In the last entry in this series, we defined True Horror genetically. Here we look at its children. Basic genre hybrids like Scifi Horror are out of scope.
Something needs to be set down in writing here: Not being True Horror does not make a work bad. Social media is for rage-bait; this is a blog. Sax Rhomer’s Occult Detective book The Dream Detective is a fun and fascinating work. It’s not True Horror, but so what? No one needs another tutting inner critic.
The Aickmanesque (1960s-1970s) Robert Aickman and Elizabeth Jane Howard resurrected the traditional English Ghost Story along Symbolist lines, creating a distinct form unaccountably disturbing from an inner perspective.
Body Horror (1980s-) Generally credited in its modern horror form to Cronenberg, the subgenre dealing most directly with alteration to the human body, often against one’s will.
Cosmic Horror (1920s-1930s) The most direct attempts to continue in Lovecraft’s style. Blood and violence are largely offscreen, implied or irrelevant, while the insignificance of humanity in a larger order is centered. A narrator lives to tell the tale, carrying an awful burden. Prose are often purple (in imitation of Lovecraft’s imitation of Poe).
Cozy Horror (1970s-) Horror in which the key elements are at an extreme remove, often shrouded in ambiguity, and human slice-of-life storytelling takes center stage. A controversial classification supported by works like Gene Wolfe’s Peace and the art of rt0no.
Folk Horror (1970s-) An expression of the simultaneous fascination and alienation outsiders hold with the perceived generational continuity, insularity and memetic survival of isolated rural regions. (Outsiders include those from different rural regions.) Generally descends from Margaret Murray’s once-popular witch-cult hypothesis.
Possession (1970s-1980s) An often quite conscious attempt to literally scare people back to religion. The universe is immoral and unknowable if one does not follow.
Psychological Horror (1960s-) Often confused with Psycho-thrillers. To fall within True Horror, the loss of touch with reality at the core of the work must rise to the level of the (implied) supernatural.
Slasher-Horror (1970s-1980s) In its hyphenated form, a Slasher in which the killer is (or killers are) implied to possess invulnerability, omniscience, precognition or other impossible attributes.
Vampire (1910s-2010s) The depredations of the ruling class, often mixed with nativism, at a remove. Coalesced initially from a variety of loosely-related Eastern European folklore traditions, and contemporary anxieties around tuberculosis.
Zombie (1960s-2000s) The only way modern pop culture can deal with the specter of societal collapse. Other desperate human beings are transmuted into mindless, soulless Others, to forgive–even make sport of–their slaughter.
