How post-horror movies are taking over cinema

Reflections on It Comes At Night, Get Out, A Ghost Story, more.

Last Thursday, the Guardian put out an article: “How post-horror movies are taking over cinema.” It caused something of a stir.

Considering that horror is the place where we explore our mortal and societal fears, the genre is actually one of the safest spaces in cinema. More than any other genre, horror movies are governed by rules and codes: vampires don’t have reflections; the “final girl” will prevail; the warnings of the gas station attendant/mystical Native American/creepy old woman will go unheeded; the evil will ultimately be defeated, or at least explained, but not in a way that closes off the possibility of a sequel. The rules are our flashlight as we venture into the unknown. But in some respects, they’ve made horror a realm of what Donald Rumsfeld would describe as “known unknowns”.

No wonder some film-makers are starting to question what happens when you switch the flashlight off. What happens when you stray beyond those cast-iron conventions and wander off into the darkness? You might find something even scarier. You might find something that’s not scary at all. What could be emerging here is a new sub-genre. Let’s call it “post-horror”.

Horror is the most profitable genre in the industry and it’s booming. This year is set to be horror’s best ever, led by titles like Get Out (which has made $252m globally on a budget of $4.5m), and M Night Shyamalan’s Split ($277m on a $9m budget). As a result, there’s a market for horrors with low budgets and mass appeal. Which basically means variations on well-established themes: supernatural possession, haunted houses, psychos, zombies.

This is the market post-horror is reacting against.

What was the stir about? Is there even such a thing as ‘post-horror’? Here’s how A24, the company which has distributed It Comes at Night, The Witch, and A Ghost Story, responded to the Guardian story which claimed that A Ghost Story is a “movie that could really seal post-horror”:

Jordan Peele, writer-director of Get Out, has a different way of referring to the movie and others he has planned: “I have four other social thrillers that I want to unveil in the next decade” [emphasis added].

Can there be such a thing as ‘post-horror’ if filmmakers and production companies consider the movies in question to be something else?

I think I get what the article is referring to: Movies which do not traffic in the tropes common to slasher films and the like. Still that doesn’t necessarily mean a new sub-genre has emerged. Elevated Horror. Social Thriller. Psychological Thriller. Seems to me those pretty much cover the gamut of this range of movies not falling into the mode of a traditional horror film.

One thing is for sure: That won’t stop production companies from marketing such movies as horror films. Check out the trailer for It Comes at Night:

What do you think. Is post-horror a thing?

For more of the Guardian article, go here.