Buying the splat pack

[First paragraph] review of Bernard, M. (2014) Selling the Splat Pack: The DVD revolution and the American horror film. Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh. (HB/PB, pp 224, £70.00/£19.99, ISBN 978-0748685493) "The final girl... alone looks death in the face, but she alone also finds the strength either to stay with the killer long enough to be rescued… or to kill him herself." (Clover, 1992: 35) Horror has changed; the oft-repeated generic convention and plot line of the final girl described by Clover (1992) has been supplanted by a range of newer tropes and situations where nobody (final girl or otherwise) is safe. This change has also resulted in a shift in audiences’ perspectives: before we would identify with the final girl at the conclusion of the film and the narrative, but now we identify with the killer and monsters of horror. This shift has introduced new terrors for audiences to explore, and has also brought with it an opportunity to study horror from a different perspective.