Post-Horror

Explores one of the most prominent and debated trends within the horror genre

Offers the first in-depth study of one of the twenty-first-century horror genre’s most important and divisive developments

Explores the shared aesthetics, themes, and reception of the post-horror corpus

Updates existing debates about horror cinema, artistic value, and cultural taste

Listen to David Church discuss his book on the Full Contact Nerd podcast

Horror’s longstanding reputation as a popular but culturally denigrated genre has been challenged by a new wave of films mixing arthouse minimalism with established genre conventions. Variously dubbed 'elevated horror' and 'post-horror,' films such as The Babadook, It Follows, The Witch, It Comes at Night, Get Out, The Invitation, Hereditary, Midsommar, A Ghost Story, and mother! represent an emerging nexus of taste, politics, and style that has often earned outsized acclaim from critics and populist rejection by wider audiences. Post-Horror is the first full-length study of one of the most important and divisive movements in twenty-first-century horror cinema.

The horror film is often read as a low-budget and disreputable genre that is disparaged by critics and loved by only a small core of committed fans. However, there has always been a high end to horror, a high end that is made up of both art films and prestigious productions from the major studios. In this book, then, Church offers a crucial contribution to an understanding of this trend through his analysis of recent developments in its history. Grounded in an analysis of the reception contexts within which these films are produced, mediated and consumed, this book is a must for those interested in contemporary film culture in general and the horror film in particular.

– Mark Jancovich, University of East Anglia

With this book, David Church confirms his status as one of the most interesting contemporary scholars working on horror and on taste politics. Church expands the notion of art-horror and shows the links between contemporary post-horror and 1940s woman's films, melodrama, science fiction and European art cinema, with great chapters devoted to the post-horror connection between family, intimate relationships, and epistemic violence. Meticulously researched and theorized, this is a book that, like the films it analyzes, rewards multiple readings. A thumping good read.

– Joan C. Hawkins, Indiana University

This book is indispensable for both academic researchers and film critics – as well as genre fans – who strive to understand the finer workings of this new cycle in horror cinema.

– Sandra Aline Wagner, University of Limerick, Gothic Studies

Church’s investment in reception cultures renders Post-Horror even more valuable as a pedagogical resource. [...] Post-Horror further affirms that the past decade—an epoch of horrors—has provided a fertile opportunity for filmmakers of various marginalized backgrounds to rethink what it means to be horrified.

– Caetlin Benson-Allott, Georgetown University, Film Quarterly

Case studies include:

It Follows

The Witch

The Babadook

Get Out

Hereditary

Midsommar

Goodnight Mommy

It Comes at Night

The Invitation

I Am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House

mother!

A Dark Song

A Ghost Story