A feminist horror film has a strong lead female character. Subsequently going against the typical codes and conventions of a typical horror film, of a promiscuous, blonde female victim who as such is ‘asking to be killed’, and are normally portrayed inferior in comparison to the male leads, and be shown to need both physical and mental support from them. Further to this, many American horror films show a huge amount of misogyny and violence. However through the film ‘Halloween’ the concept of the final girl by Carol J. Clover was used, this concept shows the final girl being level headed and morally pure. ‘Halloween’ uses both of these concepts and is therefore considered to be a feminist horror film. The main character is portrayed as strong both physically and mentally due to here escaping near death experiences on many occasions, which therefore classifies her as the final girl.
Freud’s psychological theory is used in this film as voyeurism and sadism is used mainly for the male audiences in order to cause gratification from another person’s pain, as it’s in their nature to be more sexually aroused by watching females in pain. Whereas, the female audiences are more passive and prefer films which consist of a physiological concept as it creates meaning to the film.
Voyeurism links with Laura Mulvey’s Male Gaze theory. As the woman would often fall victim to the ‘Male gaze’, and she believed that as an audience we are encouraged to view the female characters in films in a sexualised manner, as viewers we are meant to identify and sympathise with the protagonist who in the past, tended to be male. Mulvey believed that female characters were coded with ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’ where women only appear in provocative manner.
