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Horror films are designed to frighten and invoke our worst hidden fears, captivating and entering us at the same time. a dictionary defines the word horror as:
an overwelming and painful feeling caused by something frightfully shocking, terrifying, or revolting; a shuddering fear: to shrink back from a mutilated corpse in horror.
Growing up can be a bit of a bloodbath for everyone, regardless of gender. And when it comes to how the actual gory details of the process are portrayed on film, young female characters don't often get the same freedom to explore the dark side of the process that young men do, unless you happen to be watching a horror film.
Horror has traditionally been thought of as a male domain, and perhaps rightly so. There is a startling lack of consistently of work for female horror directors. This lack of has resulted in a surplus of horror films told principally from the male point of view, making for a genre that mainly reflects patriarchal fears of female sexuality and power.
When it comes to films that use horror tropes as metaphors for coming-of-age, it's pretty clear that unlike other "traditionally lady-centric" genres, horror offers the chance to truthfully explore female rites of passage that are otherwise virtually ignored by mainstream cinema.
The most obvious example is in the way that sexual awakening is handled in cinema. Young men and their pursuit of losing their virginity is an endlessly covered topic in just about every genre you can name. The same cannot be said about the female version of the experience.
Aside from a handful of examples the portrayal of the realities of what it's like for a young woman to attain her own sexual agency seems to only exist in a genre that allows for say, the existence of a teen girl sporting a set of mutant teeth between her legs. Rather than showing the initial sexual experiences as romantic or sweetly awkward,
Teeth allows for the main character to face the more ugly truths, like becoming acquainted with her own, occasionally scary, anatomy and figuring out that her pleasure may not always be at the forefront of her potential partner's mind.
