Hell of a Summer

To stand out amid the exhaustive catalog of slasher horror movies, new entries in the subgenre need a hook. Not a literal hook (although that would be a serviceable gimmick), but something to make the familiar material memorable. Maybe it’s the particularly gristly kills and unique first-person presentation in last year’s In a Violent Nature. Perhaps it’s a fun mash-up, like when this year’s Heart Eyes set a masked killer loose in a rom-com scenario or when Freaky (2020) introduced a slasher element into a body swap comedy. Slasher movies often need something extra: a distinct sense of humor, a memorable killer, gory intensity, a genre innovation, a distinct formal style, or ironic self-awareness. Otherwise, they risk looking like cheap knock-offs of their antecedents.

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