Social Commentary In Horror Films: When Scary Stories Got Political

It begins with the sound of wet breathing; not yours. Something else... Something low to the ground and crawling in the hallway light flickers like it’s nervous about what's about to happen. It is the first one to leave the scene. And then the grandma chair starts rocking gently in the corner of the room-one that's become become more of showpiece than a chair in use for years.

You get the feeling the wallpaper is peeling away like old skin and that's the final straw before your worst nightmare is about to come alive. You are about to catch a breath real quick but the devil has arrived- except it looks like you, perhaps dresses like you and means to harm you. It’s smiling. It tells you everything is fine. It says this is how it’s always been.

Horror, you see, has always known that the scariest things don’t wear fangs — they sign bills into law and sometimes, even without it. They sit in boardrooms, are passed down family heirlooms wrapped in prejudice and "good" intentions. Peel back the latex and fake blood, and horror has always been whispering secrets society refuses to say out loud or get rid of that pink tinted glasses.

IMDb

Horror unfortunately hits closer to home if you really pay closer look to the society around you and how it functions, the structures and institutions that it builds itself over against the pillars it rejects. The house isn’t haunted, the culture is. And filmmakers? They’ve stopped pretending otherwise.

Jordan Peele, for instance, didn’t invent the political horror genre — he just carved it into flesh and left it bleeding on the front lawn. Get Out wasn’t a movie. It was a diagnosis. A polite nightmare about being seen and never really seen. A dinner party with a race war tucked between the wine and small talk.

And then there’s Us, where the monsters literally are us- underground, forgotten, dressed in red like a warning. Hands across America, choking on its own symbolism.

John Carpenter's They Live let us see the real world by slipping on a pair of knock-off Ray-Bans. Suddenly, every billboard screamed OBEY. Every dollar read THIS IS YOUR GOD. The aliens weren’t invaders. They were billionaires.

Even the classics knew. The Stepford Wives was about robotic femininity and male panic disguised as domestic bliss. Frankenstein? Not a creature feature. A thesis on creation, abandonment, and colonial guilt dressed in 19th-century melancholy.

Pinterest

Horror is the only genre brave enough to say: “Yes, this is terrifying. Because it’s true.” It sneaks past your defences. Crawls into your brain while you’re waiting for the jump scare. Then it whispers: this is about you. About the system. About history. About right now.

And suddenly, the boogeyman isn’t under your bed or on that . It’s voting in your parliament. It’s built into your algorithms. It’s coded into your inheritance.

Horror Movies

Here are few movies that can shake your core and bring you face to face with the horror of society that we are part of:

The Platform

A Spanish film that you certainly don't want to watch while eating or before your meal because you'll probably end up skipping it. Platform is a psychological thriller that circles around a prison where inmates are fed on a descending platform, those on the upper levels take more than their fair share while those below are left to starve on scraps until one man decides to change the system. The film is accompanied by the prequel Platform 2.

Netflix India

Train To Busan

When a zombie apocalypse breaks out in South Korea, Seok-woo and his daughter are on a train are on a train to Busan for the daughter's birthday to see his wife. However, the journey turns into a nightmare when they are trapped amidst a zombie outbreak in South Korea.

Carrie

Based on Stephen King's novel, Carrie is the story if a misfit high-school teen, Carrie White, who gradually discovers that she has telekinetic powers. Repressed by a domineering, ultra-religious mother and tormented by her peers at school, er efforts to fit in take her to a dramatic confronting during the senior prom.

Weapons 2

Weapons 2 directed by Zach Cregger is a horror film that narrates the mysterious disappearance of nearly all children in a small town on the same night. The aftermath of this event, the film focuses on the reactions of the remaining of the residents including parents, teachers, and law enforcement. Set for a release on August 8.

Jennifer's Body

A 2009 film starring Megan Fox, Jennifer becomes possessed and turns into a succubus after she is sacrificed to Satan. When her best friend Anita learns about it, she has to stop Jennifer before she attacks her lover Chip.

Tumbadd

One of the best horror films produced in India in recent years, the 2018 horror thriller makes us face the horror when a family builds a shrine for Hastar, a monster who is never to be worshipped, and attempts to get their hands on his cursed wealth, they face catastrophic consequences.

Purge

In an America ravaged by crime and overcrowded prisons, the government sanctions an annual 12-hour period during which all criminal activity including murder -- is legal. James Sandin (Ethan Hawke) and his family face the ultimate test when an intruder drags the vicious outside world into their home. James, Mary (Lena Headey) and their two children struggle to survive the night while trying not to turn into monsters like the ones they are striving to avoid.

Heretic

Directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, Heretic stars Hugh Grant as a charming yet ominous recluse who lures two young Mormon missionaries, played by Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East, into a twisted psychological game.

Set almost entirely inside one home during a blizzard, the film slowly mutates into a mind-bending, theological trap where faith, manipulation, and power dynamics converge.

Stree

Starring Shraddha Kapoor, Rajkumar Rao and Abhishek Banerjee in Stree, the people of Chanderi live under constant fear of Stree, the spirit of a woman who attacks men at night during festivals. Vicky, along with his friends, decides to unravel the mystery.