A Horrific Piece

Hi Readers!

With Halloween inching closer, I thought it would be fun to write a piece on Horror, taking a mini dive into it's history as a genre, and application to the modern world.

What is Horror? 

Horror is defined as a medium that is intended to disturb, frighten, shock, or disgust its audience. With various sub-genres based upon what causes the fear and how the story is told, Horror is an incredibly vast tool that can entangle itself into most stories. 

The history of Horror is intrinsically tied to real-world anxieties, evolving from ancient folklore to a highly sophisticated academic medium for contemporary societal critique. Due to it's distinct reflection of localized regional anxieties, Horror differs around the globe. Beginning with ancient folklores, evolving into medieval literature, gothic literature, and modern horror.

This is portrayed by the comparison of Mesopotamian Mythology's epic, Enuma Elish, which features Tiamat, a primordial goddess of saltwater, who emobides the fear surrounding chaos and destruction, and the Norse Mythology epic of the monstrous Fenrir wolf, whose insatiable hunger for destruction represents uncontrollable anarchy.

Furthermore, Horror may be frequently used as a mirror of politics, reflecting state-sanctioned terror and systemic oppression, such as through the history of witch-hunting. In the early modern period, the fear of the supernatural was weaponized by religious and political authorities to enforce social conformity, suppress bodily autonomy, and marginalize vulnerable populations, particularly women.

As societies modernized, these externalized mythological monsters transitioned into psychological and societal terrors that directly mirrored changing cultural anxieties. For example, the Cambridge Companion to American Horror explores how Horror's focus on the body may stem from the modern American state's restrictions of freedom according to race, gender, sexuality, etc.

Therefore, taking this into consideration, it may be found that Horror is not only a genre that many enjoy for the thrill of being spooked, but for unveiling the darker truths of our societies.

My love for it

I don't actually know where my love for Horror began. My first memories of the genre is only in fear of it. I can remember hiding behind my curtains while watching 'Monster House' with my cousins, and having various nightmares of my baby dolls coming to life after watching 'Toy Story' and scratching our DvD of 'Nine' so my brother couldn't put it on anymore because their soul-functions scared me. 

Paranoia and anxiety has followed me my entire life, a gift from my loving, but overwhelming, Mom, trying to prepare me for a life in Johannesburg, where the crime rate sits at 89.6 out of 100. Constantly reminding me of current, horrific, events depicted in the You Magazine, and always watching some kind of true-crime documentary, she kept me well educated in violence. 

Somewhere along the line, my fear of Horror became an obsession--it posessed me with anxiety and yet, I couldn't stop indulging. 

I'd like to say that I overcame my fears and figured out a way to quell my sheltered idealogies, but I think the reason I love it so much, is that it feels like another way for me to prepare. Watching slashers, or home break-ins, murderous ghosts and vengeful demons--opens a kind of doorway, allowing me to almost act within these scenarios and create gameplans. How to be the final girl, the lone survivor, the one who gets to tell the tale. 

As I've started learning more about the craft of storytelling, the hidden societal critiques have only made me love the genre more. Now, not only can I feel like I'm ready for an apocalypse, but I can judge our rigid, pathetic, social norms too.  

Due to this, I've decided to list some of my favourite Horror books, shows, and films that delve into this shadowed part of humanity below, with open suggestions being available on my Recommendations Page!

Overall, thank you for reading,

Alivia :)

List of Favs: 

Books

* Carrie

* Dracula

* Frankenstein

* House of Leaves

* The Shining

 

Movies

* Alien

* Black Swan

* Creep

* Funny Games

* Get Out

* Invasion of the body snatchers

* It follows

* Obsession

* Parasite

* Perfect Blue

* Possession

* Possum

* Psycho

* Sinners

* The Babadook

* The Exorcist

* The Red shoes

* The Substance

* The Thing

* Threads

* Us

Tv

* Black Mirror

* Midnight Mass

* The Fall of the House of Usher

 

(P.S: I can't recommend what I haven't indulged yet but I also desperatly want to read Metamorphisis, Tender is the Flesh, Interview with a Vampire, and watch Eraserhead, To the Lighthouse, Rosemary's Baby, The Coven, and Eyes without a face.)

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

References:

Baako, Logan. (2023). The Evolution of Horror Films: From Classic Monsters to Psychological Terrors. Art and Society. 2. 1-10. 10.56397/AS.2023.10.01.

Baglay, Valentina. (2023). The horror genre in the world art. Iberian and Western folklore motifs. Latinskaia Amerika. 96. 10.31857/S0044748X0023819-9.

Clasen, Mathias. (2010). The Horror! The Horror!. 1. 112-119.

Clasen, Mathias. (2018). Evolutionary Study of Horror Literature. 10.1007/978-3-319-97406-4_27.

Crofts, P., & van Rijswijk, H. (2024). Final Fatal Girls – Horror and the Legal Subject. Australian Feminist Law Journal, 50(1), 113–129. https://doi.org/10.1080/13200968.2024.2333541

Dubourg, Edgar & Baumard, Nicolas. (2021). Why imaginary worlds? The psychological foundations and cultural evolution of fictions with imaginary worlds. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 45. 1-52. 10.1017/S0140525X21000923.

Dubourg, Edgar & Thouzeau, Valentin & Beuchot, Thomas & Bonard, Constant & Boyer, Pascal & Chevallier, Coralie & Clasen, Mathias & Boon-Falleur, Melusine & Fiorio, Grégory & Fitouchi, Léo & Fisher, Maryanne & Gantman, Ana & Grant, Ania & Hye-Knudsen, Marc & Katiyar, Tanay & Kjeldgaard-Christiansen, Jens & Mercier, Marius & Mercier, Hugo & Morin, Olivier & Baumard, Nicolas. (2026). Carving Stories at Their Natural Joints. Psychological Review. 10.1037/rev0000648.

Gordon, Rebecca, 'Horror-Comedy' (27 Nov. 2013), in Krin Gabbard (ed.), Oxford Bibliographies in Cinema and Media Studies (New York, NY, online edn, Oxford Academic, 28 Oct. 2011 - ), https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780199791286-0077, accessed 18 Oct. 2026.

Max Fincher (2012). Terror. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118398500.wbeotgt007Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

McAndrew, Francis. (2021). The Psychology, Geography, and Architecture of Horror: How Places Creep Us Out. Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture. 4. 47-62. 10.26613/esic.4.2.189.

Morgan, J. (1998), Toward an Organic Theory of the Gothic: Conceptualizing Horror. The Journal of Popular Culture, 32: 59-80. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0022-3840.1998.3203_59.x

Sarti, Simone & Airoldi, Massimo & Boni, Federico. (2025). The evolution of fear: cultural change in cinema horror types. 10.13129/2281-8138/2025.26.153-178.

Storey, M., & Shapiro, S. (2022). Introduction: American Horror: Genre and History. In S. Shapiro & M. Storey (Eds.), The Cambridge Companion to American Horror (pp. 1–12). chapter, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Tudor, A. (1997). Why horror? The peculiar pleasures of a popular genre. Cultural Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/095023897335691

Victoria Madden (2017). "We Found the Witch, May We Burn Her?": Suburban Gothic, Witch-Hunting, and Anxiety-Induced Conformity in Stephen King's Carrie. https://doi.org/10.1111/jacc.12675