Research on how women are portrayed in Horror Films

Research

Tradition has it that horror is the preserve of the sweaty male teen, but the movie industry wants us to believe women are more and more interested in it all. The Tale of Two Sisters is a case in point: it's the highest-grossing Korean horror film ever made and Dream Works has bought the remake rights. What marks it out in the horror genre is that almost all the characters are female and that it relies more on suspense than gore (and even the gore has a female skew - at one point, the blood on the screen is menstrual, an echo of the Canadian werewolf movie Ginger Snaps).

Most horror films have always placed women as the weaker sex, they are the victims who are usually brutally murdered and the first few to die by the murderer / deranged stalker, etc., who is a male. There are seldom female killers. Certain scenes in horror films are inevitable – you will always be able to see a beautiful and voluptuous young woman (or young college / high school girl) running away from a deranged stalker who is apparently trying to kill her, although the reason is not revealed until much later, in the opening scene. 

women are always seen as needy, needing someone, usually a male to save them from the killer and if a male character does not intervene, then the female characters will be killed. However, instead of always portraying women as helpless and vulnerable, we see a change in how women are being portrayed in horror films from 1974 onwards - they were able to defend, rescue themselves and fight back against the main antagonist in order to protect themselves and / or their family and friends.

The movie Carrie, produced in 1976, also breaks away from the conventional mold of horror films that women need to be saved from the killers who are usually male. However, instead of portraying Carrie as a heroine and a “final girl”, she is being portrayed as a killer.