10 Slasher Movies You Need To See Before You Die

1. Halloween

The slasher genre as we know it today wouldn€™t exist if it weren€™t for John Carpenter€™s Halloween. Almost any film that the genre has produced since is in some way indebted to Carpenter€™s low-budget horror masterpiece and that€™s probably due to the formula that he essentially perfected with the film. Michael Myers is a mere six years old when he first murders. The victim: his hapless teenage sister. The weapon of choice: a kitchen knife. When he later returns to his hometown, Haddonfield, Michael takes up right where he left off and starts offing helpless teenagers, one by one. What makes him such a terrifying villain is the lack of motive evident in the film. That, plus the fact that he never utters a word a dialogue makes him seem immortal. The real ace is that Halloween takes itself seriously, creating tension in a way similar to what Hitchcock did with Psycho. The film is often intimately shot, and the first-person view from Michael€™s P.O.V. give you the opportunity to get inside his mind for a moment. This style of shooting inspired other slasher films like Friday The 13 and the use of a masked killer has had an even wider impact. Even over thirty years it remains a must watch - the film has aged brilliantly and remains an excellent example in how to deliver perfect jumps a scare. The body count or gore levels may not be as impressive as some of the other flicks in this list, but without Halloween they probably wouldn€™t have existed at all. What other slasher movies are a "must watch"? How many of these movies have you seen? Share your picks down in the comments.