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 meant to end in hope: Regan McNeil can be exorcized. A hydrophobic Roy Scheider can blow up a shark. Buffy can and will slay vampires. Heroic human qualities like love, bravery, resourcefulness, and intelligence will eventually defeat the monster. But, after the 9/11, American horror became much more bleak, with many films ending with the deaths of the entire main cast. Post-9/11 Horror in American Cinema illustrates how contemporary horror films explore visceral and emotional reactions to the attacks and how they underpin audiences' ongoing fears about their safety. It examines how scary movies have changed as a result of 9/11 and, conversely, how horror films construct and give meaning to the event in a way that other genres do not. Considering films such as Quarantine, Cloverfield, Hostel and the Saw series, Wetmore examines the transformations in horror cinema since 9/11 and considers not merely how the tropes have changed, but how our understanding of horror itself has changed.

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.

This book explores the resurgence of rural horror following the events of 9/11, as a number of filmmakers, inspired by the films of the 1970s, moved away from the characteristic industrial and urban settings of apocalyptic horror, to return to American heartland horror. Examining the revival of rural horror in an era of city fear and urban terrorism, the author analyses the relationship of the genre with fears surrounding the Global War on Terror, exploring the films’ engagement with the political repercussions of 9/11 and the ways in which traces of traumatic events leave their mark on cultures. Arranged around the themes of dissent, patriotism, myth, anger and memorial, and with attention to both text and socio-cultural context in its interpretation of the films’ themes, Post-9/11 Heartland Horror offers a series of case studies covering a ten-year period to shed light on the manner in which the Post-9/11 Heartland Horror films scrutinize and unravel the events, aspirations, anxieties, discourses, dogmas, and socio-political conflicts of the post-9/11 era. As such, it will appeal to scholars and students of film studies, cultural studies and media studies, and those with interests in the relationship between popular culture and politics.

Horror films have exploded in popularity since the tragic events of September 11, 2001, many of them breaking box-office records and generating broad public discourse. These films have attracted A-list talent and earned award nods, while at the same time becoming darker, more disturbing, and increasingly apocalyptic. Why has horror suddenly become more popular, and what does this say about us? What do specific horror films and trends convey about American society in the wake of events so horrific that many pundits initially predicted the death of the genre? How could American audiences, after tasting real horror, want to consume images of violence on screen? Horror after 9/11 represents the first major exploration of the horror genre through the lens of 9/11 and the subsequent transformation of American and global society. Films discussed include the Twilight saga; the Saw series; Hostel; Cloverfield; 28 Days Later; remakes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Dawn of the Dead, and The Hills Have Eyes; and many more. The contributors analyze recent trends in the horror genre, including the rise of 'torture porn,' the big-budget remakes of classic horror films, the reinvention of traditional monsters such as vampires and zombies, and a new awareness of visual technologies as sites of horror in themselves. The essays examine the allegorical role that the horror film has held in the last ten years, and the ways that it has been translating and reinterpreting the discourses and images of terror into its own cinematic language.

Over the course of the past two decades, horror cinema around the globe has become increasingly preoccupied with the concept of loss. Grief in Contemporary Horror Cinema: Screening Loss examines the theme of grief as it is represented in both indie and mainstream films, including works such as Jennifer Kent's watershed film The Babadook, Juan Antonio Bayona's award-sweeping El orfanato, Ari Aster's genre-straddling Midsommar, and Lars von Trier's visually stunning Melancholia. Analyzing depictions of grief ranging from the intimate grief of a small family to the collective grief of an entire nation, the essays illustrate how these works serve to provide unity, catharsis, and—sometimes—healing.

Winner of the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel In her quickly gentrifying rural lake town Jade sees recent events only her encyclopedic knowledge of horror films could have prepared her for in this latest chilling novel that “will give you nightmares. The good kind, of course” (BuzzFeed) from the Jordan Peele of horror literature, Stephen Graham Jones. “Some girls just don’t know how to die…” Shirley Jackson meets Friday the 13th in My Heart Is a Chainsaw, written by the New York Times bestselling author of The Only Good Indians Stephen Graham Jones, called “a literary master” by National Book Award winner Tananarive Due and “one of our most talented living writers” by Tommy Orange. Alma Katsu calls My Heart Is a Chainsaw “a homage to slasher films that also manages to defy and transcend genre.” On the surface is a story of murder in small-town America. But beneath is its beating heart: a biting critique of American colonialism, Indigenous displacement, and gentrification, and a heartbreaking portrait of a broken young girl who uses horror movies to cope with the horror of her own life. Jade Daniels is an angry, half-Indian outcast with an abusive father, an absent mother, and an entire town that wants nothing to do with her. She lives in her own world, a world in which protection comes from an unusual source: horror movies…especially the ones where a masked killer seeks revenge on a world that wronged them. And Jade narrates the quirky history of Proofrock as if it is one of those movies. But when blood actually starts to spill into the waters of Indian Lake, she pulls us into her dizzying, encyclopedic mind of blood and masked murderers, and predicts exactly how the plot will unfold. Yet, even as Jade drags us into her dark fever dream, a surprising and intimate portrait emerges…a portrait of the scared and traumatized little girl beneath the Jason Voorhees mask: angry, yes, but also a girl who easily cries, fiercely loves, and desperately wants a home. A girl whose feelings are too big for her body. My Heart Is a Chainsaw is her story, her homage to horror and revenge and triumph.