My Classification of Horror Movies

I am a horror movie buff. In fact while we were under lockdown in 2020, I watched a new horror movie a day for 2 months at least!

I feel the horror genre can be further classified into the following list of categories:

Horror Subgenres:

1. Supernatural Entity/Ghost:

These movies have a ghost or a supernatural entity that wreaks havoc with seemingly innocent humans. Sometimes priests' exorcisms do help, but sometimes they just don't!

Under The Shadow is an Iranian movie that has a unique and compelling plot and its production is easily up there with Hollywood.

2. Possession/Exorcism:

The famous Conjuring, Exorcist and Insidious universes come under this category! The Possession of Hannah Grace and Exorcism of Emily Rose are fitting flicks for this category. Come to think of it - Christianity, possession and exorcism have been the main trio of so many movies!

3. Curses:

When bad things keep happening and there's no explanation, you can bet that there's a curse in effect set in motion by someone with sinister motives!

The Autopsy Of Jane Doe and The Last Shift are two the scariest movies I've ever watched! I literally couldn't watch them without taking breaks to scroll Instagram and skipping ahead 10 seconds a lot 'cause I couldn't stand the suspense! Maybe your opinions on horror movies is different from mine and you're not scared easily, but I challenge you to watch them and tell me what you think!

The famous Final Destination HAS TO come under this horror subgenre - I honestly cannot put the series into any other category!

A house plays tricks in Oculus and the movie 1408 has a room by the same name that certainly is cursed! The Curse of La Llorona and Drag Me To Hell both have curses inflicted by witches. I remember watching Drag Me To Hell almost a decade ago and being captivated by its simple, albeit good plot. Old has people agonized by accelerated aging!

I personally also liked the sexual curse in It Follows (2014) because it had a proper story and the characters had to struggle to shake off the curse. My friends didn't like it much though and I never knew why!

Also, witches can wreak a lot of havoc and movies on witchcraft and voodoo come under the Curses subgenre as per my opinion. The Witch (2015) was a nice one too!

4. Monster/Creature:

Whether it's the deadly sharks in the original Jaws, piranhas in Piranha 3D, the werewolf in Howl, the monster in The Monster (2016) or the hungry alligators in Crawl (2019), this horror subgenre makes our fear of the monster under the bed even worse!

5. Deadly Game:

We all love playing games and winning prizes, but sometimes things can go too far! The famous Saw series, Cube series and Circle have people waking up in strange spaces for the deadly games; while the Escape Room series, Ready Or Not and Would You Rather have people voluntarily participate in the games. The Belko Experiment has people participating by force! Enjoyable and thrilling are understatements for this category!

6. Horror by Humans:

Man is a social animal. Man's intelligence is unparalleled in the animal kingdom. But so is his ability to inflict harm to his fellow man.

Orphan was one of the first movies I ever watched in this category and I really liked it. I must've watched it almost a decade ago on tv - HBO to be precise!

This subgenre of horror movies is closer to reality than the rest, since man is capable of some truly horrific acts!

8. Unfortunate Circumstances:

What do you do if fate:

1. Buries you alive (Buried), or 2. Has placed you on top of a tower with no way down (Fall), or

3. Locks you in a room while your little daughter is outside with your psycho ex (Shut In), or

4. Puts you at the bottom of a huge pool with no ladder in sight (Pool), or

5. Locks you in an apartment on the top floor all alone (Trapped)?

Can you think of some way to get out? How do you survive, if at all?

Watch these movies to find out!

9. Found Footage:

What better than proof of the horror that exists in this world, am I right?!

The Visit is a personal favorite in this subgenre. You're 'satisfied' by the horror in the movie, thinking that you've had enough, but there's more - as nobody would've ever see the twist at the end coming! Afflicted is another good one according to me. I went in thinking it'd be just good, but my expectations were exceeded a bit!

10. Sci-fi Horror:

Sometimes science can help us deal with the monsters that populate our world. Other times, science itself births the horrors that populate our world! The above movies are a must-watch for sci-fi aficionados!

Spectral (2016) is a personal favorite in the sci-fi-cum-horror subgenre. Ghosts haunt a town and when army is sent to investigate, the ghosts attack the soldiers. The bullets just go through the ghosts and all soldiers die! What could these ghostly things be? An amazing movie that keeps you in suspense through its runtime. I wish more movies combined sci-fi with horror like these. I'd LOVE to watch them all!

Horror movies generally have ghosts, poltergeists, monsters, haunted houses and so on, but Dark Skies (2013) has something truly unique, a horror element that is often forgotten in the horror genre. I'm not spoiling anything! Just go and watch it - it's even got a twist at the end!

Prometheus is another good one. I remember a friend - H - gave it to me to watch in senior year of high school. He summarized it perfectly when he said " the first half of the movie is about searching, while the second half is about surviving!" Not gonna spoil the story! It's got some good CGI work sometime at the 1 hour 10 minute mark. That's how much I loved it when I watched it!

Malignant's twist is one of the best I've ever watched in a horror movie!

The others are worth watching too.

11. Summoning Evil/Family Member & Consequences of Séance:

These movies are all about summoning: whether a beloved or a paranormal entity, whether by choice or by mistake! Not a lot of movies in this category, but I couldn't put them in any other subgenre.

12. Apocalypse/Zombie Apocalypse:

Movies where most of the humanity has been destroyed and the survivors are barely holding on. How will the survival go?

Pontypool is the worst horror movie I've ever watched. Maybe I didn't understand it well, maybe the direction is bad, maybe story is uninteresting; I just didn't like it much!

13. Cursed Doll:

A very small category I know, but I couldn't place them anywhere!

14. Psychological Horror:

Whenever the human mind has been pushed beyond its limits, we have made progress. But what happens when we stretch the human mind and the mind cannot cope? Find out via these movies!

In the above list, Shutter Island, Psycho, The Sixth Sense, The Others and The Lodge are personal favorites. I mean, come on! No list of psychological horror movies is complete with Leonardo Dicaprio's masterpiece!

I wish there were more amazing Black-and-White movies like Psycho that I knew of! Don't want to sound like a bad person, but a lot of old movies just don't appeal to me too much!

Bonus fact: All of the above - except Gone Girl - have a twist at the end!

15. Laptop Screen Horror:

Just like Found Footage subgenre, but instead of a footage there is a laptop's screen recoding!

If what they're saying is true, Host (2020) was shot while in lockdown, and the actors did the acting and horror effects by themselves while at home!

16. Horror Comedy:

First off, I want to just say this - if you like comedy and horror you have to watch all five Scary Movies! I've been a fan of the series since I watched them a decade ago on tv. The way they parody at least 3 horror movies in one is unbeatable! Maybe I will write another blog post about how each of the Scary Movie parodies horror movies. 😁 The Wayans brothers absolutely nail the comedy movies they act in and/or direct!

I still remember watching Jennifer's Body on Movies NOW one night when my parents were out late and being genuinely terrified! The movie's cinematography is exactly like a horror movie's and I genuinely thought of it as a horror movie for years, until I watched it properly when older and realized it isn't as scary as I thought it was!

The plot is truly unique: Needy's BFF - Jennifer - becomes a monster and starts killing people. That is a problem in itself, but things get worse when Jennifer chases after Needy's boyfriend; that too not to KISS but to KILL him?!

Johnny Depp is a vampire who returns from the dead and has trouble adjusting in the modern world in Dark Shadows - that must be enough reason for you to watch it!

Zombieland is about surviving a zombie apocalypse with humor. The cast includes Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone and Woody Harrelson.

Slaxx has a pair of jeans that goes murdering people. Yes, you read that right!

15. Slashers:

The Slasher subgenre is incomplete without mentioning the original Halloween released in 1978. Though old, the movie is a horror classic even today. My expectations were somewhat exceeded and I ended up liking it a bit!

I've honestly never watched the classic horror series Scream as of writing this. The reason for this is simple: this genre does not appeal to me! But I cannot call myself a horror movie buff without giving the popular slasher a fair shot, so I'll watch it sometime soon! 🤭

Oddly enough, my favorite horror movie character is Jason Vorhees from Friday The 13th universe! Jason's pure determination, no speech, 'immortality', relentless chasing and his towering physique that strikes fear into the hearts of his victims seems interesting to me! I liked playing him in the PC Game Mortal Kombat X and subsequently MKXL. I always choose the Slasher version and I was kind of a champion among my roommates in my sophomore year in college!

15. Horror Drama:

If the story is far interesting than the horror elements or if the plot is more important than the jump scares, you know you're watching a Horror Drama!

Goodnight Mommy in this list is a personal favorite. The movie is made in such a way that the twist is saved till the end and without the twist you can't understand the complete plot at all! See if you can find the meaning of what's happening while the movie is in progress!

There're 5 Hindi movies in this list - Tumbbad, Pizza,13-B, Dybbuk and Chhorii - all of which have compelling stories along with horror elements.

Pizza is the scariest Hindi movie I've ever watched - its jump scares were far too frightening!

Chhorii is a remake of the Marathi-language film Lapachhapi (2017), and conveys an important social message for Indian audiences in the end.

If Bollwood kept making movies like these 5, I'd be a fan of Indian cinema in no time! Sadly, good movies with worthwhile stories don't reach a wider audience and hence filmmakers are un-incentivized to make them.

So, what do you think of my Horror Movie Categories?😁

Do you know a nice Horror Movie that isn't included here? Let me know, PLEASE!😀

Source: My brain! 🤭🤭🤭