Different Horror Categories
Which One Suits YOU the Best?
The Horror film genre is huge and kind of pain staking to delve into.
There’s a plethora of terrible horror movies out there.
Movies that bore, movies that repulse and movies that leave someone scarred for life when they just wanted to have fun for Halloween.
Finding the best movie for you and your preferences can be tough.
You don’t want to spoil the plot for yourself, but sometimes you just have to know exactly what’s coming.
Which is why my love of horror has pushed me to create my own category system for determining the best horror movie for the mood.
Some categories already exist within the genre, such as slashers, found footage and creature features.
But over the years I’ve found it easier to select a film based on categories I’ve created for myself. You can use it based on the members watching with you, on what you want to see, or what you want to feel.
Everyone deserves to enjoy the spooky side of fiction.
This is a comprehensive guide to my list of horror categories.
Scene from the 2016 film Hush
Sinister Human/s
This category is pretty straight forward, humans doing messed up stuff to other humans.
The focus is usually on the relationship between Target and Antagonist, generally one character will have an advantage over the other in a disproportionate sense.
Themes in these stories cover power structures in relationships and communities, exercising control over others, and the terrifying thought of how you might cope if you were being hunted.
Sub-categories:
Home Invader (Halloween 1978)
Stalker (Psycho 1960)
Cult (Apostle 2018)
Ominous Stranger (Misery 1990)
Home Invaders
Stories about Home Invaders have two major focuses, the Invader and the Tenant, with the story revolving around the power struggle between the characters.
If we look at the film Hush (2016), our perspective is that of the target, a deaf author who lives alone in the woods. We are introduced to various mechanism of her life that have been altered to help her navigate. For example, all alarms that would be audio are replaced by intense flashing lights. All of her communications are visual, such as face time and skype.
Fear is already being established by showing how vulnerable our protagonist is.
The protagonist refuses to be broken even though her attacker has every upper hand. No one knows their own house better than the dweller, and she uses that to her advantage.
Following that thought, the movie Don’t Breathe could not be better at illustrating the dangers of entering the house of someone you don’t know.
This time our protagonists are the home invaders.
A group of teens all coming from desperate living conditions believe that if they can just rob one house on the block, they can flee this town and build their own lives.
They all attempt to rob the house in one night, with the goal to leave the next morning directly after the hit. They mean no harm to the owner, but assume him to be a weak older man, known to be blind, who hopefully won’t even notice them or be able to stop them.
Unfortunately for the teens, they discover that this man is not only dangerous, he’s also an absolute psychopath.
The “hunters” become the hunted.
Scene from the 2016 film 10 Cloverfield Lane
The Ominous Stranger
The Ominous Stranger is a category I dedicate to they who cannot be completely trusted.
10 Cloverfield Lane is an excellent example.
After a fight with her partner, Michelle is driving away from her home city along a rural road when she has an accident, waking up in the bomb shelter of Howard, who admits to causing the accident due to his rush to get home. This is when he explains to Michelle that aliens have invaded, that the outside air is poisonous and no one is safe out in the open.
The story revolves around accepting whether or not Howard is telling the truth.
Which becomes more and more tested the more controlling Howard becomes about Michelle’s behavior, beliefs and speculations about the outside world.
Michelle is placed in a very difficult situation, does she flee Howard and the shelter he has provided and take a chance in a toxic wasteland? Or does she accept his explanation and stay put.
The concept is popular when apocalypses and government forces are part of a story, misinformation and trying to decide which reality is real is a common pattern.
But if we remove anything like that, how dangerous can a stranger be in our day to day lives?
How well do you know your friends?
Introducing Behind Her Eyes.
A series focused around a young woman who has a brief affair with her boss, only to accidentally befriend his wife and begin having an affair with her as well.
Scene from the 2021 series Behind Her Eyes
However, something is off about the wife, the main character is uncertain whether the wife has negative intentions, or if her husband is actually abusing his authority by diagnosing her and medicating her himself.
This one had a twist that truly warped my brain and left me wanting to rewatch it right after the finale credits ran.
The Sinister Human is a genre I love because it plays on your ability to read people, the actions of one group which were thought as sinister, can appear innocent in the face of actual malice.
People’s ability to experience what they see in front of them is truly phenomenal, most of us know the feeling of isolation that can come from staying on a farm or camping in the woods. Even if we have not experienced stalking, that unnerving feeling of someone watching you through your windows at night is one that resonates with many.
I would argue that women watch this category the most, its almost like prepping, you sit there are yell at the tv “No not that way!” “DON’T GO UPSTAIS WTF”, and if the character is capable and actually gets out of the situation, its cathartic and satisfying.
People always want the evil guy to lose, the balance is in making sure the fight is brutal but our protagonist has an iron will, too much to lose, too much to live for.
Target Audience and Warnings
This is a great category for people that want to watch someone fight back or unravel a mystery of who to trust.
Its a cat and mouse game that can go either way depending on the film you choose.
Hush is a battle between killer and survivor, at no point does the killer suggest interest in SA, which for me is a massive tick in any horror movie involving women. While it has a place, and can add a great deal to a plot, pure shock value is usually why SA is used in a horror film and it bothers me.
Sinister Human/s has the potential to depict some pretty hectic stuff, there’s almost nothing as upsetting as the actions humans are capable of inflicting on one another. With this in mind, sensitive viewers should watch with caution, try out the parents guide on IMDb if you’re really sus on the plot.
Jason from the Friday the 13th franchise
Karma, Revenge and Justice
Karma, Revenge and Justice revolves around what the characters experience rather than the characters themselves, it focuses on morals and challenges our beliefs around the crime versus the punishment.
The audience generally understands that whoever’s perspective we follow, something undoubtably terrible will happen to them. Sometimes the call to action is a major assault or waking up with a group of people you have to work with to get to safety.
I’m never going to recommend this genre to newbies, families, or sensitive people.
Its very torture, gore and despair focused.
The Saw franchise fits into our Karma and Justice tropes perfectly.
Viewers are introduced to a group of people trapped together by a maniac, who tortures the group for crimes only known by the maniac and the individuals accused.
The most interesting part about Saw, is the way the characters act in the situation. The maniac responsible for putting them in this game usually informs them that they are here for a reason, something they did wrong, and at some point the character may have to own up to what that could be. This leaves the audience conflicted, if they start to side with one character who turns out to have done something bad, its emotional whiplash.
Scene from the 1995 film Seven
Another example is something like Seven, a serial killer being tracked by the police is operating on a ridiculous set of morals they have drawn from the 7 deadly sins.
Their targets are people the maniac has decided represent a specific sin, and their deaths or tortures are specifically themed in that aesthetic.
Beware any film with a similar plot line to I Spit On Your Grave, its an extremely graphic and disturbing story about a woman who is violently attacked by a group of men.
The story starts off with the call to action being this horrific assault, with the rest of the film focusing on our protagonist acting out her revenge.
Target Audience and Warnings
There’s a place for these films, and people do enjoy them.
The entie point of these films is shock value. The story and effects are intended to impact viewers with intense grotesque imagery and situations, attacking our sympathetic nervous system, extracting a visceral reaction.
Its probably cathartic at some point to see the character inflict pain and death on these monsters who hurt them, but after having to watch the full assault, the revenge feels…..unsatisfying.
Its almost not enough.
In the wonderful series American Horror Story: Asylum, one of the major characters is also kidnapped and assaulted in one of the most disturbing scenes in cinema I’ve had to watch through. I’m feeling slightly ill recalling it right now.
BUT.
The character gets justice, in multiple ways, and becomes triumphant, allowing the tragedy to become part of her hero’s journey. Its explored over the rest of the series from the moment of her assault, and it sets a fire of hope and aggressive support.
Overall, though, if you know you’re going to be watching a revenge flick, girder your loins, hold hands with your friends, and prepare to pause or turn off the tv if shit gets too intense.
No one wants a movie to straight up traumatize them.
Scene from the 2017 film The Ritual
Monsters and Creatures
One of the most recognized areas of horror films, and by far one of the most creative.
The Monster genre revolves around any threat that isn’t human but has more physical weight compared to a supernatural entity.
If you’re looking for a monster movie, the easiest way is to go by titles revolving around what the creature is.
Popular examples include; The Thing, It Follows, the Mist and depending on your view of aliens we could include A Quiet Place.
One of my favourite movies that nails the concept is The Ritual.
Four friends go on a trip to Sweden to mourn the death of their friend. The get lost along the trail, and when a terrible storm rolls over are forced to take shelter in a shack coated in symbols and shrines. When they attempt to find the trail the next day, they begin seeing things, doing things they don’t remember doing, and eventually, encounter a monster unlike any other.
These stories divide between monsters with high exposure and monsters with low exposure.
A scene from the 2007 film The Mist.
You’ve got a story like A Quiet Place and the Mist where everyone is aware of the monster.
Groups fall apart or sabotage one another, and despite a uniting enemy, humans will still harm humans. On the flip side, sometimes the group refuses to step down. In the case of the first Tremors film, once the townspeople know what’s going on the decide to go to war with the creature.
Scene from the 2014 film It Follows
Then there’s the quiet, scary, unknown monsters, the ones that single out individuals and small groups.
It Follows is a monster passed on after sexual intercourse. Once the monster knows you and starts following you, the only way to escape is by engaging sexually with someone else and “passing” on the monster. The monster is a shape shifter, always looking like someone different, you can only see them if you’re the victim.
Its about isolating and exhausting, just like how predatory animals hunt.
But in this case, if they touch you once, you don’t escape.
Scene from the 2006 film Pan’s Labrinth
Something to watch out for when delving into monster movies is the other plots involved, a monster story on its own is pretty removed from things like SA and human on human crime.
Nevertheless, many films will use a pre-existing situation or conflict as a jumping off point for the monster concept.
Pan’s Labrinth disturbed me a great deal when I first saw it, luckily not as a child like some unfortunate folk.
Although I was not disturbed by the fantasy monsters, I was disturbed by the main villain, who is actually human.
The story takes part during the Spanish war, one of the characters we follow is a malevolent general who commits war crimes on screen. In one scene a father and son accused of being treasonous are put in front of this general, who proceeds to kill the man slowly and painfully in front of his father by beating him in the head with a gun.
That scene lives in my mind forever.
Target Audience and Warnings
This is a great genre for people who are looking for awesome make-up artistry, cool special effects and hopefully some animatronics. Its great for people who love folk lore or appreciate the fantastical.
The older release date you go, the more fun and ridiculous it will be.
Modern monster stories tend to go darker, fusing multiple themes together and throwing a monster in there just to make things difficult.
Which is why you gotta read your plot descriptions well, if its happening in war times it might not be very fun or light. If it mentions a cult following or ritual that has let this thing out, consider what horrors go on in cults and whether you want to bare witness to that if it comes up.
Anything from the perspective of the monster is also a potential hot stove for the sensitive viewers, like Splice or anything with a “Frankenstein” energy. Inevitably the creation is abused, mistreated, or hunted for its peculiarities.
This can turn a fun Halloween party into a sob fest, and we don’t want that!
Seriously though Splice is messed up skip it.
Skip it.
Scene from the 1982 film Poltergeist
Supernatural Nonsense
The supernatural is a giant percentage of horror movie content.
Anything magical, paranormal or unexplainable generally falls into this space.
The Haunted House (Monster House 2006)
The Cursed Object (Oculus 2013)
Paranormal (Poltergeist 1982)
Demons, Devils, Holy Warriors (The Exorcist 1973)
Rituals and Awakenings (The Evil Dead 1981)
The Haunted House (or Haunted Property)
Its a classic tale, a family looking to build a new life move into a suspiciously cheap house. Shocked at how beautiful the place is for the price, everything seems to be looking up, until weird stuff starts happening. First it starts small, but it will always escalate, and someone will probably die.
I cannot count how many times I’ve seen this exact story play out, and yet there’s always room for a fun spin on the subject.
My favourite use of this trope is when its applied to buildings or spaces other than houses.
Scene from the 2007 film 1408
Introducing 1408.
This story takes place in a hotel, wherein one specific room is considered haunted or cursed.
A man who writes about haunted places learns about the ominous room 1408, and despite the owner practically begging him not to stay in the room, our protagonist insists on staying for one night.
A night that never ends.
Once in the room, the space starts to transform in any way it can in an attempt to destroy him.
Scene from the 2013 film Oculus
Cursed Object
Cursed object stories always involve a party coming into contact with something that has enormous power and evil intentions.
I’m always drawn in by the motivations and history unveiling in stories like these.
Scene from the 2002 film The Ring
The Ring is arguably a cursed object story, with our cursed object being a video tape.
Once you watch the video tape, you receive a call, “seven days” she speaks and the line disconnects. Over the course of seven days the victim is terrorized with flashes of memories that aren’t their own, seeing things that aren’t there, experiencing things that should not happen.
Once the seven days are up, a tv or digital screen will light up with a scratchy video recording of a stone well in a field. A girl with long back hair in a nightgown crawls out of the well, moves towards the screen and enters our world.
Once that happens, you’re kind of doomed.
Scene from the 2016 film The Autopsy of Jane Doe
Most of the other tropes fall under a similar umbrella, if its not chained to an object or a place the plot revolves more around the specific ghosts, demons, or the journey of someone possessed.
A wonderful paranormal film to consider is The Autopsy of Jane Doe.
A mortician gets a call about a very strange corpse that’s appeared in a small town under someone’s house. The body appears perfectly preserved, but was buried in soil. The police cannot determine how the young woman died or if anyone in town has anything to do with it.
The mortician and his son begin the autopsy, and as they progress the night becomes frantic with storms, the building starts to behave strangely, until everyone is unsafe around this corpse.
Scene from the 2010 film Insidious
If the devil and the power of what is good and holy is your thing, rest assured you will find plenty on the subject.
Insidious is a solid franchise about the devil and evil forces penetrating the lives of a family.
There’s also stories like the Omen, the Rite and of course all the Exorcist movies.
Target Audience and Warnings
The Supernatural genre is pretty samey, something spooky is afoot, jump-scares leave you on edge, the death count is high to show just how dangerous the spiritual force is. Experts are called, some are helpful, some just die.
The important element to consider if you’re a sensitive viewer is why the spiritual force is so hostile.
In the case of the Grudge movies, its domestic violence and family annihilation.
In the case of Shutter, the spirit was the victim of gang assault.
If you can identify the “why”, and that “why” is crazy messed up, you might need to reconsider. For example, war ghosts, I assume anything about paranormal stuff and wars to be especially fucked up.
The most popular supernatural movies are generally the safest, from my experience.
They seem to cater to the “Halloween” celebrators, films for young adults to have a fun time watching as a group. The idea being to keep it crazy, but not traumatic.
You’ve got your Paranormal Activity franchise, the Insidious franchise and films like Steven Spielberg’s 1982 Poltergeist is a great family friendly paranormal dive.
Even the Conjuring franchise is pretty tame content wise.
Movie poster for the 2017 film Mother!
Psychological Chaos
The movie poster above is for the 2017 film Mother! and is one of the most intense and distressing viewing experiences I’ve ever had on my horror film journey.
By no means is this a film for people under the age of 18, nor is it something I would consider watching as a group.
The story is about a young woman whose husbands writing, or burn out, consumes their whole lives. Things take a turn for the worst when the husband invites in some guests who assumed the house to be bed and breakfast by mistake.
With a hunger, the husband insists on letting the guests stay.
The wife has her boundaries crossed to such an extent that you start to think it can’t get worse, but it does. It just gets worse.
Psychological horror is one of my favourite genres of horror. The perspectives on reality, the fear of losing your mind, of not seeing things the way everyone else sees it, or the abject horror of you being the only one living in reality, and having that reality pulled into question by the ones who are meant to love you the most.
Its possibly the most dangerous area of cinema to watch if you’re a sensitive viewer.
Scene from the 2019 film Midsommar
One of the tamer stories in this category is one of my favourite horror films.
Midsommar follows the tragic story of a young woman who loses her mother, father and sister all at once in a murder suicide. Her boyfriend is out with friends celebrating and discussing their upcoming trip, and they encourage him to break up with our protagonist so that he can have flings abroad.
Once he discovers what has happened to her, he feels obligated to stay in the relationship. When she gets wind of him and his friends plan to travel, she is a little hurt that she was not told, this leads to her boyfriend inviting her along despite the protests by some of his friends.
From the get go our protagonist is shown feeling isolated and somewhat shunted by the group. Despite her desperate efforts not to be a burden or make things any less fun for anyone else, this is still a young woman who has lost everything, she is fighting trauma and intrusive thoughts at every turn, and her group is mostly apathetic to it.
Once they arrive at their destination, they are introduced by one of the group members to his family and the commune they are staying with for the solstice, who he grew up with.
The community is idealized, wearing beautiful handmade and embroidered outfits, a lifestyle devoid of digital technology, where everyone has a place, a purpose, and direction. Above all, the community is loyal to one another, and the support of your whole community is something we yearn for more and more in a world of so much noise and rush.
Over the course of the solstice, the community starts to show increasingly concerning practices, but with so much support of their culture surrounding them, the group is forced to choose whether to participate or leave. And for someone who has lost everything, and has very little support from the group she came with, what’s stopping her from being enveloped by this cult?
Scene from the 2014 film The Voices
Possibly the closest example of a family friendly psychological horror is The Voices, a story about a young man with a serious mental illness he requires medication for.
He means well, and he just wants a normal life with a good job and a girlfriend who gets him.
But he hates living medicated, he feels more alive and like things are more magical without it, which his psychologist cautions against.
Things start to turn upside down when he finally gets a date, only to end up in a serious car accident that leaves his date seriously wounded. With his thinking and reasoning stunted, he decides to “put her out of her misery” thinking her wound is fatal, and finishing the job. Then when his cat and dog start telling him how stupid it was, he panics and goes back for the corpse, hiding her in his fridge.
This creates a domino effect of pure madness.
Target Audience and Warnings
Psychological horror is all about people trapped by their perspectives on reality.
Trauma and the complete destruction of a person’s psyche is very much on the table.
Mother! is designed to evoke feelings of helplessness, and reflects on women trapped in emotionally abusive relationships, spiraling into a montage of everything women experience all over the world in a matter of minutes.
I barely took a breath the whole screening.
The audience usually starts watching at the moment in someone’s life where it all unravels, some become sorta supernatural but in a sense where you could argue its just the manifestation of the situation in the protagonists mind.
The Shining’s surface story is about a family driven mad in an old building up on a mountain. However, I believe the true story to be the deranged final moments of a man who was always psychopathic and hateful of his family. The only people who see spooky stuff is the father and the son. The father is exposed as an abusive force in the boys life before we relocate to this hotel, and the boy is also revealed to have emotional issues with psychosis.
The father and the boy are going through mental journeys. The boy’s revolving around his feelings of isolation and boredom, and the realisation that his father is now a violent murderous force (redrum). The father’s revolving around his egotistical meltdown, and a sense that the life he hungers for has passed him by because of his family.
A round of applause for Shelly Duval portraying a desperate mother, relentlessly protecting her child and herself from her maniac husband.
You could argue the hotel manipulated the man to kill his family, or you could view it as his mind collapsing and justifying his desires. The fun of the genre comes from pondering theories like this.
When you decide to watch a film in this category, you have to accept the horrors of trauma and the dangers of mental illness.
Watch with caution and avoid viewing with young audiences.
Scene from the 2009 film Zombieland
Too Specific to Function Categories
Some horror tropes are so pungent they require their own categories.
These are the following:
Zombies (Shaun of the Dead 2004)
Vampires (Dracula 1931)
Parody Horror (Willy’s Wonderland 2021)
Trapped (Cube 1997)
End of the World (Children of Men 2006)
Animals that Kill (The Ghost and the Darkness 1996)
Hard Sci-Fi Horror (Event Horizon 1997)
Scene from the 2016 film Train to Busan
Zombies:
You’ve got apocalypse stories, you’ve got the beginning of the outbreak, you’ve got weird stories where humans coexist with zombies, or resolve to live in a world with zombies integrated into the society. There’s even zombie romance films, looking at you Warm Bodies.
Zombie films are great for a younger audience, its a genre packed with goofy makeup, side effects, plenty of jump scares and the occasional dive into the lore of the zombies.
Things that don’t completely encompass the zombie trope are different, The Evil Dead franchise, for example, not about zombies. Though it may sound like it, the power in the films fall into the space of Rituals, what ever things that book brings to life, they have far worse intentions than consuming flesh.
True zombies, are a never ending force of death and chaos.
Whether they be slow, like in the 1978 Dawn of the Dead, or crazy fast like World War Z, the main intention of the diseased is to bite and maul people to death and consume them.
Then there are some interesting stand outs that aren’t the same old story of “zombie plague destroys humanity”.
Pet Semetary plays with the idea of humans finding out about resurrection, and the choice of using that power and the consequences of doing so.
The 2006 film Fido is set in a version of the world where there was a zombie outbreak, but now zombies are part of the labor system, and become house staff after they die. They are considered public servants, with no desires beside violent instinct that has to be suppressed.
Overall, this is a fantastic trope to dive into with teenagers, its a great genre for parties because most people know what a zombie is and generally everyone will know going in what to expect from a zombie movie.
I see very little intense themes in genres like this, but that being said series have more space to cover the darker areas of the trope, which is where it starts to fall more into the Sinister Human/s category.
Scene from the 2007 film I Am Legend
Vampires:
Vampires have the pack threat of zombies, with additional intelligence and strategy.
Honestly I’m not super familiar with the pool of Vampire horror, sometimes the genre feels boring and played to death, but that might just be the trauma from Dark Shadows who knows.
I Am Legend is mistaken for a zombie movie so much and it drives me crazy, they aren’t zombies.
The story is actually based on a book, and it has several film adaptations. The beings in this film are intelligent, biologically different or transformed by a chemical or biological reason, and form their own societies. When the main character, and the last person alive in this city, kidnaps one of the beings and attempts to study her in his lab, it triggers a violent response from the vampires, who do anything to retrieve her.
One of my all time favourite vampire movies is Daybreakers, set in a world where vampires and humans co-exist, but when the nature of the co-existence is challenged by the humans, vampires find themselves fleeing a massive manhunt.
Vampires traditionally revolved around creatures who romance and manipulate women to grow their communities or to stand by the side of the leader, there’s probably some creepy themes in there somewhere.
Twilight is not a horror film, but there’s a solid modern reference for what I mean by “creepy”.
(I still love the Twilight series do not @ me)
Promotion imagery for the 2014 film What We Do in the Shadows
Comedy Horror:
If you want something to watch on Halloween but want to laugh not scream, this is your go to genre.
There’s plenty of good films that aren’t Scary Movie, like Death Becomes Her and Jennifer’s Body.
If I had to recommend one for a group sitting, it would definitely be Housebound.
Housebound follows a young woman who continuously gets in trouble with the law. In a strange, unorthodox ruling, the judge decides that she should stay with her mother by court order. She has to wear an ankle bracelet and the perimeter of the house will be specified so that if she leaves it alerts local authorities.
Rather than face prison, she decides to do what the judge suggests, begrudgingly moving in with her mother. Once she starts living their she starts to experience paranormal activity that she remembers from childhood. Her mother is no help, speculating that maybe there is a ghost, but that her daughter is probably just seeing things or looking for attention.
The daughter is entitled and bratty and hilariously disrespectful, and when things get too spooky, she has no trouble making it everyone’s business.
I’ve laughed to tears on multiple watch-throughs, and its a New Zealand creation with an actress who played a spicey character in Neighbours, I watched it purely because of her.
And I adore it.
The worst part about this genre is how stupid it can get, films like Vampire’s Suck permeate the category, focusing on egregious sexual humor and poop jokes, but there are gems among the condom wrappers.
Scene from the 2010 film Buried
Trapped:
This category hones in on claustrophobic intrusive thoughts.
The concept forces the audience to feel suffocated, small, helpless and vulnerable.
Its very obvious in a film like Buried, the man has been buried alive in a box in the middle of the desert after being targeted by terrorists for being a military supplies driver.
The entire story is filmed inside this coffin like box, the camera always very close to our character, forcing us to only see reality from his perspective. The audience can feel his panic as he attempts to call people on his cell phone, no one answers and the one who does doubts his sincerity, thinking it a prank.
The restriction of freedom is the central focus, it doesn’t even have to be something as severe as being buried alive.
There’s movies like the Black Phone, which has many themes going on, but the main challenge for the protagonist is escape from a room designed to keep children trapped.
Rebirth is about a retreat offered to specific people, when they show up to the space and community known as Rebirth, the protagonist finds that no matter where he goes, he cannot find the exit.
Scene from the 2009 film 2012
End of the World:
Very straight forward, the world is ending and at the end there won’t be anything left of it.
The explanations come from prophesies and religious justifications, such as 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow.
I watched one as a kid, Knowing, a classic 2009 Nic Cage film, about a man whose son starts having obsessive thoughts about a selection of numbers. When his father starts to track the numbers, he discovers a serious of signs suggesting the world will soon end.
The best part of watching any film in this genre is the action, gore and mystery behind what happens.
I can’t say I’ve been very satisfied by most of the predicted end of the world stories.
However, This is the End makes a comedic spin on the concept, involving the “real” personalities of celebrities and their reactions to the beginning of the rapture.
There’s not much to worry about in these films, they’re very focused on chaos, the personalities of anyone involved is somewhat irrelevant.
Scene from the 1983 film Cujo
Animals that Kill:
Think Jaws, think Sharknado, there’s the Hitchcock classic The Birds, and how could I leave out the ever so recent Cocaine Bear!
This is an area of cinema you can watch for an eternity and not find the bottom before you leave this world.
Its got gore, its got jump scares, we get plenty of tension and special effects.
If you’re worried about the monster genre going to far, the Animals that Kill category is a fantastic jumping off point. With truly too many shark related plots.
Scene from the 2018 film Annihilation
Hard Sci-fi Horror:
Sci-fi horror is a great category.
I would include it with Monsters but there’s just too much of it.
Sci-Fi Horror awakens the deep fear of the unknown, the existential idea of our creators existing out in space somewhere, or the dread of one day being invaded.
The Alien franchise is an obvious one that comes to mind, and there’s classics like 2001 a Space Odyssey, but I want to focus on a different film.
Annihilation is about an environmental catastrophe, one day something happens on a beach and by a few months that thing expands a huge bubble around itself spanning 100s of kilometers.
After various teams are sent out to explore, who never return, a new team of specialists are requested for the mission and take the terrifying journey inside this bubbled space.
Without giving off spoilers, this is one of the most threatening forms of Alien invasions that doesn’t enter guns blazing. The nature of this eco-system is to terraform, even the humans who enter end up mutated and turned around, the environment plays with their minds.
I would say of all the sci-fi horror you could watch, Ridley Scott’s stuff is usually the more disturbing, with most of the protagonists being women across the franchise, the themes of sexual violation can get intense. There’s a scene in one of them where a woman has to abort an alien fetus within her before it kills her.
Generally speaking though, its a pretty mild area of horror.
Final Thoughts
There’s probably even more I could say about types of horror films but this article is already way too long.
I would call this my basic list of horror categories, it helps me decide what I feel like watching if my mood is this or that.
You might disagree with where I have placed some movies in this list, and that’s totally ok, this isn’t official, its just what I use.
When I was younger, I was so curious about horror movies yet I was also very sensitive and easily traumatized. My sister brute forced me through it in an effort to distract me from a horrible breakup when I was 18. Once the seal was broken I could not stop watching horror.
During depressive episodes and moments in my life where I was panicking at every turn, I would go to what ever streaming network we had and find a horror film.
It helps me forget my real world problems for a few hours, and I’m left with so many thoughts about the plot that I can finally breathe again.
However, its important to know your emotional limits, I saw certain movies when I wasn’t ready, watched things expecting it to go in one direction but pivoting to something different and worse.
Its not a huge regret, it does not loom over me, I just think my experience could have been better had I understood the size and complexity of the genre.
Which is why I created this.
Also, if you really really need to know how bad a film is going to be, maybe in preparation for a party or a viewing, check out the parents guide for the specific film on IMDb, or if you don’t have enough info from that, check the plot synopsis on Wikipedia.
Happy viewing everyone.
