Fear Factor

A history of how horror movies mirror their society.

by Juan Lopez

Although many of you have likely moved on from your scary-movie marathon in the wake of Halloween, their position and reflection of society is a question probing my mind.

30s & 40s - Science & The Outsider

During the Great Depression and in the midst of World War II, there was a fear of the unknown and the outsiders, ideas or individuals that maybe were just too unlike us. It was a time of rapid urbanization and globalization, and movies like Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), and The Mummy (1932) manifested these fears as dangerous, non-human creatures meant to be eradicated. According to Barry Grant, Dracula in particular was used to tap into the era’s xenophobia, with the vampire representing the fear of foreign influences on western society. David Skal, in his book The Monster Show, also noted how Frankenstein symbolized the dangers associated with scientific progress and experimentation that was unbound by morality.

50’s - Cold War, The Covert, and The Atom.

When the first atomic bombs dropped at the end of World War II, anxieties over the potential horrors that would come of such a weapon skyrocketed. Famously, the film Godzilla (1954) confronted the fears of nuclear fallout. By manifesting atomic testing’s unforeseen circumstances in a mutated creature, these consequences were portrayed as a revolt from mother nature, now hellbent on seeking payback. In the western world, alien-invasion films took the xenophobic undertones of prior monster movies and evolved to represent a fear that was potentially more advanced than them. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and The Blob (1958) acted as cultural stand-ins for fears of communism infiltrating the nation. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) specifically, according to Grant, a direct metaphor for The Red Scare, a time when neighbors and friends feared one another over the possibility of them secretly being a communist agent. As such, the film plays with this “quiet invasion” as the aliens created identical human copies, eventually replacing the original.

60s & 70s - Social Unrest and Straying from The Norm

With the turbulence of the 1960s, such as the Civil Rights movement, anti-war protests, and political assassinations, filmmakers began to toy with the idea that normalcy could possibly hide the real dangers of society. Psycho (1960) was a revolutionary film in its time for depicting the monstrosity of a basic human. The magic of what made the movie so successful at the time was the fear that someone so heinous could seem so normal. Kendall Phillips points out in his book, Projected Fears, that movies like Rosemary’s Baby (1968) as well as The Exorcist (1973) even take it so far as to make audiences think the danger could come from their own homes and families. The authority of medical and religious figures were put into question in these films, reflecting a society that became increasingly aware and weary of those they were told were put in place to help and protect them.

80s & 90s - Conservatism and Young Blood

The fear that the biggest danger was next to you from the 70s evolved into a new threat in the suburban neighborhood. The era of Slasher films were born, with movies like Halloween (1978), Friday the 13th (1980), and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) placing these hidden dangers in the places that were least expected, with bloody murder occuring in summer camps and white-picket fence neighborhoods. Uncoincidentally, these films often used much younger protagonists than prior films. With the inauguration of Ronald Reagan in 1981 came a wave of conservative reforms meant to deal with a “dire crisis” in the United States. As Milly Williamson writes in her book, The Lure of The Vampire, the villains in these movies often targeted young characters who took part in behavior that was perceived as wreckless or morally wrong. Behavior that was growing amongst the younger generation, with the rising popularity of artists like Madonna and the start of MTV, which began that same year that Reagan took office. Similarly, Scream (1996) played into the slasher trope whilst challenging them at the same time, mirroring the increasing rebel-culture of the younger generation at the time.

2000’s - Terror and Big Brother

At the turn of the millennium, corporate greed and moral decay fed into anxieties of the nation. Movies like American Psycho (2000) questioned the morality of a society that was growing increasingly wealthy and dehumanized through a character that was driven by greed and a desire to humanize himself, fitting in with morally bankrupt people. Very early into the 2000s though, following the events of 9/11 and the subsequent War on Terror, the American people were disrupted and forced to deal with drastic changes in their lives overnight. A new subgenre was born from this, and “torture-porn” movies like Saw (2004) became popular as society grew uneasy with the moral ambiguity of the war and the loss of privacy in many situations that were a part of every day life, such as the introduction of the TSA in airports. In Cineaste volume 34, David Mark writes that this era of movies mirror a society that was grappling with the ethics of survival and justice, as well as growing desensitized to violence and trauma.

2010’s & 2020’s - Isolation, Inequality, and the Inaccessible

In the current era, horror films began to focus more on social issues such as inequality in race, class, and gender/sexual orientation. Jordan Peele’s films Us (2019) and Get Out (2017) portrayed America’s exploitive identity with black culture and identities, while Parasite (2019), Squid Game, (2021) and The Purge (2013) represented class struggles as an extremist battle to the death where the rich enjoy taking from and making fun of the poorest of society. The changing political landscape post-2016 and the COVID pandemic spurred a wave of horror centered on isolation and loneliness as well as the growing inaccessibility minorities face as their rights are stripped away. Host (2020), a film made over zoom, highlights the social disconnection that came from quarantine and nation-wide curfews, as well as a vulnerability within those digital spaces, as per Ann Kaplan in Trauma and Cinematic Horror in the Age of COVID. Most recently, films like Immaculate (2024), Alien: Romulus (2024), and The First Omen (2024) have either featured or focused on birthing “demon-babies” against their mothers will. Similar to how Rosemary’s Baby and Black Christmas were penned around the time of Roe V. Wade’s initial passing, these movies have provided a bleak outlook on the overturning of Roe V. Wade, as women are now struggling with the growing inaccessibility to a procedure that was once more easily accessible to them.

Despite often being overlooked due to their gore and raunchy nature, horror films have frequently been used as a cultural artifact reflecting the society from which they come from. These horrors and anxieties are shared and remembered in a medium that helps provide understanding to and for people who may otherwise struggle to communicate their fear and find peace.

Since the late 1800s with the first film in the genre, Le Manoir du Diable (1896), horror movies have been used as a tool to reflect the societal fears of the time. From the age of monster films to scientific experiment mishaps to demonic possessions, horror movie trends adapted over the decades as times changed, with directors and writers using the medium to hold up their own mirrors to society. As a result, a number of eras have spawned when looking back at the history of horror films.