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The Trauma Debate: When Does Elevated Horror Stop Being Horror?

Published

1 month ago

April 1, 2026

I want to talk about the two types of horror fans currently at war with each other on the internet, and I say that with love for both of them.

On one side you have the person who thinks Hereditary is the most important horror film of the last twenty years and wants to write a thesis about grief as architecture. On the other side you have the person who watched the same film, waited patiently for something to actually happen, and then left a one-star review that just says “not scary.” Both of these people love horror. Both of them went to see the movie. Somehow they watched completely different films.

The phrase at the center of this whole mess is “elevated horror.” It has been used to sell movies, start fights, end friendships, and generate more thinkpieces than any two words in the genre’s recent history. I am not here to tell you which side is right. I am here to make sure you actually understand what each side is arguing, because a lot of this debate is people yelling past each other about completely different things. Grab a snack. Let’s do this.

What Is Elevated Horror and Who Decided That Was a Name

The term doesn’t have a single inventor, which tracks, because nobody with good taste would have claimed it. It crept into critical vocabulary around the time Robert Eggers’ The Witch arrived at Sundance in 2015. Critics who had spent careers treating horror like a guilty pleasure suddenly had a film they felt comfortable writing about at length, and the word “elevated” started appearing in reviews the way “brave” appears in Oscar coverage: technically a compliment, slightly condescending if you think about it too hard.

The Hollywood Reporter noted the irony pretty well: Eggers made a film that rejects the idea that horror needs to be dignified to deserve attention, and it became the founding document of a movement built entirely on that idea. The Witch did not ask to be elevated. It was just a great film that mainstream critics finally had a framework for engaging with.

From there, Ari Aster arrived with Hereditary in 2018 and Midsommar in 2019, A24 leaned into the branding, and suddenly “elevated horror” was a genre, a marketing category, and an extremely reliable way to start a fight in any horror group chat.

For the record, the working definition is something like: horror films that prioritize atmosphere, psychological depth, and thematic substance over jump scares and gore. Which sounds reasonable until you realize it accidentally implies that films with jump scares and gore are doing something less than. Horror Obsessive flagged this early and correctly: calling some horror elevated is a very polite way of suggesting the rest of it is on the floor.

The Case For It: When the Slow Burn Actually Burns

Okay, team elevated, this one’s for you. And yes, I’m using team as a joke but also not really.

The genuine argument for this wave of horror is that at its best, it does something the genre has always been capable of and rarely gets credit for. It uses fear as a structural tool for exploring things that are actually scary. Not monsters. Loss. Grief. The collapse of a family. The way trauma gets passed down like a bad inheritance.

Hereditary isn’t a movie about a cult. It’s a movie about what it feels like to be inside a family where something is fundamentally broken and nobody will name it. The horror works because the emotional damage is real first and supernatural second.

The same goes for The Babadook, which is genuinely one of the most suffocating films about depression ever made. Or Midsommar, which manages to make a sunny Swedish meadow feel like the most threatening place on Earth by the time it’s done with you.

The case for elevated horror is just sometimes the scariest thing in a horror film isn’t on the screen. Sometimes it’s the thing the film makes you feel about your own life while you’re watching. That’s a legitimate form of horror. It has been since the beginning.

The Case Against It: Nothing Happened and I Sat There for Two Hours

Okay, other team. Also valid. Also welcome. Pull up a chair.

The legitimate frustration is not with slow horror or emotional horror or any of the genuinely good films that get lumped under this label. The frustration is with the films that learned to perform those qualities without actually delivering them. And there are a lot of those films.

Once studios figured out that “elevated” was a word that opened doors and got awards consideration and made critics write 3,000-word pieces, the label started getting applied to anything sufficiently slow with a muted color palette and a dead relative in the backstory. Not all of those films earned it. Some of them are just quiet and sad and completely unbothered by the fact that nothing scary is happening.

The clearest case study is It Comes at Night. It holds an 87% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes. Its audience score is 44%. Its marketing sold a creature feature and delivered a slow psychological drama about paranoia and plague. That gap is not just a marketing failure, though it is definitely a marketing failure. It’s also a real conversation about what audiences feel they’re owed when they buy a horror ticket and what they actually get.

There’s also the gatekeeping problem, which runs in both directions but hits harder from one side. When elevated horror advocates dismiss gore-heavy or fast-paced horror as lesser, they’re dismissing decades of genuinely innovative, culturally significant filmmaking. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is not waiting for someone to elevate it. It is a perfect film. It does not need finishing school.

The anti-elevated crowd is onto something real when they say the label gets used as a permission slip. It lets people be horror fans on a three-film allowance without doing the actual work of engaging with the genre. That’s annoying. It’s okay to be annoyed by it.

The Films That Broke Everyone’s Brain

The most interesting territory in this whole debate is the films that don’t fit cleanly on either side and drove both camps completely insane trying to categorize them.

The Substance is the best example. Coralie Fargeat made a film that is a pointed, angry, thematically loaded piece of work about the entertainment industry’s relationship with women’s bodies. Very elevated, by the usual criteria. It also has some of the most intensely physical, stomach-turning body horror put on screen in years. Viewers were walking out mid-screening. It was not slow. It was not quiet. The film was loud and bloody and furious and also extremely smart about what it was doing. Nobody quite knew what shelf to put it on and that’s exactly what made it interesting.

Talk to Me, the Philippou brothers’ film about a cursed ceramic hand that lets you invite demons in, overtook Hereditary as A24’s highest-grossing horror film. It is fast and visceral and genuinely upsetting and also deals with grief and teenage numbness and the specific horror of not knowing what you want. Nobody called it elevated. It was too fun. But it’s doing the same emotional work as films that get that label all the time.

These films suggest that the binary was always a little false. A movie can be smart and scary. It can be slow and dull. It can be gory and emotionally empty. The label doesn’t actually tell you which one you’re getting.

So Where Does This Leave Us

Genuinely, I don’t know, and I think that’s the right answer.

The term elevated horror is probably not going away, because marketing terms never die, they just get quieter. The debate around it is also probably not going away, because it’s actually a debate about something real. What horror is for, who it’s for, and whether a film owes you a specific kind of experience when it calls itself horror.

The elevated horror defender and the “nothing happened” reviewer are both responding to real things. One of them found a film that got under their skin in a way they didn’t expect and can’t quite explain. The other sat in a dark room for two hours waiting for a movie to keep a promise it never actually made. Both of those experiences are valid. Both of them are also talking about completely different films half the time and pretending they’re talking about the same one.

What I actually want to know is where you land. Not in the abstract, but specifically. Is there a film that got labeled elevated horror that you think genuinely earned it? Is there one that you think used the label as a shield for not actually being scary? Did It Comes at Night do anything for you or did you want your money back?

Drop it in the Facebook comments. I’ll be there. This is the kind of conversation the genre needs to keep having, loudly and specifically and without anyone pretending there’s an obvious right answer. Because there isn’t one. And the fact that there isn’t is kind of what makes horror interesting.

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Universal’s Horror Make-Up Show Ends 36 Year Run

Published

8 hours ago

May 12, 2026

Piper St. James

The Horror Make-Up Show at Universal Studios Orlando has closed its doors after 36 years of entertainment. But not permanently.

The long running show that combines horror, comedy, and interactive demonstrations is next in line for a makeover at the Florida theme park. Besides the E.T. Adventure, The Horror Make-Up Show is the only other remaining attractions at Universal Orlando from its opening day.

A Brief History of the Make-Up Show

The idea for the show originated from an attraction at Universal Hollywood called The Land of A Thousand Faces. Land ran from 1975-1979. The twenty minute show entertained an audience of up to 1,700 visitors in an open air venue. The show taught the audience about movie makeup. Additionally, two volunteers were chosen to be transformed into the Frankenstein monster and his bride.

Despite the show’s popularity, The Land of A Thousand Faces was closed to make room for a new experience at Universal Studios Hollywood.

An Era of Gods and Monsters

Lon Chaney

Explained with movie clips, Universal’s Horror Make-Up Show explains the humble beginnings of makeup and special effects in horror movies. Starting with the classic Universal monsters such as Frankenstein’s Monster, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and The Phantom of the Opera, this era heavily features the work of Lon Chaney.

Lon Chaney’s contribution to the world of horror makeup greatly impacted the industry for decades to come. Many of his creations were the results of self experimentation. In fact, his extreme dedication to his craft earned him the nickname “The Man of 1,000 Faces”.

While we do know how he did some of his makeup effects, Chaney took many of these secrets with him to the grave when he died in 1930.

Rick Baker

Another important name in the industry that Horror Make-Up mentions is Rick Baker. Baker created the incredible werewolf transformation in An American Werewolf in London (1981). It was his work in this movie that earned him his first Academy Award for Best Make-up in 1982. This would be the first win for the make-up artist in a long line of achievements.

Perhaps Baker’s second highest achievement was his work in Michael Jackson’s music video Thriller. Baker’s make-up transforms the pop singer into a werewolf among a hoard of zombies. The makeup artist even makes a cameo in the video as one of the undead.

Other movies Baker helped bring to life with his craft include; The Howling, Men in Black, and The Wolfman (2010).

A Blending of Technologies

As seen in An American Werewolf in London, Rick Baker did not only use prosthetics to create horror movie magic. Baker and his team designed the animatronics and “change-o” heads, limbs, and other props to create the groundbreaking transformation from man to werewolf.

The combination of prosthetics placed directly onto the actor in combination with robotics began the blending of technologies used to create the next generation of monsters.

The Horror Make-Up Show continues its education of the genre as technology expanded into the computer era. The final clips shown on screen demonstrates the latest evolution of horror make-up in Universal’s The Mummy (2017).

Computer generated imagery is layered over physical practical effects to create the amazing hieroglyphics covering the character of Ahmanet, played by Sofia Boutella. It is the partnering of these two technologies that the host of the show claims creates the best and most convincing effects in modern day horror.

Moving Forward

Hardcore horror movie fans of the Horror Make-Up Show will be some of the first to say while entertaining, the show is indeed outdated. The names Lon Chaney, Rick Baker, Dick Smith, and Tom Savini certainly deserve to be immortalized in horror history. However, there is so much new blood that should be acknowledged for their contributions to the genre that continues to propel it forward.

Artists such as Damien Leone (Terrifier), Greg Nicotero (The Walking Dead), Todd Masters (Final Destination), and Eryn Krueger Mekash (American Horror Story) are all examples that have continued the evolution of visuals in the genre.

Damien Leone, Philip Falcone, and a victim in the make-up chair!

As touched upon in the original Make-Up Show, the best results in movies is when practical effects are blended with computer generated effects. Using just one style versus the other runs the risk of looking “too fake.” Using both techniques can also be more budget friendly and less time consuming for the actor in the make-up chair during the creation process.

The Future of the Horror Make-Up Show

Universal Studios Orlando is expecting to re-open their doors to the new Horror Make-Up Show during the winter of 2026. However, they have not yet announced what changes will be made, or what the future show will look like. The most the theme park has announced is the show will be:

“featuring classic and modern horror properties along with shockingly fun surprises – all while staying true to the comedic and irreverent vibe that guests love.”

What were your favorite moments of Universal Orlando’s original Horror Make-Up Show, and what do you hope they bring to the table when they reopen? Let us know in the comments!

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Koji Suzuki Built the Well. The Author of ‘Ring’ Trilogy Dies at 68

Published

3 days ago

May 9, 2026

Luna Gray

There is a specific kind of damage Ringu does to you, and it is entirely the phone call’s fault. You get through the whole movie thinking you are watching it from outside, and then Sadako’s voice comes through the receiver, and you realize you were inside it the whole time. Koji Suzuki, who wrote the 1991 novel that started all of this, died May 8 at a hospital in Tokyo. He was 68.

The premise fits on a napkin. There is a cursed videotape, you watch it, a phone call tells you that you have seven days. What Suzuki actually built inside that premise is harder to shake than the premise itself. Sadako is not a slasher villain. She is not hunting you because you wronged her. She is the embodiment of a child who was dropped into a well and has been there ever since, and the curse moving out from her is not really about revenge. It is about the impossibility of forgetting that something terrible happened and nobody came. You cannot outrun a concept like that. You can only try to understand it before the seven days are up.

What He Built

Ring came out in Japan in 1991. Spiral followed in 1995 and immediately went somewhere people who thought they had the series figured out were not expecting, pushing the mythology into science fiction territory that still catches readers off guard. It won the Yoshikawa Eiji Prize for New Writers. Loop completed the trilogy by becoming a meditation on simulation, biology, and what memory actually is, none of which you would expect from a book that started with a videotape.

Suzuki was not a writer who wanted to do the same thing twice. His 1996 collection Dark Water was adapted into a well-regarded Japanese horror film in 2002 and an American remake with Jennifer Connelly in 2005. The story in that collection about the water tank on the roof of the apartment building is one of the most quietly devastating things in his bibliography. The man knew how to use one small wrong detail.

What It Became

Hideo Nakata turned Ring into Ringu in 1998 and something got loose. American horror had spent the 1990s being very clever about how clever it was, doing the Scream thing, making sure you knew it knew the rules. J-Horror walked in from a completely different direction and did not know what a knowing wink was. It was slow and sincere and interested in grief and possession and the residue violence leaves in physical spaces long after the people involved are gone.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Pulse, Takashi Shimizu’s The Grudge, Higuchinsky’s Uzumaki: the entire movement traces back to the ground Suzuki’s novel prepared, and Sadako crawling out of that television became one of the most recognizable images in horror’s last fifty years.

Gore Verbinski made The Ring in 2002 and ensured that anyone who had somehow missed the Japanese original was now on board. Two separate horror renaissances on two different continents inside a decade is not a record that gets broken easily.

What He Meant

Horror has a short list of writers who actually changed what the genre thought it was allowed to do. Suzuki is on that list. Every cursed-content story since, every found footage premise, every creepypasta, every haunted stream, every piece of internet horror built on the idea that something terrible is already moving through the medium you are currently inside: all of it lives downstream from what he started. He wrote a novel about a videotape and it turned out to be about something much harder to shake than a videotape.

He received the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel in 2012 for Edge. The Horror Writers Association gave him the Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award in 2022.

Sadako is still in the well.

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This Week in Horror: The Genre Says Goodbye to Jonathan Tiersten

Published

4 days ago

May 8, 2026

Luna Gray

Not the lightest week the genre has had. Jonathan Tiersten is gone. Zach Cregger just showed what he did with Resident Evil. Cape Fear dropped its full trailer, Dev Patel got to stream for free, and a Japanese liminal horror adaptation quietly landed on digital. A lot happened. Here is all of it.

Jonathan Tiersten, 1965-2026

Jonathan Tiersten, who played Ricky Thomas in the 1983 cult slasher Sleepaway Camp, died at 60 at his New Jersey home. The announcement came May 5. The cause of death has not been officially confirmed.

Sleepaway Camp is one of those films the genre holds in a very specific kind of regard. Low budget, summer camp, standard slasher setup, and then a finale that has been showing up in “best horror endings” conversations for over forty years. Tiersten’s Ricky is the emotional spine of the film.

He is the cousin trying to protect Angela while the camp turns dangerous around them, and he played it with genuine investment in a way that a lot of low budget horror of that era did not bother to require of its performers.

The horror community is not small, and it does not forget the people who were part of something it loves. Sleepaway Camp is one of those films that impacts conversations about gender and autonomy in a way the original creators would have never imagined. Tiersten will always be remembered, not only for his acting, but also for being a part of something so much bigger than himself.

Zach Cregger Shows What He Did with Resident Evil

The trailer for Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil is out, and it has his fingerprints all over it.

Cregger directed Barbarian, a film that works in all the ways it probably should not have, and Sony gave him the next major Resident Evil adaptation. The film stars Austin Abrams as a medical courier who arrives in Raccoon City during the outbreak and does not yet know how screwed he really is.

Resident Evil opens September 18 in theaters and IMAX.

The Cape Fear Trailer

Apple TV+ dropped the full Cape Fear trailer on May 7. Ten episodes. Amy Adams and Patrick Wilson as the Bowden attorneys. Javier Bardem as Max Cady, the killer they helped put away who is now out of prison and looking for them specifically. Bardem is also an executive producer on the series, which means the version of Max Cady on screen is one he had a hand in shaping before cameras rolled.

First two episodes June 5 on Apple TV+, then weekly through July 31.

Rabbit Trap Is Free on Pluto TV

Dev Patel’s Welsh folk horror Rabbit Trap is streaming free on Pluto TV until May 31. Written and directed by Bryn Chainey, produced by Elijah Wood’s SpectreVision, the film is set in 1976 and follows a couple who relocate to an isolated cabin in Wales, disturb a fairy ring, and are visited by a mysterious child who does not have good intentions. Rosy McEwen and Jade Croot co-star with Patel. It is free on Pluto TV until May 31.

Exit 8 Hits Digital

Exit 8 is on digital now via Neon. Directed by Genki Kawamura and based on the liminal horror video game by Kotake Create, it world-premiered in the Midnight section at Cannes 2025 to an eight-minute standing ovation. The film follows a man trapped in an endless sterile subway corridor searching for the exit. It holds a 92% on Rotten Tomatoes and is the cleanest possible encapsulation of a very specific internet-era dread.