In contemporary (post-modern) horror, the threat is “not simply among us, but rather part of us, caused by us.” Institutions (like the church and the military) that were once successful in containing the monster and restoring order are at best ineffectual (there is often a lack of closure) and at worst responsible for the monstrous. Contemporary horror also tends to collapse the categories of normal bodies and monstrous bodies; it is said to dispense with the binary opposition of us and them, and to resist the portrayal of the monster as a completely alien Other, characteristic of such 1950s films as The Thing (from Another World) (1951), Them! (1954), and The Blob (1958). This tendency to give the monster a familiar face (the monster is not simply among us, but possibly is us) is tied, in postmodern horror, to the focus on the body as site of the monstrous.
–Lianne McLarty, “Beyond the Veil of the Flesh”: Cronenberg and the Disembodiment of Horror, from The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film
love how kids are always so uncontrollably ravenous for horror. they beg you to tell them spooky stories even when they know it will give them nightmares. every school has gruesome rumours about the kid who fell off their chair or tripped onto a cloakroom peg. we used to stand in the playground of my primary school staring up at the castle looming across from us and swear we could see a ghostly figure wave before plummeting endlessly to the water below…. all of this passion and yet most kid’s horror media is complete shit. what a waste.
As with most female horror fans, people love to ask me what it is I get out of horror. I give them the stock answers: catharsis, empowerment, escapism and so on. Less easy to explain is the fact that I gravitate toward films that devastate and unravel me completely – a good horror film will more often make me cry than make me shudder.
Kier-La Janisse, House of Psychotic Women