What is the greatest subgenre of horror?
Ask a group of horror fans what their favourite subgenre is, and you’ll surely be greeted with a range of answers. From home invasion and slasher to supernatural, psychological and body horror, filmmakers have taken many different approaches to the genre since the beginning of cinema, many of which have garnered cult followings as a result. But which subgenre is the best? Of course, that is a subjective question, but there are some subgenres that have endured much better than others and some that, at their core, are far more interesting.
The earliest horror subgenres date back to the silent period when literature, vaudeville, and theatre greatly shaped the narratives and techniques used by filmmakers. Work by the likes of Edgar Allan Poe, HP Lovecraft, Horace Walpole, and Mary Shelley helped make gothic and supernatural themes the most popular, laying the foundations for horror cinema. New and exciting filming and editing techniques, like double exposure, worked well to depict ghostly or otherworldly beings on screen, which served the trend of ‘trick films’.
The gothic trend continued into the 1910s and 1920s, with adaptations of classic scary novels becoming popular. However, as filmmakers tried to push the boat out and make movies that were a little more violent, many encountered issues from censors. Between 1934 and 1968, the Hays Code prevented explicit violence, gore, sexuality, and other ‘taboo’ images in mainstream cinema. Thus, the horror movies churned out by Hollywood during this time were a far cry from what we’re used to today.
Movies based on classic supernatural tales or featuring monsters, zombies, and werewolves became popular, but as the years continued, the emergence of more nuanced thrillers led to a trend of more psychologically developed horror movies and a broader exploration of themes. The ‘50s saw a rise in the science-fiction horror movie trend, which appeared to come in response to fears of nuclear warfare. Across the pond, British horror was largely made up of Hammer Productions’ gothic tales of Dracula and Frankenstein, with violence and gore kept to a minimum – although, at the time, what was shown in these films was still quite shocking.
So, by this point, monster movies (including zombies and vampires), sci-fi horror, supernatural, and gothic horror were the most popular subgenres. As censorship waned and the film industry became more accessible, the 1960s saw the horror genre boom. All of a sudden, filmmakers across the globe were using more gore, more brutality, and exploring more shocking themes. In 1960, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom were both released, paving the way for slashers – which would become one of the most popular subgenres of all time. It would develop in the ‘70s with titles like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween.
However, the ‘60s also welcomed more refined and psychologically complex supernatural tales, like The Innocents and Rosemary’s Baby, which also fell into the arthouse horror category – one that has remained popular today with movies like Raw, Climax, and Under the Skin. The decade also gave rise to splatter cinema, which would lead to the 2000s phenomenon of torture porn, popularised by movies such as Hostel, and the New French Extremity movement, featuring films like Martyrs. Body horror has also developed over the decades as one of the gorier subgenres, dissecting themes of corporeality and the human experience with a visceral and confronting approach.
Some rather strange subgenres have emerged since the ‘60s, like cannibalism or nun-themed horror. Then there are the subgenres that boom in popularity as they coincide with real-world events, such as the virus and apocalypse horror movies becoming a trend around the time of Covid-19. There are also subgenres that are more closely associated with certain countries, like folk horror, which has thrived best in the United Kingdom.
So, what is the greatest subgenre of horror?
While there is no right answer to this question, there are two subgenres that stand out as the most enduring and influential: gothic/supernatural horror and slashers. Without gothic horror, we wouldn’t have all of the tropes that basically make horror what it is. It formed the basis of many early horror movies and led to the development of other subgenres.
Gothic horror has given us ghosts and ghouls in haunted mansions, black cats lurking in corners, and often a Byronic Hero who gets swept up in the narrative. The fact that gothic horror has been popular for so long and continues to inform many successful scary movies is a testament to its enduring and iconic status.
Yet, horror wouldn’t have developed at the rate it did in the latter half of the 20th century without the slasher. The subgenre has evolved through the years with the popularity of Italian giallo films featuring masked killers in the ‘60s and ‘70s, rural slashers like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, home invasion slashers like Black Christmas and Halloween, and comedic and mystery-focused slashers like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer.
The subgenre has produced some of the greatest (and highest-grossing) horror movies of all time, allowing horror to boom in the 1980s as one of the most thriving genres in cinema. Slashers brought more gore to horror cinema while also acting as stories that could truly frighten. These weren’t stories of supernatural beings or unlikely apocalypses; these were movies that featured innocent people getting stalked and disturbed by murderous strangers – what could be scarier?
