By Ali Teske
Thread 2
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There's no denying the fascination moviegoers (and now streamers) have with being scared, Pulitzer Prize-winning movie critic Roger Ebert was vocal about his adoration for good horror movies and their ability to tastefully frighten. While many would think his catalog of scathing reviews for horror movies depicted a hatred for them, Ebert remained critical as a means of holding genre filmmakers accountable for the products they released. Slasher movies were no exception to his polarizing, divisive opinions while also the best of the best received well-deserved high praise. His review of John Carpenter's Halloween is all-encompassing of his appreciation for being scared and the craft it takes to responsibly depict violent deaths.
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Slasher movies, by definition, operate with premises of a masked killer(s) stalking and murdering their victims. The deaths are often violent and at the hands of bladed weapons. While there is some room for supernatural, psychological, and sci-fi elements, the best slasher movies keep to the basic structure while cultivating unique villains and thrilling circumstances. The worst slasher movies are formulaic, and not in a good way, sacrificing plot for predictability and strategic death for graphic violence. Ebert's picks for the worst of the worst include installments in the most iconic slasher franchises, movies he declared he hated the most, and rip-offs of other genre movies.
10 'Scream 4' (2011)
Directed by Wes Craven
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Ebert's final review of the iconic slasher franchise mirrored similar sentiments to his review for the third film: it's a movie that does exactly what you'd expect and nothing more. His two-star review describes Scream 4 as a self-aware horror movie where "[s]urvival of the fittest needs another million years to take effect in Woodsboro." Neve Campbell returns as final girl Sidney Prescott on her best-selling book tour that returns to where it all started, and where Ghostface resurfaces terrorizing a new group of teens associated with Sidney's cousin, Jill (Emma Roberts).
"'Scre4m' provides exactly what its audience will expect: one victim after another being slashed, skewered, stabbed, gutted and sliced, with everyone in on the joke. Maybe that’s your idea of a good time."
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Ebert applauded the continuity of writer Kevin Williamson's dialogue but wondered why characters so well-versed in horror tropes and what happens next would continue to stay in Woodsboro. This new cast of teen slasher victims is detached from the reality they live in, not at all rendered emotionally incapacitated by their impending doom, but rather excited by the horror plot they're the stars of. Ebert called it "a film that doesn’t care about human insights."
Scream 4
9 'Halloween II' (1981)
Directed by Rick Rosenthal
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This sequel was "a fall from greatness...from one of the most effective horror movies ever made." Halloween II failed to do its predecessor justice by doing away with originality and a productive premise. Picking up where Halloween left off, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is rushed to a hospital after surviving Michael Myers (Dick Warlock), although he isn't dead and back on the prowl, inflicting more senseless violence. Ebert's two-star review criticized the monotonous, formulaic nature of the movie in addition to "old friend the Idiot Plot which requires that everyone in the movie behave at all times like an idiot."
"It is not a horror film but a geek show...it tries to outdo all the other violent 'Halloween' rip-offs of the last several years. The movie does not have the artistry or the imagination of the original..."
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Ebert's primary issue with Halloween II's departure from the first film is its transition from smart, meticulous horror to what the genre calls a Splatter Movie. The term was coined by film theory author, John McCarty, his definition quoted in Ebert's review, but boils down to movies where the primary goal is to display graphic violence and mutilation rather than scare or thrill audiences. Halloween II met that definition and more for Ebert, making it one of his choices for the worst slasher movies.
Halloween II
R
Horror
Slasher
Halloween II is a direct sequel to John Carpenter's original 1978 Halloween starring Jamie Lee Curtis. In the sequel, Laurie Strode is transported to Haddonfield Memorial Hospital to recover from her injuries, but Michael Myers continues to hunt her down. Halloween II is also the film that established Michael and Laurie were siblings, which would become one of the most controversial twists in the Halloween franchise.
- Release Date
- October 30, 1981
- Director
- Rick Rosenthal
- Cast
- Jamie Lee Curtis , Donald Pleasence , Dick Warlock
8 'Hatchet II' (2010)
Directed by Adam Green
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Ebert encouraged audiences who bought a ticket to Hatchet II to take a good long look in the mirror and have a serious internal conversation. The slasher feature, like many sequels that are worse than the first, picks up where the predecessor's runtime stopped. Marybeth Dunstan (Danielle Harris) barely makes it out of a haunted swamp tour alive after the cursed bayou butcher, Victor Crowley (Kane Hodder), slaughters her fellow tourists. She enlists the help of a group of local hunters and gunmen to kill Crowley, avenging their deaths.
"Man, Adam Green must have run up a bill at the local butcher. Hundreds of dollars worth of sweetmeats, livers, gizzards, hearts, lungs and other organs of animals (none of them human, I trust) are seemingly ripped out of Crowley’s victims, while blood helpfully obscures our view of the details of these eviscerations."
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Surprisingly, Ebert gave the gore fest a full star and a half, despite him having skipped the first installment, much to his appreciation. Any sort of expository dialogue is just filler content before writer-director Adam Green returns to the graphic butcher violence, Ebert describes as "slicing, dicing, slashing, disemboweling, chain-sawing and otherwise inconveniencing." The franchise is all gore, missing the mark for a so-bad-it's-good certification. The final movie in the triology was released after Ebert's death in 2013, another one he is probably happy to have missed.
7 'Lisa' (1990)
Directed by Gary Sherman
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A film that Ebert believed had the potential to be a Hitchcockian-style thriller, Lisa lacked patience for the proper payoff, racing to become one of the worst in the genre. Staci Keanan stars as the titular teenager, who spends her nights locked away in her room making secret phone calls to teenage boys, pretending to be an adult. Lisa unsuspectingly engages in a flirtatious obsession with a serial killer (D.W. Moffett) who shares a similar interest in making phone calls, leaving messages on the answering machines of his victims before he kills them. Much of Ebert's one-and-a-half-star review was spent criticizing the skill and decision-making of writer-director Gary Sherman.
"It’s a bludgeon movie with little respect for the audience’s intelligence, and simply pounds us over the head with violence whenever there threatens to be a lull. Anyone can make a movie like this. It’s directing by the numbers."
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Ebert refused to mince words when he wrote that Sherman didn't have "the slightest clue what makes horror films scary. He thinks it all has to do with violence, and killers jumping out of shadows." The pacing of the movie gives away the climax without any build-up, making the allure of the heroine and killer's relationship fall flat. Lisa is just another genre example of poor execution with a promising premise, driving audiences further away from understanding the true feelings of fear that a good horror movie can produce.
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6 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' (1997)
Directed by Jim Gillespie
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What became a cult classic of the 90s slasher craze didn't win over Ebert with time as it did with horror audiences. I Know What You Did Last Summer became a symbolic slasher flick about four teens (Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr., Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Ryan Phillippe) who commit a hit-and-run, except they dispose of the not-so-deceased victim in the sea. When they return home the next summer, a note appears with the titular phrase just before the group is stalked by a hook-handed killer. Despite Kevin Williamson penning the script, Ebert wouldn't give the moviemore than one star.
"The ads make much of the fact that 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' is from “the creators of 'Scream.' That means both scripts are by Kevin Williamson. My bet is that he hauled this one out of the bottom drawer after “Scream” passed the $100 million mark."
What worked with Scream is the characters' understanding of how a horror movie works in relationship to their slasher scenario. Here, the characters operate on ignorance that makes every seasoned genre audience member groan. Ebert insinuates that I Know What You Did Last Summer can't be as dense as it tries to be while it simultaneously disposes of B-characters out of obligation to the slasher formula instead of finding purpose for their deaths. Even the film's source novelist couldn't get on the slasher bandwagon with the adaptation.
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I Know What You Did Last Summer
R
Horror
Mystery
Where to Watch
*Availability in US
- Release Date
- October 17, 1997
- Director
- Jim Gillespie
- Cast
- Ryan Phillippe , Freddie Prinze Jr. , Muse Watson , Sarah Michelle Gellar , Jennifer Love Hewitt
5 'Bad Dreams' (1988)
Directed by Andrew Fleming
What Ebert calls a "foul teenage vomitorium" and clone of the original A Nightmare on Elm Street, Bad Dreams is yet another slasher enigma for the critic, as he continuously questions the why and how movies like this are made. Following a cult's violent mass suicide, the sole survivor, Cynthia (Jennifer Rubin), falls into a 13-year coma. When she wakes up in a psychiatric ward and starts having visions of the cult's deceased leader (Richard Lynch), her fellow patients start killing themselves in the most gruesome of fashions. In his scathing half-star review, Ebert declared the film "'entertainment' that celebrates doom."
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"Did the filmmakers even recognize that their work was a commercial for death? Do they know any teenagers, especially younger, troubled ones, like the ones in their movie and in their potential audience? Are they aware of the national epidemic of teenage suicides? Do they even think about such things, or was this movie simply a mindless exercise in technology? I ask such questions because I watched the movie with a tide of unease rising within me. There is hardly a shred of hope anywhere in this film."
Ebert was a very vocal opponent of horror movies (slasher or not) similar to Bad Dreams that knowingly target a teenage audience with such graphic depictions of a world where the only goal of adults is to harm and traumatize their adolescent counterparts. He recognized that the filmmakers and producers behind it were top talent in the industry, but Ebert couldn't wrap his mind around why they "would want to wade in this sewer."
Bad Dreams is currently unavailable to stream in the U.S.
4 'Friday the 13th Part 2' (1981)
Directed by Steve Miner
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Taking his viewing experience of this sequel personally, Ebert's sentimentality of Friday nights at the movies and the innocence of teenage youth was short-lived: "It’s fun to be scared. Then an unidentified man sunk an ice pick into the girl’s brain, and, for me, the fun stopped." His half-star review details the crushing of his nostalgia by Friday the 13th Part 2 immediate elimination of the franchise's first final girl, along with its determination to continue depicting violent slasher deaths of the franchise's newest camp counselors, lacking any emotional substance.
"This movie is a cross between the Mad Slasher and Dead teenager genres; about two dozen movies a year feature a mad killer going berserk, and they’re all about as bad as this one. Some have a little more plot, some have a little less. It doesn’t matter."
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This is one of the many films Ebert is on record for taking issue with the deeper meaning of misaligned slasher movies like this unconsciously portrayed, "the primary function of teenagers is to be hacked to death." What proved more disturbing was the target audience's vocal enjoyment of graphic killings. He could plug and play the same criticism for any of the franchise movies, or any of the other candidates for the worst slasher movies.
Friday the 13th Part 2
3 'Wolf Creek' (2005)
Directed by Greg McLean
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This zero-star, thumbs-down horror movie almost drove Ebert from the theater. Loosely based on real-life Australian serial killers, Wolf Creek is founded on violent and misogynistic torture and mutilation of its women characters, giving the slasher genre a bad name. The movie follows a trio of stranded tourists in the outback who misplace their trust in a local man, Mick Taylor (John Jarratt) offering to fix their car, but instead, he kidnaps and brutalizes the group. The headline of Ebert's review called it "a slough of despair."
"There is a line and this movie crosses it. I don’t know where the line is, but it’s way north of 'Wolf Creek.' There is a role for violence in film, but what the hell is the purpose of this sadistic celebration of pain and cruelty?"
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When Wolf Creek first premiered, Ebert was shocked by the Tomatometer scoring of 82% Fresh (the rating dropped to 51% shortly after, and currently holds at 54%). He tried to seek camaraderie from other critics in his discomfort with the movie's blatant, graphic choice of female suffering, but found a mixed bag of reviews upon the movie's initial release. He found it hard to praise the filmmaker's skill in creating all that mayhem on a low budget, but rather chose these parting words to close his review: "If anyone you know says this is the one they want to see, my advice is: Don’t know that person no more."
Wolf Creek
2 'Halloween III: Season of the Witch' (1982)
Directed by Tommy Lee Wallace
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It was all love for the first, distaste for the second, and pure hate for the third movie in the Halloween franchise. Halloween III: Season of the Witch may have earned a star and a half from Ebert, but the critic put it on his "Ebert's Most Hated" list. Ditching the Laurie Strode and Michael Myers premise, this movie follows the unraveling of a horrifying conspiracy by a mask maker who schemes to perform a mass murder of millions of children via Celtic ritual by getting them to buy and wear his masks on Halloween. Ebert's review called the latest franchise installment a "low-rent thriller from the first frame."
"There are a lot of problems with 'Halloween III,' but the most basic one is that I could never figure out what the villain wanted to accomplish if he got his way."
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Halloween II seemed to pass the torch of slasher nonsense to Halloween III, which it willingly picked up and continued to diverge from the greatness instilled in the first movie. Ebert describes the film as an amalgamation of other horror movies, but not amounting to anything worth watching, except for young Stacy Nelkin's performance.
Halloween III: Season of the Witch
R
Horror
Mystery
Sci-Fi
Kids all over America want Silver Shamrock masks for Halloween. Doctor Daniel Challis seeks to uncover a plot by Silver Shamrock owner Conal Cochran.
- Release Date
- October 22, 1982
- Director
- Tommy Lee Wallace
- Cast
- Tom Atkins , Stacey Nelkin , Dan O'Herlihy , Michael Currie , Ralph Strait , Jadeen Barbor
1 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' (2003)
Directed by Marcus Nispel
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Not only is this remake one of the worst horror movies according to Roger Ebert, but it's also the worst slasher movie. Ebert's zero-star review of the 2003 remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre described the violence as "vile, ugly, and brutal." The 2003 version follows a group of friends traveling across Texas who, while on a pit stop, become the target of a chainsaw-wielding madman and his deranged family of killers. The minimal background info of the original 1974 footage at the beginning of the runtime is the only indication of its ties to the source material, setting unfamiliar audiences up for a nauseating ride.
"The ending, which is cynical and truncated, confirmed my suspicion that the movie was made by and for those with no attention span."
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre lacks originality and creative execution, opting instead to "start the gore and unwilling to pause for exposition." Its formulaic structure parades the same horror tropes without thoughtful execution or meaningful payoff, a choice Ebert declared there was no defense or purpose for.
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The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
R
After picking up a traumatized young hitchhiker, five friends find themselves stalked and hunted by a deformed chainsaw-wielding loon and his family of equally psychopathic killers.
- Release Date
- October 17, 2003
- Director
- Marcus Nispel
- Cast
- Jessica Biel , Jonathan Tucker , Erica Leerhsen , Mike Vogel , Eric Balfour , R. Lee Erney
- Main Genre
- Horror
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NEXT: The 13 Worst Horror Movies of All Time, According to Roger Ebert
- Movie
- Roger Ebert
- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
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