Horror is as
varied and multifaceted as rock music. You have your slashers, you have
post-apocalyptic horror, you have zombie horror (which often goes hand-in-hand
with post-apocalyptic), and psychological horror. Hauntings and possessions are
two forms of supernatural horror, and they occasionally mix as with James Wan’s
The Conjuring. There’s torture porn,
monster movies, experimental/abstract flicks and, my personal favourite, sci fi
horror. And god only knows how many of those have been shot as found footage or
mockumentaries.
Each subgenre
has had its moment in the limelight—zombies are popular at the moment, coming
on the heels of the Saw-driven
torture porn craze. Found footage has been immensely successful twice in the
last decade and a half thanks to The
Blair Witch Project and the Paranormal
Activity series. And I’m hoping—really hoping—that the good old haunted
house film makes a comeback in the next few years. But there’s another class of
horror you may not have noticed, in large part because it’s often disguised as
other subgenres or completely different genres entirely. I wonder if their
creators are actually aware they’re contributing to this largely hidden
category. I call it moral horror, and it’s been on my brain the last little
while.
