By Jack Grove
For avid moviegoers, an inescapable flood of horror movies seems to be entering the mainstream. From the groundbreaking Oscar success of Ryan Coogler’s Sinners to the online mass worship of Curry Barker’s Obsession, it seems like horror might no longer be a fringe genre for those scary Halloween nights or pretentious cinephiles. But when did this rise start, how long will the spotlight remain on things that frighten us, and what does the recent trend tell us about the shifting tastes of this generation’s media consumption?
Horror first emerged as a defined genre in cinema in the 1920s with the rise of German expressionism and the infamous Nosferatu, before reaching American audiences in the 1930s, when Hollywood caught on and produced classic movie-monster staples like Frankenstein’s monster, Count Dracula, and the Mummy. As you would expect from a genre meant to scare you, horror reflects the fears of the country and culture of the time. For Nosferatu, that fear was the unknown, society’s breakdown under foreign invaders, and the uncertainty and chaos that come with a rising authoritarian regime.
For much of the genre’s continued history, cultural fears and taboos remained the blood and guts of its movies, and it’s important to appreciate many of them through that lens. When someone chooses to watch a horror movie, they are not only seeking that satisfying adrenaline rush translated to onscreen entertainment, but also exploring anxieties true to them and their times; horror can “give form to formless anxieties”, as Dr Alison Peirse summarises. And now, it seems, in the wake of COVID-19, horror has reemerged as a serious, introspective storytelling form after a brief diversion into cliché and cash grabs that marked much of the 2000s and 2010s. But beyond critics’ reviews and lengthy Substack analyses of your favourite nail-biters, is there any indication of a lasting industry impact?
There certainly seems to be. COVID had an undeniable impact on cinema attendance, but horror proved unusually resilient. By 2025, horror accounted for around 17% of North American ticket sales, an increase of 4% from the decade earlier, according to data compiled by Comscore for Reuters. This rise is not just due to more horror movies being released, but relates more to an audience choosing this genre as opposed to previous blockbusters that have dominated the culture for the past 10 or so years.
Sinners’ success reflects a clear shift in appetite and appreciation for what is being deemed ‘smart-horror’. Released in 2025 with a budget of roughly $90 million, the film grossed over $370 million worldwide. On top of that, at the 2026 Academy Awards, Sinners entered the ceremony with a record-breaking sixteen nominations — the most any film has ever received, beating a record previously shared by All About Eve, Titanic and La La Land — and left with four wins, including Best Actor for Michael B. Jordan and Best Original Screenplay for Coogler himself. These wins feel like a culmination of the progressive recognition horror has received over the last decade. When looking at the new wave of ‘smart-horror’, many of them have made their way into Academy shortlists. The Substance, a 2024 film nominated for five Oscars in the 2025 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, can be seen as paving the way for the multiple horror movies nominated for the 2026 awards.
In both The Substance and Sinners, there isn’t a subtlety in their overarching societal themes. The one the nose, campy, and somewhat grotesque depiction used in The Substance tackles the pressure to stay looking youthful, attractive, and thin; injecting yourself with a miracle drug to maintain an appearance of perfection while breaking the individual both psychologically and by the end physically. Sinners works not only because of the acting, special effects, and sound design but also because of the fear that the vampires represent in the movie’s script. Many minority groups have to play the line of cultural integration and preservation; each individual needs to figure out how much of themselves they are willing to share with the world. The vampires present a world of complete cultural integration and loss of individual cultures; when fighting to survive the night our protagonists are not fighting to save their own lives, they are fighting to keep their traditions, music, and culture alive against a world which is becoming increasingly homogeneous.
In 2026, Obsession has demonstrated why the genre is becoming particularly relevant to younger audiences. Curry Barker’s film, made for reportedly less than $1 million, became one of the biggest box-office stories of 2026. By June, it had passed $370 million worldwide, a frighteningly large return on its production cost. Barker came from YouTube horror, building an audience through projects such as Milk & Serial before translating that digital following into a theatrical audience. An 18+ horror movie depicting fears of consent, power dynamics, and incel culture isn’t exactly a safe bet for commercial success, but something about its anxieties that already exist online and in everyday relationships appeals to a generation raised amid pandemics, social isolation, and algorithmic media.
The emphasis is now on production studios and seeing how they will respond to the emergence of what has been deemed ‘smart-horror’. Whether in TV series or blockbuster productions, horror is clearly becoming the genre of choice for new directors, writers, and creatives, and it shows little sign of slowing down. In the coming months alone, several more pieces to this genre are set to be released for home and cinema audiences, such as Leviticus, a Sundance-acquired queer supernatural horror about conversion therapy that critics have already tipped as one of the year’s most talked-about debuts; Buddy, a surreal children’s-TV-gone-wrong horror-thriller; and a small-screen reimagining of Hitchcock’s The Birds, placing the original story in modern day Alaska.
Horror, more than almost any other genre working today, has become the place where filmmakers feel free to say something. A24 and Neon are backing directors barely out of their twenties, following an unconventional route in developing their storytelling skills, and the Academy is finally treating a vampire film or a body-horror satire as awards contenders rather than novelty nominees. Whether that appetite holds once the current crop of hits ages out of the conversation is the real test, but for a genre that has spent a century being written off as disposable, simply being taken seriously gives a glimmer of hope for all the final girls yet to reach the big screen.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and may not reflect the opinions of The St Andrews Economist.
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