What Is Horror?
“I don’t like horror movies, I hate being scared, I hate gore, I hate jumpscares…” If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard some variation of this sentence I could finance every horror film on Indiegogo (yes that was a shameless Welcome Week plug). Many of my friends detest horror, claiming they simply don’t like the genre. It makes me wonder what they think defines the genre. Horror has a reputation for being outrageously violent, disgustingly brutal, or shamelessly tawdry and demeaning to its audience. Whenever someone tells me they don’t like horror, I ask them to define what horror is to them. There are many different definitions of horror depending on who you ask.
“Horror is something that’s scary.”
Alright, horror is something that is scary. How do we define scary, though? What scares me might not scare you. Fear is subjective; it’s difficult to establish. Is it something that intends to scare? How do we know if it intends to scare? What about comedies like Death Becomes Her or The Wolf Of Snow Hollow? I would argue that Scream isn’t necessarily scary, but does that make it not horror? And how do we go about categorizing gateway horror like Coraline or Scooby-Doo? Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade was one of the scariest movies I’ve ever watched, does that make it horror? Does it depend on the person? Is horror a label we must give individually? If so, doesn’t that defeat the purpose of genre in the first place?
“Horror is something that has supernatural elements.”
The idea that horror is supernatural makes sense, but excludes some of the most crucial parts of the genre. What about slashers? What about psychological horror? What would that make films like Psycho and X? What about films that start off natural but then become supernatural later in the franchise like Friday The 13th? And does that make everything that is supernatural automatically horror? Would that mean that films like Ghost or Dune are horror, but films like Halloween are not? Would Star Wars be considered horror given it has ghosts? Would Harry Potter? What about films that deal with supernatural creatures like The Little Mermaid or Pinocchio? How exactly would we go about defining the supernatural in the first place?
“Horror builds suspense.”
Horror building suspense is probably the answer I agree with the most. It includes most horror comedies and gateway horror. I can’t really think of any examples of horror content that doesn’t build suspense. Then again, I can’t think of many examples of any stories that don’t build suspense. When I watched Mickey Mouse Clubhouse as a kid the suspense of whether we’d get to go to the clubhouse or not killed me. This is where we hit the problem, once again, of how exactly we would define suspense itself. Is it simply something mysterious that leaves viewers questioning what’s going to happen next? Is it something that intends to make the viewer anxious? How do we know that it intends to do this? I think the suspense definition is especially interesting because it brings up a question I frequently ask. Where do we draw the line between horror and thrillers? What defines the thriller genre and what differentiates it from horror?
Honestly, I’m not even sure that I know the answer. It seems like every time I think I know exactly what horror is, a film like We Need To Talk About Kevin comes out that completely changes that. I see horror elements in thousands of movies that I wouldn’t necessarily classify as horror. How much horror does a film have to have for it to be classified as horror?
I’d like to say it’s a Justice Stewart “I know it when I see it” situation, which is where it seems to stand now. However, this makes it difficult to narrow down. I might see Jaws as a horror film, while others would argue that it’s strictly an action film. That’s the thing about genre—it’s not really real. It’s like gender. The more we analyze it the more we can start to see the cracks in its logic. With the popularization of more experimental films I think we’re starting to see more and more that genre is only real because we make it real. We as humans like to categorize things and put them in boxes, but defining those boxes is difficult. For example, Parasite showcases a vast mashup of genres, so what category does Parasite fit into?
Genres became specifically important within film when companies started using them for marketing purposes. There were a number of major studios and each was known for their genre of films. Universal, for instance, was known for their horror movies. These films often concerned creatures and monsters. Could monsters be the defining part of horror? It could be argued that Michael Myers or the mind is a monster. However, it could also be argued that characters like Regina George from Mean Girls or President Snow from The Hunger Games are monsters; most antagonists could fit into that monster classification. And what about films like She Dies Tomorrow where the evil is ambiguous?
Last year I wrote myself a definition of horror: “Horror is anything that questions societal norms using the strange, unusual, or unsettling in a controlled group to elicit empathy.” The main phrase here being “questions societal norms.” The one common thread I’ve found throughout all horror is that it is always questioning society and human nature. What happens when someone goes against the norm by putting on a mask and killing teenagers? What happens when the government fails due to a zombie apocalypse and we’re left to our own devices? What happens when the perfect American teenage girl moves in with her monster aunt and uncle? If someone is raised as a cannibal and doesn’t know it’s wrong, is he really evil? What is evil?
Questioning society, though, can be applied to a large number of stories that aren’t necessarily horror. Sex And The City is built around questioning the social dynamics between the sexes in the early 2000s, but I wouldn’t classify that as horror. That’s why I include “the strange, unusual, and unsettling,” but, again how do we define the strange and unusual exactly? To some, that could mean queerness or mental illness. I think of it as anything that goes against the everyday, whether that’s a goth family with a funky bald uncle or an army of doppelgangers living underground.
I certainly don’t have all the answers nor do I believe I’m the authority on this topic, but this is how I view horror. I think it’s something personal to each of us and we’re all going to see it a little differently. Horror loves to push boundaries- perhaps that’s one of the reasons it’s so hard to define. It’s constantly challenging our expectations. If you try to put horror in a box it will claw its way out one way or another. So, next time someone says they don’t like horror for whatever reason you can give them this entire spiel and then they’ll probably never talk to you again. :)
I have to give credit to Dr. Rebekah McKendry for making me aware of horror’s undefinable nature all the way back in 2019. She has a great episode of Nightmare University on the subject.
