From Suspiria to Hereditary, the genre is increasingly ditching its B-movie bag of tricks in order to be taken seriously.
But I was far more frightened by ‘duds’ such as Overlord and The Nun than this new monstrous Oscar-baitHorror is having a moment.
Films such as Suspiria, Halloween, A Quiet Place and Hereditary are no longer being dragged out and dusted off at Halloween before being kicked back into the basement for another year.
Now, they generate high-profile coverage all year round, often reiterating some version of the idea that they shouldn’t be called horror at all, but should be fenced off in a subgenre dubbed “elevated horror”, “smart horror” or “post-horror”.
I don’t like horror, the reasoning goes, but I liked these horror movies … so now I have to call them something else.This is nothing new.
The history of horror films is one long tug of war between the classy,
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