Fiery Pen

Modern horror: the state of the genre

Last week, I was featured as a camp counselor at the inaugural Creepaway Camp, an immersive horror-themed summer camps for adults. I participated in a panel called “What Scares Us Now?” to discuss the trends we are seeing in the horror genre and what they say about our current fears.

So, like a good millennial former literature major, I did my research and prepared pages of handwritten notes (in multiple color pens). The panel ended up ruminating more on how we are representing these things in our work, which was great. It was an interesting discussion. I had more thoughts than we had time.

But now, I have all this research… so I bring it to you here.

Horror through the decades

“Horror films don’t create fear. They release it.”
Wes Craven

The horror genre has always reflected current fears in society. Horror is how we explore and face them. It is our playground where we exercise the worst what ifs.

After World War II, we saw the rise of nuclear monsters and science gone wrong, like Godzilla and The Fly. During the Red Scare, we saw psychological horror, like Psycho and Rosemary’s Baby. The civil rights era brought us Night of the Living Dead. The passing of Roe vs. Wade stirred up The Exorcist and Carrie. The urban decay of the 70s saw the rise of cults and the start of slashers, like Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The consumerism of the 80s paralleled the serial killer epidemic and the many installments of franchises like Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars spawned torture porn like Saw and Hostel. Then technology leaped forward and phones and cameras were everywhere, bringing documentary style films like The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity. We started to move into virtual horror like Feardotcom and Stay Alive and community collapse like The Purge.

Horror trends today

Horror is having a moment. We are seeing groundbreaking books, TV, and movies and a surge in genre popularity. Horror is breaking records and winning awards. But when things are good for horror, they are usually not so good for the world.

Where does that put us? Post-pandemic, mid global political turmoil, fully in climate collapse, what are we scared of?

The list is long, I think, for all of us. But how is that being expressed in the movies and books coming out now in the horror genre?

There are easy concepts like capitalism as vampires, social media as a trap, climate collapse as monsters (or animals). But I would suggest our modern, post-COVID horror fears can be distilled down to these categories:

• Grief, generational trauma, & social injustice
• Aging & the elderly
• Wealth inequity & capitalism
• The future (AI, technology, climate crisis)
• Feminine rage & the masculinity crisis (often seen as men & dating)
• Mental health & body image disorders

Honorable mention to loss of autonomy and control, liminal spaces (Backrooms, From), and the uncanny valley (The Outsider). Honestly, if we made a Venn diagram of this, I imagine there would be A LOT of overlap between trends.

I could probably write a post on each topic, then another post on each work under them, but let’s look at some examples…

Grief, generational trauma, & social injustice

This is a large category. I would say the foundation is grief. Some stories show us the individual experience of grief, but we also see grief intersecting the generational trauma of social injustices. That pain, whether the microcosm of loss or the macrocosm of long-standing evils, is spawning horror now.

I do think the increase in grief trauma, particularly around death, is linked to the amount of death seen during the pandemic. I also think the increase in historical and generational trauma horror is linked to the rise of awareness on these issues post-pandemic and social media movements.

Movies & TV:

• Bring Her Back
• Talk to Me
• Midsommar
• The Boogeyman
• Get Out
• Nope
• Candyman
• The Blackening
• His House
• Sinners
• Lovecraft Country
• Them
• Widow’s Bay
• The Fall of the House of Usher

Books:

• This Thing Between Us
• Monstrilio
• Headlights
• How to Sell a Haunted House
• Our Wives Under the Sea
• Sisters of a Lost Nation, Indian Burial Ground, & The Whistler
• Indian Lake Trilogy
• The Only Good Indians
• The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
• The Reformatory
• Chain Gang All Stars
• Lone Women

Aging & the elderly

We are approaching an inverted population pyramid. As we live longer and birth rates decline, we are facing a “silver tsunami”. And apparently, this prospect is terrifying.

Movies & TV:

• X
• Barbarian
• Weapons
• The Substance
• The Visit
• The Rule of Jenny Penn

Books

• The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre

wealth inequity & capitalism

Billionaires running (and ruining) the world with all their many evils saturate our news feeds. This has always been a theme in horror because I think it has always been a theme in humanity. Hostel wasn’t breaking any new ground 20 years ago.

Movies & TV:

• Ready or Not
• The Menu
• The Hunt
• Infinity Pool
• The Long Walk
• Squid Game
• They Will Kill You

Books:

• Guillotine
• A Better World

The future

The future is bleak, my friends. Between the alarming and aggressive rise of AI, the absolute shit show that is politics, and the accelerating climate crisis, we no longer know what to expect. Our plans, patterns, and expectations are being upended, and that scares the shit out of us.

Movies & TV:

• It Ends
• M3gan
• Subservience
• Swarm
• Companion
• Infinity Pool
• Knock at the Cabin

Books:

• Bury Your Gays
• Wake Up and Open Your Eyes
• Dead, But Dreaming of Electric Sheep

feminine rage & Masculinity crisis

This is a big topic that contains multitudes. #metoo, toxic nice guys, the Epstein files, the Male Loneliness Epidemic. All sides of the same coin and, likely, core fear.

Movies & TV:

• Companion
• Obsession
• Men
• Creep & The Creep Tapes
• Promising Young Woman
• Barbarian
• Blink Twice
• Yellowjackets
• Revenge
• The Substance
• Heart Eyes
• Together

Books:

• A Certain Hunger
• Molka
• Play Nice
• Jawbone
• The Mean Ones
• The Eyes are the Best Part
• Maeve Fly

mental health & body disorders

Horror is looking at mental illness, body image disorders and beauty obsession in particular. Mental illness has always been a part of horror, but this particular current expression speaks to our fixations.

Movies & TV:

• The Substance
• The Ugly Stepsister
• The Beauty
• Grafted
• Slanted
• Devil in Silver
• Malignant
• Pearl
• Smile

Books:

• Nothing Tastes as Good
• You Did Nothing Wrong
• The Eyes are the Best Part
• My Heart is a Chainsaw
• Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng
• Headlights
• Listen to Your Sister
• I’m Thinking of Ending Things
• Devil in Silver
• A Certain Hunger
• Natural Beauty

My own fears

This is my blog, so of course I have to bring MY work into the conversation. Let’s look at what I’ve published in this decade (since 2020):

• “Christmas in Misery”: social injustice
• “Enjoy Your Show”
• “Hairs”: grief
• “Opportunity”: wealth inequality
• “Thin Air”: mental illness
• “One Last Kill”: aging & the elderly
• “Smolder”: grief
• “Break a Leg”: mental illness
• Red Walls: grief, generational trauma, wealth inequity
• “Hers”
• Invisible Girls: feminine rage, generational trauma
• “Carnalytics”: the future
• Savages 2 (title TBD): the future

If you asked me what I am scared of, I would say myself and humans. However, if I look at my work the past few years, it appears I am scared of more than that. Not all my work hits on the trends listed in this post, but plenty do touch on those themes.

What do you think?

Hit those comments and tell me what you think scares us now and how it shows up the horror genre.

References

• Five Contemporary Horror Themes: What Scares Us Today?
• The Evolution of Modern Horror
• what cultural fears are driving today’s horror movies
• The Horror Mirror: Society’s Fears by Decade
• Be Very Afraid: How Horror Movie Trends Reflect Societal Fears

Christina Bergling

https://linktr.ee/chrstnabergling

Like my writing? Check out my books!

• Invisible Girls – Two girls must decide how far they will go to protect each other and if freedom can be found without fire.
• Red Walls – When Talia’s parents go after the monsters who hurt her, they never expected real monsters.
• Followers – You never know who is on the other side of the screen. Followers is a mystery and thriller that blends women’s fiction with horror.
• The Rest Will Come – Online dating would drive anyone to murder, especially Emma.
• Savages – Two survivors search the ruins for the last strain of humanity. Until the discovery of a baby changes everything.
• The Waning – Locked in a cage, Beatrix must survive to escape or be broken completely.
• Screechers – Mutant monsters and humans collide in the apocalyptic fallout of a burned world. Co-authored with Kevin J. Kennedy.
• Horror Anthologies