How the Horror Genre has changed

So, of course, I love the horror genre. It’s interesting to me because it’s always been critical of human progress. It shows us the dark side of human progress, at least initially with the Jules Vernes and the HG Wells of the world, and the Mary Shelleys. They were part of the romantic movement of literature that was moving away from reason and into emotional life, and nostalgic for a time before scientific progress. Complicated things. Those flaws aside, I think it is a great medium for critiquing progress. We do have to know the dark side of what we do as much as the progress side, as much as the positive side. Nowadays, I think horror has expanded. The characters are far more complex. The plots are more complex. The twists are more complex, and the issues they deal with are more complex. They’re not just, how does progress affect humanity and should we really move forward in this scientific area, or that scientific area. It’s a social commentary as well, and sometimes that social commentary can be really valuable. And the medium of horror enables us to explore that social commentary without vitriol, in the same way that comedy helps us explore social commentary without vitriol. So this is the age of the new horror film, where demons are really not just external beings, supernatural beings, but they’re the things that are inside you. Where ghosts aren’t just these external beings that haunt you, they’re your past. They’re any part of your life that you haven’t resolved, that comes back to haunt you until you resolve it. So it’s much more human, much more… the stories are much more centered around psychological dynamics and I think that’s a great advancement.