One of my favorite projects last year was my two-week deep dive into the horror genre. I enjoyed not only catching up on dozens of horror films from a variety of sub-genres, but writing about them as well.

I’ve watched another 58 horror movies since then (based on the Letterboxd classification) and I still have so many more on my watchlist.

Horror has quickly gone from a genre I avoided to one of my favorites. This week I’ll go into some of the reasons why.

A big part of my appreciation for horror is the way these films reflect and comment on society. For decades, big screen scares have served as metaphors for all kinds of real-wold anxieties: financial, sexual, racial, political, religious, domestic. These films often comment on shared societal unease more effectively than any didactic drama.

This year’s The Substance is a good recent example. The film chronicles a 50-year-old actress’ breakdown after losing her exercise guru gig due to her age. She turns to the titular product to create a “younger, more perfect” version of herself, with disastrous results. Its message is obvious, its techniques blunt, and its genre allows it to go off the rails in spectacular ways.

I recently watched a spate of home invasion movies set in the 2000s and early 2010s, and it struck me that the prevalence of the sub-genre at that time was likely due to September 11. Movies such as The Strangers, The Purge, and You’re Next explore the feeling of being attacked somewhere you expect to be safe.

The deadly affliction in It Follows is transmitted sexually, a rather direct analogy to STDs. In this film, the victims are stalked by a slow-moving entity who takes the form of everyday people. If you have sex with somebody, the entity will pursue them instead, but if that person dies, the target is right back on you. Unnerving and expertly crafted, it’s one of the best horror films of the century so far.

Many horror films, especially in the last decade or so, use their frights as a metaphor for trauma and its close cousin, grief. Midsommar, Smile, The Descent, Hereditary and The Invisible Man are just a few examples. Of course, this isn’t only a recent phenomenon. The central figures in Psycho and Carrie were channeling their trauma into murderous rage in 1960 and 1976, respectively.

Finally, I want to shout out Jordan Peele, who has stated that in his films, “society is the monster.” His exploration of race and class divisions through horror has resulted in three fascinating films so far. You can see his love of the genre informing every frame of his modern-day classics.