Ever since I was knee-high to a grasshopper, I’ve been a massive—some might say obsessive—horror movie fan. Listen, I’m in my 40s. I was born in the early 1980s, and it was a different time back then. My parents didn’t think it was a big deal for me to watch Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees slice and dice teenagers into bits and pieces. Did seeing these films so young traumatize me? Probably. But I still turned out relatively okay, with only a few visits to mental health professionals over the years.
While supernatural horror flicks like The Conjuring and The Exorcist are more my jam these days, old-school slasher movies that left audiences quivering in fear like a bowl full of Jell-O shaped my childhood. Ah, the days before movie studios gave up on the art of practical effects and turned everything into CGI sludge. Those were the best of times.
As a Christian adult, I’ve spent a lot of time pondering what makes those movies work and what they try to say beneath the blood, guts, and synth music. When you put slashers under a microscope—especially Friday the 13th and Halloween—you find something rather fascinating: these films unintentionally preach a kind of objective moral law.
Unfortunately, they leave out the mercy and grace of God that we find in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Frankly, that’s exactly what you’d expect from unbelieving filmmakers. Still, I find it interesting how the imago Dei, the image of God, manages to break through the work of people who aren’t even religious.
The formula for a good slasher flick is pretty simple. Take a group of teenagers who gather together in isolation. Toss in a dash of beer, a pinch of drugs, and a whole cup of casual sex. Sprinkle in disdain for authority and add a killer who hates their guts for whatever reason, and you’ve got yourself a slasher.
In these movies, the most degenerate members of the group meet their doom first. If a character is a pothead, he or she bites the dust early. Then the couple in the throes of premarital sex goes next. Every slasher needs comedic relief, but being the group prankster won’t save you from taking an ax to the dome. The only character who usually survives these horrific encounters with a crazed maniac is the virgin—what horror fans call the “final girl.”
That survival pattern isn’t accidental. It’s intentional. Filmmakers might deny it, but they can’t escape it. The entire subgenre runs on moral logic. In Friday the 13th, Jason punishes teenagers engaged in reckless behavior because they remind him of the counselors who neglected to save him from drowning. Those counselors were too busy exploring each other’s bodies to notice the bullied young boy flailing in the water after a group of hooligans tossed him in.
Then there’s Michael Myers from Halloween. He commits his first kill against his sister Judith immediately after she has sex with her boyfriend. Myers is only six years old at the time. “The Shape,” as the credits call him, later targets teenage babysitters who care more about getting sweet lovin’ from their significant others than watching the kids placed in their charge.
Killers in these films function less like mindless, random monsters and more like instruments of judgment. From a theological point of view, Sacred Scripture repeatedly tells us that sin carries consequences. Saint Paul calls it “the wages of sin.” In slashers, the villain translates that truth into cinematic form. He doesn’t kill randomly. He targets individuals engaging in specific, unsavory behaviors. He punishes vice. In brutal fashion, he holds these kids accountable for their actions.
Myers and Voorhees parody divine justice. They reflect God’s Law written on the hearts of men. Deep down, we know these behaviors are wrong. Actions matter. Participating in evil invites destruction. Audiences recognize this truth instinctively, which explains why they cheer when vile teens get what they earned.
But here’s where the genre collapses theologically and reveals its emptiness. Slashers deliver judgment without mercy or hope of redemption. These killers never offer repentance. They extend no grace. They simply carry out the sentence. That message doesn’t reflect the Christian faith. It reflects legalism taken to its most nihilistic extreme.
Yes, God judges sinners who die without faith in Christ. But God never divorces His judgment from His mercy. He offers redemption up until the moment of death. Instead of executing guilty sinners, God accepts Christ’s sacrifice to ransom them from the punishment they deserve. That’s the meaning of the Cross.
The final girl survives not because she repents, but because she “earned” salvation by being good enough. That isn’t grace. Slasher movies rightly teach that choices matter and sin has consequences, but they fail to offer hope—especially to those struggling with immorality.
As a Christian horror fan, I don’t reject slashers for this reason. I see them as cautionary tales believers can use to start conversations about truth, right and wrong, and personal sin. In Christian hands, the hope missing from these films gets supplied by preaching the Gospel. In the end, these movies can become tools—opening doors to reach a lost and dying world with a hope they won’t find on screen.
