“I suppose I think about murder more than anyone really should. I am constantly amazed by its sheer power to alter and define our lives.”

—Not The Holiday

All’s Fair in Love and Gore: The Intersection of Romantic Comedies and Slasher Films in the Late Twentieth and Early Twenty-First Centuries

While slasher and rom-com films may draw harsher criticism than other genres, the sociocultural impact of these types of films cannot be understated. There’s a reason they both have a pull at the box office. A reason why, despite the turbulent swing of audience taste and film trends over the years, for every Halloween that’s been produced, there’s been a Julia Roberts–fronted “will they/won’t they” to match (see appendix 1).

From a behavioral standpoint it could be argued that slashers and rom-coms maintain their permanency within the cinema landscape by the way their predictable outcomes appeal to basic instinctual human needs. Coincidentally (or perhaps not), the textbook endings within each genre align with consecutive stages of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: slashers—safety and security; rom-coms—love and belonging (see appendix 2). Put simply, these films give us something we all inherently want: a life to live and a reason to live it.

However, the inherent structural similarities between these two ostensibly opposed genres suggest far wider applications could be obtained from not just their individual study but a complementary investigation. A more in-depth consideration of these films reveals that they follow an analogous format, one that contains certain rules. If the protagonists follow those rules, they win. In slashers, they live. In rom-coms, they find love. If they don’t follow the rules, they lose. For slashers, that means getting decapitated in some gruesome, yet satisfying, way (often while topless). For a rom-com, losing leads to crying in the rain outside an unrequited love’s house, doomed to be alone and sexless forever. Either of these scenarios could apply to countless classics within the slasher and rom-com repertoire of the late twentieth century. While these films are dismissed in some circles for an apparent lack of depth and a heavy reliance on tropes, audiences continue to come back for more.

Consider this dissertation a genealogical study of slashers and rom-coms; distant cousins stuck in the same generational cycle. Influenced and precast by their predecessors. Destined to repeat the tropes and clichés of their pa—