Not many would be surprised to know that the concept of movie theaters is on the decline, seeing as America has experienced a steady decline in ticket sales since 2002. These past few weeks, this reporter has spent more time in Gallatin’s Regal theater than ever before, and can say with absolute certainty that although many people are still passionate about horror movies, the culture of seeing them in theaters has seemed to hit an all time low. There were hardly ever more than six or seven other people in the theater at one time, meaning empty seats were plenty and leaving halfway through the movie no longer seemed as rude as one could remember.

Despite the decline of movie theaters, Hollywood is still undoubtedly reaching the next generation. Furthermore, it’s not just Hollywood anymore; many independent filmmakers are gaining traction due to the new opportunities provided to them by the ease of distribution that the internet provides. One search for “horror short film” on YouTube brings up thousands of films independently made by creators from all over the world, with different backgrounds, cultures, and stories to tell. This dispersion of the creative community has enabled filmmakers to accurately tell stories that have not previously been told in the industry.

The increasing diversity of all genres has become a hot topic in recent years, with the horror genre seeing the most significant diversification in the industry. Take one of the most classic tropes of the genre for example: the final girl. She is the sole survivor in slasher movies, and she is typically defined to most classically misogynistic generalizations. More modern incarnations of the final girl have shown her to be less of a plot device written by someone who did not have her experience and more so as a force of change and her own person with both flaws as well as virtuous aspects. Although the mere idea of a final girl seems somewhat progressive coming from a film industry that is predominantly written, produced, and directed by men, women were previously written simply as personifications of the idea of the so-called perfect and virtuous standards that were set by society at the time, with the majority of these unwritten rules that the women had to follow in order to survive the movie being related to sobriety, virginity, and looks. However, we’ve seen women become deeper than this as the genre has progressed, with one of the most recent examples being the main character, Dr. Rose Cotter, in Smile (2022). She is an independently successful woman, who has her own character flaws in both relationships with her sister and fiancé, but still shows extreme dedication to surviving the horror of the plot she finds herself in.

In terms of race representation, we have seen increased diversity from the white-dominated world of early horror. Where the casts of the most iconic movies of the 80s and 90s were mostly white (think Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream, etc.), we now have producers like Jordan Peele—Get Out (2017), and Us (2019)—providing black representation in both directing and cast. Native American representation has also appeared in movies such as Blood Quantum, which features a mostly Native American cast and centers around Native American issues while still providing a narrative that can be enjoyed by all horror fans. Furthermore, we have revamps of famous movie franchises, such as 2022's Scream, now having Latin-American actors at the center of the franchise. The director of the 2018 thriller Searching, a movie that features both an Asian-American lead and director, summarizes it best when he said in an interview with Variety, “You don’t have to justify anyone’s skin color to be in a thriller, to be in an action movie, [or] to be in a mystery.”

Finally, the third most ignored minority in the horror genre is the LGBTQ+ community. Although this can be expected with the stigma that surrounded the queer community during the '80s and '90s due to the AIDS epidemic, as societal stigmas have lessened, we are finally seeing a steady increase in queer representation in the horror movie industry. However, there are still very few movies that feature queer main characters. The most recent horror movie series to feature a queer main character is the 2021 Fear Street trilogy, based on the book series by R.L. Stine.

Undeniably, the movie industry has changed. However, society has not only changed to accommodate it, but it has also incited change in order to make the horror genre more accessible and relatable to its newest audience: Generation Z. The true fear in horror movies comes from the connection the viewer forms with the characters on screen, making them feel as if they have stakes in the story itself. Without characters that accurately represent the audience, horror movies lose their edge along with their viewers. Our society is becoming increasingly supportive of different races, viewpoints, and traits. Therefore, it is imperative that this next generation—our generation—of filmmakers, actors, and writers accurately bring every view to the table in order to write horror that will capture a wider audience than it has in the past. To any potential Raptor story-makers reading, remember this: movies are a uniting force, and there is nothing more powerful than seeing human emotion play out on the big screen– even if that screen is getting smaller by the decade.