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Horror films are often used as social allegory: they are subversive, critical, and as Benshoff argues, carry inherent radicalism.
We see this with zombie movies that critique consumerism, apocalyptic movies that represent global fears of terrorism, and serial killers that represent general societal unrest.
The Zombie Film
The Zombie Film
The zombie film is universally popular, and is used as social commentary. The subgenre began with condemnations of postwar America, specifically commenting on consumer capitalism. Zombie films offer horror films' greatest critiques of Otherness.
The contemporary zombie revolves around the notion of general violence and humans as target practice, as opposed to the classic idea of "who is the real monster?" Older zombie films emphasize that the zombies were people; their monstrousness is associated with the norm, the norm being human behaviour under capitalism, while contemporary films of the genre have assertions that the Other deserves little or no empathy. Benshoff explains that in the age of illegal war invasions, this direction of the zombie film is not surprising. The sense of panic that informs these films is notable.
Worldview
Worldview
“[...] horror cinema forces us to look again at the wounds inflicted on individuals, families, communities and nations by traumatic events such as genocide and war, terrorist outrage and seismic political change, wounds that are all too often concealed beneath ideologically expedient discourses of national cohesion,” (Linnie Blake).
Nicole Birch-Bayley in "Terror in Horror Genres: The Global Media and the Millennial Zombie" explains that after the 9/11 attacks on the United States in 2001, various forms of popular media changed as a result of the shift in global media, and as a result, zombie films came to represent the worst-case fears of an apprehensive media culture. These films entertained anxieties about world events, and in this case, a fear of terrorism and epidemic in zombie form (Birch-Bayley).
Various zombie films came to be seen as a medium for western culture's "crisis mentality" - expressing concerns of a culture waiting for the next attack, or the next pandemic. This stylistic shift in zombie films suggests the way that society interprets social and political tensions has changed since the turn of the millenium.
The horror film continues to embody the ideological circumstances of the moment that contains it (Benshoff).
The horror film continues to embody the ideological circumstances of the moment that contains it (Benshoff).
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