Horror is in its best decade since the seventies

For a long stretch horror meant sequels and remakes. Somewhere around the mid-2010s that changed, and the reason is as much financial as artistic.

The economics are the explanation

Horror is the only genre where a film can cost under five million dollars and gross hundreds of millions. The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity proved it twice, a decade apart. That asymmetry means a studio can fund a slate of strange, personal, director-led films and only needs one to land.

Blumhouse built a company on it: low budgets, creative control traded for tight money. A24 came at it from the other side, treating horror as a home for arthouse directors. Between them, the risk of a weird horror film became commercially rational.

The "elevated horror" argument

The label annoys people, and fairly. Horror has always been about something — Night of the Living Dead in 1968 was not subtle, and The Stepford Wives was not either. The idea that horror only recently became thematic is film-critic amnesia.

What did change is tempo. Hereditary, The Witch and Get Out take their time, trust the audience, and put the horror in the situation rather than the jump. That is a directing choice, not a new genre.

Where the genre is actually moving

The most interesting recent work is coming from outside the English-language market — Indonesian, Iranian, Korean and Australian horror have all had genuine breakouts, and streaming means they arrive without a distribution fight.

The other shift is folk horror's return: rural, communal, and about belief systems rather than monsters. It suits an anxious decade.

Lists worth reading

• HorrorMoviesListCurated horror lists and reviews
• LetterboxdWhere the good horror lists actually live