Horror Films as Mirrors of Collective Fear

Spooky skeletons, terrifying ghosts, and boiling cauldrons fill movie screens around the world after George Méliès created the first horror film, La Manoir du Diable (Georges Méliès, 1896). With a run time of only three minutes, Méliès transforms the film industry and creates a new genre with spectacular images that are meant to spook the audience: the horror genre. Since then, societal anxieties (specifically surrounding safety) and major global events have significantly shaped the themes and contents of horror films, creating images with more substance than skeletons and bats. While death is a favored topic among horror films, in standard day-to-day conversations, it is also considered taboo and an anxiety-inducing topic. Yet, in the theater, screens act as a barrier, allowing people to decrease their apprehension and feel separated from the horrors presented to them. Horror films were able to provide commentary on daunting issues, ultimately leading them to be a successful coping mechanism for many. Repeated traumatic events such as World Wars I and II, the Cold War’s nuclear arms race, the rise of serial killers in the 1970s and 1980s, and the introduction of new technologies (AI) have left deep cultural scars that horror cinema reflects.

As the Eastern hemisphere struggles with a ravaging war during the 1940s, new fears of nuclear fallout and destruction are at the forefront of all minds. Soon after, filmmakers began to craft horror films featuring antagonists that teeter on the edge of supernatural and human. Fears surrounding nuclear exposure and Cold War tensions are most obvious in films such as Godzilla (Ishirō Honda, 1954), The Incredible Shrinking Man (Jack Arnold, 1957), The War of the Worlds (Byron Haskin, 1953), and When Worlds Collide (Rudolph Maté, 1951). In Godzilla, a titular monster born from nuclear testing serves as a metaphor for the catastrophic consequences of human naivety. Similarly, The Incredible Shrinking Man explores the dehumanization that is caused by exposure to radiation, honing in on fears of losing bodily autonomy and control. Alien invasion films such as The War of the Worlds and When Worlds Collide were also able to expose the Cold War anxieties surrounding foreign threats and ideological infiltration from the Soviet Union. 

Uncensored images of WWII plastered the screens of cinemas around the world, leaving audiences with lasting impressions: good and bad. Come and See (Elem Klimov, 1985) is a revered film that candidly shares what transpired during World War II and is said to be a contender for the most unnerving movie of all time. Taking place in Soviet Belarus, Come and See follows Florya (Aleksei Kravchenko), a belligerent adolescent who gets recruited by a group of impoverished Soviet partisans to become a part of their unit as a militiaman. Diverging from Florya’s preconceived ideas of what he would be doing at the camp, he ends up performing menial tasks around the camp, leaving him begrudged toward the combat-ready partisans. After a few days, Florya is separated from the group and left alone for half of the film. Village after village, he witnesses mass destruction at the hands of the Nazis. Horrifying images fill the screen, and Klimov transports the audience to Hell on Earth. While some were able to acknowledge the horrors of WWII in a whole new way, many preferred to stay naive to the brutality of war. Spectators either saw the images as too graphic or not real, making the film have a lesser effect on society than intended. 

As communities recovered from the war and the idea of deranged monsters was less sinister than previously thought, a new antagonist brought the shock factor to struggling studios. Coming in as replacements for retroactive monsters and fairytale creatures (vampires, werewolves, witches), serial killers began to infiltrate Hollywood studios. With the newfound villains of the 1960s-1980s, American cinemas were at their peak with business and overwhelmed with gore as movies like The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980), Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968), and Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960) were on the big screen. 

Parallel with the villains of these pictures, the rise in serial killers was unpredictable. According to an article published in Northeastern Global News, “Since the 1970s and 1980s, a high activity period for serial murderers, the numbers have dropped significantly…By the time the 2010s rolled around, there were fewer than 50 known active killers” (Mello-Klien, 2023, para. 2). Accompanied by statistics, the rise in films with serial killers comes as no surprise during the late 20th century, leaving overwhelming evidence towards society’s contemporaneous fascination with their latest anxieties. However, as the number of known killers went down, so did the drive to create more features centered around realistic monsters, and soon a new villain was on the screens: artificial intelligence. 

Topics of AI succumbing to sinister natures are not necessarily new to this generation (Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927) was the first movie to depict a robot); however, the fears have become more tangible and more profitable for directors. Starting a year before the mark of the 21st century, The Matrix (Lana and Lily Wachowski, 1999) depicts a world where robots have already taken over and created a virtual reality for humans to stay in. After that cult classic is released, many with similar themes follow in its pursuit. While the sci-fi genre kept adding films to its collection, the horror industry began to take note and created Ex Machina (Alex Garland, 2014), which is about a robot named Ava who becomes more self-aware than her creator expected. As technology advances, more and more horror films litter the theaters. Over the past few years, there have been a few notable films that capture the fears of many as we become more aware of AI and its strengths: M3GAN (Gerard Johnstone, 2023), Afraid (Chris Weitz, 2024), Subservience (Scott Dale, 2024), and M3GAN 2.0 (Gerard Johnstone, 2025). These films may have received many mixed reviews, but they also had people talking about the dangers of artificial intelligence and the continued use of it. 

Hypnotized by images that mimic the novel fears of society, moviegoers fled to cinemas in search of a cynical yet effective escape from their even more dreadful reality, and thus the popularity of horror films surged, creating the horror genre as we know it today. By putting a name to society’s anxieties, instead of relying on conventional horror tropes such as jump scares and special effects, horror films were able to validate us. Through this validation, a connection between us and the characters is often created, thus making the adrenaline rushes of the characters transfer to us in the theater chairs or living room couches. This connection, I argue, is the true reason why horror films continue to gain popularity and hold the strongest of fan bases. 

Sam Witt is a freshman at Barnard College studying film and history. In her free time, you can find her taking photos, listening to music, taking a long walk in the park, or writing unserious Letterboxed reviews.

@samnwitt