Slasher Blog: He's Out There

This movie is a relatively new film added to the Slasher collection. He's Out There (2018), directed by Quinn Lasher, is about a family who is taking a vacation to their lake house in the woods. The father of the family was not able to arrive at the lake house with his wife and kids, due to a work related meeting, but was to arrive later that same night. On the first night of the family staying at their lake house, the two young daughters find a red string that they follow into the woods. This string leads them to a picnic, where one of the girls, Maddy, ends up eating a cupcake that was placed for her. Later this night, Maddy gets sick and ends up vomiting, and along with that, she coughs up a ribbon that has the word "Hello" written on it. This event was the beginning of the horrific night that was to come.

Once the father arrives at the house, the mother and two daughters have already had many horrific encounters with the masked psychopath that was watching them. The father is clueless to what is taking place with his family. The masked murder ends up killing the father first and then going after the female characters. After the father is killed, the father continues to torture the female characters, like a typical slasher film does. The masked murderer ends up taking the mother out of the film for a decent amount of time, making the audience think that she is dead, so that he can go after the young girls.

There are many categories that play a part when it comes to slasher films, as noted in Carol Clover's, "Her Body, Himself." This film accurately matched many of those categories. First, it is very common for slasher films to have the psychopath go after the female characters, which is what was portrayed in this film. The masked murder completely cut out the father from the situation before he could even see his family again, so that he could target the females. Another very important category off slasher films is in fact a masked murder, especially one that uses a weapon other than a gun. In this movie, the masked murderer specifically used an axe to hurt all of his victims. One other category that was included in He's Out There was that the location was not at their normal home. Although in this movie they were at a home they owned, they were not at their normal house setting, they were actually at a house that the axe murderer used to live in as a child.

In this particular film, the father was not present so the females had to protect themselves, which is unusual in female characters. In many films, it is usually the male character that protects the rest of the family or group, but since the father in He's Out There was arriving late, he could not protect his family. It is also very common for horror movies to portray the female characters as scared or helpless. But, in this movie, both the mother and the oldest daughter became brave and protected themselves along with the other characters. Slasher films are often known to leave a "final girl" that survives the psychopath coming after them. In this movie, all of the female characters seemed to survive, although there was a twist at the end that leaves the movie off on a cliffhanger.