I was rewatching Weapons and this occurred to me. Are we living in a golden age of horror? Turns out, I’m almost ten years too late on this.

For one, there’s a Wikipedia page on the topic. All of the references are from 2016 to 2019, although the article originated from 2024. The thing is, according to the article, the movies this started with are Conjuring, Insidious and Sinister, while IT is mentioned in the sources, and I disagree with this completely. Sure, these were massive commercial successes but while I hope the movies I like are successes, I am much more interested in the movies themselves than the number of people who went out to see them. When I think about the best movies from the last 16 years or so, I think of The VVitch, Hereditary, The Substance, Get Out, the aforementioned Weapons, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Green Room, I Saw the TV Glow, The Babadook, A Field in England, Talk to Me, and so on and so on. According to IMDb, I’ve given 140 horror movies movies released after 2010 an 8 or better on IMDb.

To me the golden age of horror isn’t about commercial success, it’s that certain auteurs have found a voice in horror. Like, look at the list of movies above. It includes movies from Coralie Fargeat, Jordan Peele, Ari Aster, Yorgos Lanthimos, Robert Eggers, Jeremy Saulnier, Jennifer Kent, Ben Wheatley, Philippou brothers, Zach Cregger and Jane Schoenbrun. Not necessarily household names but names I recognize and have seen multiple movies from (well, several of them have only ever made two, but still).

To me the Conjuring, Insidious and Sinister feel more like remnants of earlier trends. Horror has changed a lot during it’s history but it has always been a genre where you can make a movie on the cheap and you know you can get a return on it. When technology has evolved, horror is often the genre that can take advantage of it and it will, because the nature of the game is often exploitation.

However, when you have a generation of people who grew up on these movies, they have a different outlook on this. Sure, there was a lot of shit made in the 70s and the 80s but that doesn’t mean those films couldn’t have inspired better takes. When you have smart people with something to say, they can use those same sensibilities or the ones they find interesting, and make something better out of it.

This is what the golden age of horror is about. I really don’t think anyone will be interested in Insidious or Sinister in 50 years… or even now, but Get Out or I Saw the TV Glow or The Babadook? Those are movies that will be talked about basically forever. Sure, they might reach only black folk or queer people or frustrated mothers, but that is also part of the beauty of these movies. You don’t have to make something for the lowest common denominator. You can make something for a specific audience, because the budget is limited. So, if you can find that audience and maybe some movie fans on top of that (I for one am not black or a mother and I don’t identify as queer, but I have seen those movies), you’ll be fine.

So, if this is a golden age of horror, when did it start? Where are we on the timeline of it?

Yeah, I have no answers. This is something that needs to be studied in hindsight, but I would like nominate Let the Right On In from 2008 as the starting point. I don’t know why. It just feels right.