Screams of Our Time: Why We're Obsessed with Horror in an Age of Political Crises

Image Credit: Nathan J Hilton via Pexels

I love horror films. I always have. One of my earliest memories of the cinema is being smuggled into a screening of It (2017) by my stepmum and finding the ticket officers more frightening than Pennywise.

The genre has always held my imagination captive: the violent string scores, mindless protagonists, and shameless sadism have a strangely cathartic appeal. Perhaps this fixation points to something pathological, but The Conjuring will always be my go-to comfort movie.

Living through an era of so-called ‘elevated horror’ - which arguably began with Charlie’s decapitation in Ari Aster’s Hereditary - has, unsurprisingly, been a thrill for me. But recently I’ve found myself wondering, why now? Why has the mainstream only just started to embrace the brutal beauty of horror? In my mind, this renaissance has been a long time coming.

I can’t help but feel that this newfound appreciation for the macabre reflects something more than a shift in aesthetic tastes. We are, after all, living in a decade defined by political instability, climate crises, and cultural polarisation - all of which seem far more horrific than a possessed doll or a chainsaw-swinging cannibal. The intrinsic motifs of horror are perfect vehicles to convey such contemporary anxieties, perhaps explaining the resurgence of the bloody and the bone-chilling in film.

Take Sinners, for example. Directed by Ryan Coogler and released earlier this year, Sinners smashed box office records, earned five nominations at the Grammys, and is thought to be a serious contender at this year’s Oscars. Given the Academy’s unforgivable snubbing of horror in recent years (I’m still not over how they overlooked Toni Collette as Annie Graham), Coogler’s original vampire flick could prove to be a cultural pivot point.  Although watching a cabal of vampires break into traditional Irish step-dancing is a draw in itself, the screenplay weaves together discussions of race, immigrant identity, white supremacy, cultural erasure, and social cohesion to create a blood-spattered tapestry of contemporary malaise. If only Michael B. Jordan and his machine gun could come to our rescue…

Sinners is just one example. Despite the director’s protestations, the recently-released Weapons has widely been interpreted as an allegory expressing the absurdist tragedy of school shootings, encompassing conversations of police brutality and misogyny to boot. 

Beyond this year, Nosferatu (2024) dissected themes of sexual power, male possessiveness, and the cultural impulse to ignore victims of abuse. I don’t know about you, but Eggers’ grotesque, gluttonous Orlok, whose destructive sway is enabled by fanatical followers, also reminds me of a certain occupant of the Oval Office.

Jordan Peele’s Get Out and Us similarly come to mind as obvious examples of ‘political horror’, as do 2013’s The Purge, 1975's Jaws, and 1973’s The Exorcist. My favourite example of sociological projection onto the supernatural, however, is the queer recasting of The Babadook. The titular ghoul is now widely embraced as an LGBTQ+ icon, even appearing at Pride parades and protests (I mean, that top hat is giving something).

Fundamentally, horror has always been political. From its very inception as a cinematic genre, horror has challenged norms, provoked resistance and reform, and reshaped our understanding of the times we live in. Although we are unlikely to encounter killer clowns (2016 epidemic aside), crimson demons, or pagan cults in our day-to-day lives, we can certainly see ourselves in the characters who rage against them.

So don’t lose hope when the knife-wielding figure of fascism presses its blade to democracy’s throat, because as every horror movie teaches us, the final girl always survives.