Horror has been a good friend to Holly­wood. Horror films are cheap to make. They have a ready-made audience. They do well overseas. They earn stacks of money. Hollywood has not repaid horror in kind, however. In the ninety-five-year history of the Oscars, only six horror films have been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Out of 601 nominees, only six. 

In Feeding the Monster, film critic Anna Bogutskaya treats the genre with the
seriousness it deserves. Her subjects are the horror films of the last ten years – what she calls ‘the new horror’. Horror has ‘always been a significant form of cultural expression’, she writes. But over the past decade it has enjoyed ever greater cultural relevance, with films like Get Out (2017) and Hereditary (2018) wowing critics, generating endless discourse and taking hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office. ‘Why now? Why in this manner? How do these films make us feel?’ she wants to know. 

Her introduction makes some bold claims for the genre. ‘Horror, more than any other, is a genre of empathy,’ she states. It’s not ‘about looking at someone being butchered or haunted; it’s about feeling what they’re feeling’. Inasmuch as you can’t ironise fear, it’s also ‘the last truly sincere