After 45 minutes of waiting for something, anything, to happen, and the movie keeps insisting that something has already happened through its mood, score, and carefully chosen grief metaphors, there’s a certain kind of anger that builds in a dark theater. That feeling is at the heart of one of the more honest arguments in film criticism right now. It’s been a long time coming.
“Elevated horror” didn’t come with a white paper or a press release. It got in. Critics say it’s similar to Robert Eggers’ The Witch, which had its world premiere at Sundance in 2015 and was genuinely unsettling, historically immersive, and about as far from a typical horror movie as you can get. Reviewers who had never been close to the genre now had a movie they felt good about praising in depth. The word “elevated” started showing up in reviews in the same way that “brave” does in news stories about awards. In a way, it is a compliment. If you think about it for a while, it’s kind of condescending.
Then Ari Aster showed up. In 2018, Hereditary dealt with grief in a way that was so clear and harsh that it was hard to say it wasn’t serious. The next movie was Midsommar, which was about a breakup and took place in a Swedish folk horror cult. It was mostly shot during the day, which made it more disturbing. The brand was important to A24. “Elevated horror” went from being a casual way to criticize to a marketing term, a sign of seriousness, and a good way to start a debate.
There is a good reason for the movement. At its best, this wave of horror used fear to explore things that are really scary, like grief, inherited trauma, and the fear that comes from living in a family where something is broken and no one will say what it is. The Babadook is still one of the worst movies ever made about depression. The emotional damage in Hereditary is real before the supernatural parts even show up, so the story works. Not because they were dull, but because they moved slowly. They moved slowly because fear builds up.
But somewhere along the way, studios realized that “elevated” opened doors. It gave them access to awards, reviews, and think pieces. So, the label started to be put on anything that was quiet enough, had a muted color scheme, and had a dead grandmother in the background, even if the movie didn’t deserve the weight it was giving it. It’s possible that will happen. Labels always lose their strength when they become important. Still, seeing it happen in real time makes me feel bad.
It Comes at Night is the most clear case study. The review score on Rotten Tomatoes was 87%. People gave it 44%. The ads made it sound like a monster movie, but the movie itself was a slow psychological drama about loneliness and paranoia. That gap isn’t just a marketing mistake; it shows a real disagreement about what a horror movie owes its audience when it uses horror-related language without fully committing to the genre.
There’s also a problem with gatekeeping that the most devoted supporters of elevated horror don’t always see. When the term is used to separate “serious” horror from everything else, it ignores decades of creative, culturally important horror movies. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is not a worse movie because it doesn’t use Jungian architecture to deal with grief. Long-lasting fear and social anxiety are masterfully shown in this work. It doesn’t need to be raised.
What really makes this debate interesting—not just interesting for the sake of being an internet argument—are the movies that broke the binary completely. The themes in The Substance were sharp, and the movie had some of the most horrifying body horror I’ve seen in a long time. No one could quite figure out which shelf it belonged on, and that lack of clarity seemed like a sign of real creative drive. Talk to Me, the Philippou brothers’ movie about a cursed ceramic hand, made more money at A24 than Hereditary. It happened quickly, was really upsetting, and was based in reality. No one called it “elevated,” probably because it was too fun. But it made me feel the same way as movies that get that label all the time.
Some people think that the more important question isn’t whether or not a horror movie has been elevated, but whether or not it’s actually scary and whether the fear it causes comes from something real. A film can be slow and hollow. It can be gory and emotionally precise. The label, it turns out, doesn’t reliably tell you which one you’re getting. That’s the argument critics are finally starting to make out loud, and it’s worth listening to.
