How Horror Movies Reflect the Era
Gita Anand ‘28
Staff Writer
anandggr@lakeforest.edu
Horror movies have always reflected the anxieties and superstitions of their historical context. For many years, society incorporated fears of monsters, supernatural threats, and grotesque acts of violence and torture into general horror media, relying particularly on shock value to cater to audiences. But in the past decade, horror has increasingly become a way to confront systemic injustices such as racism, patriarchy, xenophobia, and classism. Contemporary horror portrays the physical threats that oppressive social constructs have normalized. While this genre is particularly good at leaving its audience with an unsettled feeling in their gut, horror movies of the last decade have also undoubtedly made legitimate points.
Films that highlight minority communities often portray racism as a form of consumption. “Get Out” (2017) and “Sinners” (2025) are two popular examples that illustrate forms of predatory racial appropriation. In “Get Out,” white liberalism disguises its desire to possess and exploit Black bodies as admiration. In “Sinners,” vampirism is a clear metaphor for “sucking away” and consuming Black life and culture. The contradiction between the polite, “woke” behavior and the intention to possess and consume Black bodies reflects a common and normalized experience in the United States. The Black protagonists in these films are not endangered because their enemy claims to accept them, but because that acceptance is a mere cover for a desire to control and possess. Both films refute the assumption that racism can only be expressed through explicit hatred and violence, because admiration and cultural appreciation are equally violent when they deny people basic autonomy.
“Midsommar” (2019) and “Obsession” (2025) show the brutal violence hidden within desires for belonging and romance. Dani’s search for emotional recognition in “Midsommar” results in a disturbing kind of liberation, while “Obsession” turns a man’s desire to be wanted into a nightmare that spirals out of control. Both challenge the normalized idea that women owe men affection, obedience, or labor of any kind. Both feature emotionally immature, cowardly men who somehow gain sympathy from the female characters they consistently harm. Not only that, but the women actually blame themselves for the constant mistakes made by men, justifying each of them with “love.” Obsessive or overly-infatuated affection is often mistaken for love at the center of mainstream culture because those narratives promote patriarchy as a justification for control. In a society so benevolent to men, these films emphasize why normalizing such behavior is dangerous.
Colonialism is a system of domination that profits from undermining unity, especially within communities that have already been fractured by oppression. In “Sinners,” both the Black human protagonists and white vampire antagonists have suffered from systemic oppression, yet the vampires attempt to reclaim their lost culture by claiming and consuming the Black community rather than building solidarity with it. They desire the community’s cultural joie de vivre and strength, but do not value the lives of its members nearly as highly. They desire the ability of the Black community to love and laugh and dance together without competing for domination. Forced suffering reinforces cycles of domination rather than building solidarity, especially when collective liberation or happiness is presented as impossible to achieve. Colonialism turns survival into a competition between the vulnerable, but the Black community’s shared music and gathering convey the simple power of enjoying life together — which requires no competition at all. Isolation is a crucial method of oppression in a capitalist environment.
Ultimately, these films are just a few examples of how the genre of horror has contextualized oppression in horrifying ways by obliterating its unreasonably respectable facade. The undeniable violence that fuels racism, patriarchy, and forced isolationism shows that the real monstrosity lies not within the cruel individual, but in the way society assumes inequitable systems of power to be natural and even something to idealize.