The Sympathized Slasher

«Unlike several popular slasher films in which the serial killer is written off as emotionally absent, some horror films attempt to evoke sympathy in the male killer. In Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (1960) and Franck Khalfoun’s Maniac (2012), viewers develop an understanding between the killers’ emotional distress and how anger against their abusive or neglectful parents carries through to violence against women. I will suggest that these films demonstrate masculinity in distress via the act of looking. As in many narrative films, the male gaze is a significant narrative; male looking and objectification/fetishization of the female victim plays a role in cinematography. The first-person I-camera assumes the gaze as the killer stalks and murders his victims. But in some cases, the male gaze is not the dominating, controlling force that film theorist Laura Mulvey identifies; in fact, the male gaze is challenged when the killers of these two films come into contact with central female characters, rendering them not only as the Other but also by adopting the feminine gaze. With the possibility that gaze can be subverted or even switched, these films suggest that male anxiety against the “final girl” is palpable on screen. Further, these two films examine the killers’ psychological displacement of rage against the father or mother but do so in different ways; while Peeping Tom analyzes rage against the father, Maniac studies disavowal against the mother.» [Résumé]