It’s the 2020s, and horror is becoming a respected genre of film. Scary movies aren’t a guilty pleasure now, they’re celebrated for their direction, acting, and subtext. For a horror fan, it’s great to see. There’s just one problem. I’m not scared anymore.
Horror now relies on challenging themes, artistic scares, political scares, and performances that are creepy – but in an impress-the-academy sort of way. I miss the purity of danger. Those scenes where a character faces a tangible threat and reacts with appropriate fear. They still exist, of course, and not all were done well in the past, but they used to be exclusively dedicated to the terror, not the cerebral framework surrounding it. It was an intimate dance between viewer, character, and threat.
Compare Sinners (2025) and Signs (2002). One is brilliant, innovative, and thematically potent. The other is scary.