When I coined the term for scary films that broke the rules, gore fans showered me with abuse. Now it has been adopted by a festival – and I feel vindicated
Five years ago, in this paper, I coined a term to describe what I saw as a new trend in horror movies: “post-horror”. Bad idea. To me, the term had a nice ring to it – a bit like “postmodern”. And in the same way postmodern architecture played with established language and traditions without necessarily sticking to the rules, I suggested a number of recent horror movies were doing the same: movies such as It Comes at Night, A Ghost Story and The Witch. The “horror community” wasted no time in telling me how wrong I was. Responses to my article varied from “It’s all just horror, duh” to “This is elitist snobbery” to “You can’t possibly weigh on this subject because you haven’t watched as many horror movies as I have”.
“All Rose is really saying in his article is ‘I don’t like horror, so these particular films must be something else,’” argued one online article, which concluded: “using platforms of cultural gate-keepership … to denigrate a persistently rich and popular genre with little mind to nuance is more than simple cultural distinction, it’s shoddy journalism.” Well that was me told. I hadn’t experienced such vitriol since my two-star review of the World of Warcraft movie.
