We held a Slasher Movie King of the Mountain Bracket Battle to decide the greatest slasher movie of all time at Crypticon Seattle. 64 movies entered, and one emerged as the King of the Mountain. Cheers, groans, hoots, and pleading were all part of the activity. I asked the audience to get loud, and they made it happen! The final four were from franchises that would not surprise you, but the actual champion was not a highly seeded favorite. Who won? Check out the full interactive bracket right here!
Thanks to Crypticon for letting The Scariest Things showcase this showdown! It’s always fun to have the fans and audience weigh in and stump for their favorites. My favorite part would be when two beloved movies show up, and the crowd would groan, “Ohhhhhh…” I would tell them, “You have to pick one of them, because two movies enter, and the other one goes in the wood chipper.” Decisions, decisions. Sophie’s Choice moments, horror movie style.
For those of you familiar with the March Madness NCAA basketball tournaments, this is set up just like that tradition, but with horror movies. Like any elimination tournament, there will be heavily favored, highly seeded participants and surprising underdogs. The #1 seeds, and the tournament favorites were: Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Psycho. They were pitted against “Just happy to be here” unheralded movies that many people were not familiar with. So, easy advancement would be expected. Needless to say, that wasn’t how it played out. If you were looking for a “chalk” (Predictable according to the seed line) tournament, we got a “chaos” bracket instead. And I was 100% down for that!
This is how we set up the field of 64:
- This bracket battle is to determine the audience FAVORITES, not necessarily the best production. These are very subjective decisions.
- To qualify as a slasher, the movie had to feature human, or nearly human, serial killers.
- The slasher is a melee weapon wielder. No biting. No Guns.
- Seeds were determined by the movie’s importance to the history of horror. Popularity, critical acclaim, and box office all matter. But, in the end, it’s the fan’s voice that counts.
- The audience was instructed to cheer for their favorite Movie. The winner would be the one that got the loudest cheers. In the event of a close battle, a show of hands would be called. Any tie goes to the underdog. Them’s the rules!
The Scariest Things used a widget application, Common Ninja Bracket Master, to create the brackets, if you ever want to try and create a bracket yourself. It’s got a ton of depth and utility, and we only took advantage of a few of the features.
The Results
What you see in the bracket below are the results of the audience selections, and do not reflect The Scariest Things’ opinions on the matter. BUT, we do support the results. This is, of course, a subjective competition, and it’s for fun and speculation. We had about 32 people participating in the battle, so it is a limited sample size. You could certainly sense the momentum for certain fan-favorite movies as the bracket progressed.
My Post-Bracket analysis
- Mostly the bracket held form, but there were some absolutely stunning results.
- The reputations of Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre weren’t enough to get them out of the early rounds. Stunning.
- Can’t say I had Dr. Giggles crashing the party!
- I thought that Terrifier 2 was going to go further, particularly with Art the Clown in attendance at Crypticon… but it made an earlier than expected exit.
- I also expected Scream to do better.
- This audience really liked “fun” slasher movies. Final Girls, Happy Death Day, and Freaky all did well. I spit on Your Grave, Last House on the Left, and Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer… not as much. The fun factor of Friday the 13th Part VI and A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 also reflected this audience’s personality.
When navigating this site, please note that you can scroll up and down, left and right to see the entire bracket and selections. You can click on the matchups to get additional information about the director, the release date, and the seeding.
Also at Crypticon, we did a Final Girl Final Four Bracket Fight. If you found this event interesting, we will be doing this again, with different categories.