I called it ‘post-horror’ – and now I’ve created a monster

When I coined the term for scary films that broke the rules, gore fans showered me with abuse.

Now it has been adopted by a festival – and I feel vindicatedFive years ago, in this paper, I coined a term to describe what I saw as a new trend in horror movies: “post-horror”.

Bad idea.

To me, the term had a nice ring to it – a bit like “postmodern”.

And in the same way postmodern architecture played with established language and traditions without necessarily sticking to the rules, I suggested a number of recent horror movies were doing the same: movies such as It Comes at Night, A Ghost Story and The Witch.

The “horror community” wasted no time in telling me how wrong I was.

Responses to my article varied from “It’s all just horror, duh” to “This is elitist snobbery” to “You can’t possibly weigh on

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