherness' to the killer in a slasher film. Carrie, Prom Night, Friday the 13th and Terror Train all hinge around a vulnerable, different-coded character (or a relation thereof) seeking vengeance over a historical wrong. In Carrie, the gory revenge of Carrie White is almost orgasmic. Sissy Spacek's titular character suffers great indignity for almost the entire run-time, until she unleashes a torrent of murderous rage at those who have mocked her, providing a rush of emotional release for the viewer. While some of Carrie's victims are somewhat sympathetic, the vast majority have it coming. I am happy to confess that, while I was being relentlessly bullied all through high school, I did wish from time to time that I could 'pull a Carrie'.
Carol J Clover's seminal 1992 book Men, Women and Chainsaws examines the feminist subtext of horror movies, but I think we can apply much of her logic to a queer reading of the same texts. Clover argues that most slasher films, rather than being purely sadistic male-gaze fantasies, instead encourage viewers to empathise with what she deems the female 'victim-hero'.
The final girl is the one character who makes it to the closing credits intact, and it was this character I saw myself in. Until 1996's meta-heavy Scream, the final girl was usually asexual – babysitting or eye-rolling while her more libidinous friends shagged their way to the grave. Prime examples are the chaste Laurie Strode (Halloween) and Nancy Thompson (A Nightmare on Elm Street). As a young queer viewer who considered the notion of sex scarier than slasher Jason Voorhees, I found safety in these girls abstaining from sexual relationships.
Clover posits that the mild-mannered high-schooler often transforms into a masculinised tough girl by the end of the film. She emasculates the (usually male) killer by removing his (usually phallic) weapon and then, often, kills him with it. This formula still holds true, with Terrifier 2, The Invisible Man and MaXXXine just a few recent examples. In each case, our girl is in some way different from her peers; she is quieter, smarter, or possesses some form of heightened insight. She is often disbelieved by her friends or authorities when she confides her trauma. She is oppressed, both by her stalker and by those who deny her reality. By the end, she has overcome her oppressor and walks away a more fully formed version of herself; a survivor.
And if that's not queer, I don't know what is.
Juno Dawson is the author of Her Majesty's Royal Coven. The final book in the series, Human Rites, is released 17 July 2025.