Post-Horror: Art, Genre and Cultural Elevation

Explores one of the most prominent and debated trends within the horror genre Offers the first in-depth study of one of the twenty-first-century horror genre's most important and divisive developments Explores the shared aesthetics, themes, and reception of the post-horror corpus Updates existing debates about horror cinema, artistic value, and cultural taste Listen to David Church discuss his book on the Full Contact Nerd podcast Horror's longstanding reputation as a popular but culturally denigrated genre has been challenged by a new wave of films mixing arthouse minimalism with established genre conventions. Variously dubbed 'elevated horror' and 'post-horror,' films such as The Babadook, It Follows, The Witch, It Comes at Night, Get Out, The Invitation, Hereditary, Midsommar, A Ghost Story, and mother! represent an emerging nexus of taste, politics, and style that has often earned outsized acclaim from critics and populist rejection by wider audiences. Post-Horror is the first full-length study of one of the most important and divisive movements in twenty-first-century horror cinema. Case studies include: It Follows The Witch The Babadook Get Out Hereditary Midsommar Goodnight Mommy It Comes at Night The Invitation I Am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House mother! A Dark Song A Ghost Story "