10 Slasher Horror Movies That Had No Right To Be This Good

Best known for butchering an incalculable number of naked teenagers in inventively gruesome ways, the slasher genre has been a major cornerstone in the realms of western horror cinema.

From the genre's roots in Black Christmas and Halloween in the '70s, and all-time '80s classics A Nightmare On Elm Street and Friday The 13th, all the way up to modern gems Vicious Fun and Bodies Bodies Bodies, slashers have helped shape and define each era of cinema for each new generation.

Still, for every ground-breaking classic out there, there's a dozen other forgettable pieces of schlock that are thrown out by studios to cash-in on current trends or buried in streaming services in the hopes that nobody sees them.

Because of the ubiquity of unimpressive slasher flicks in circulation, it can be difficult to distinguish which ones are deserving of our attention and which should be avoided at all costs. However, first impressions can be deceiving. There are some flicks out there which, despite looking like they should be categorically awful, have managed to surprise us in the best possible ways.

Never judge a slasher film by its cover. You just might be missing out on something great.

When it comes to pitch perfect horror satire, it doesn't get any better than Wes Craven's original Scream trilogy. Not only did these films dissect and poke fun at the various horror tropes of the era, but the trilogy also delivered a genuinely enthralling slasher mystery.

Over a decade after the trilogy ended, however, it was announced that Scream 4 would be hitting our screens, and horror fans unanimously sighed at the prospect. Horror cinema in the 2000s was dominated by lazy and terrible remakes, with the atrocity of 2010's A Nightmare On Elm Street still fresh in our minds.

The concern was that Scream 4 would be another tasteless and needless revival of a horror classic. What we weren't expecting, though, was for Scream 4 to do what Scream did best and lovingly breakdown contemporary horror tropes. And with Craven returning alongside the original cast, this was the revival the franchise needed.

Moreover, there's plenty of grizzly slasher fun to be had here, too, alongside another fun mystery to solve about who's behind the mask this time.

If you skipped Scream 4, now is just as good a time as any to check it out.