The Future of Horror: Will Fear Cease to Exist?

The walking dead tv series shows a lot of hope in the genre. In the cinema they have gone back to slow creepiness like paranormal activity which is very subtle. I think the genre is still going strong with less teen slashers. The scream days are now a thing of the past. As for written horror? I still think James Herbert and king are the best out there for modern times.

Skunk, your observation is probably more important than you realise. I've been out of work for a long time and I suffer on and off from depression, and lying awake at 3 am with the creeping horror on your mind of worrying about paying the bloody bills can be just as terrifying as Leatherface, Michael Myers, the face-huggers in Alien or Pennywise the clown. I try to use my experiences in my own work - fear is fear, whatever its root cause. You can't beat Stephen King in my eyes. I agree, a lot of horror goes over the same tired old ground, but sometimes some clever git comes up with an interesting twist, which is what keeps any writing alive. King's writing is, in my opinion, amongst the very best storytelling. It's crammed with human interest and behavioural observations, which helps with the suspension of disbelief and gradually leads you into the story - I'm really looking forward to reading his sequel to The Shining. When you think about it all genres have been worked to death and it's agonisingly difficult to come up with anything original - 'There's nothing new under the sun,' it says in the Old Testament, in Psalms or Proverbs, I've forgotten. Storytelling, though, is as old as humanity, and it will never die, it will just be rehashed, updated and delivered in slightly different ways. Long live the horror genre, and long live storytelling!

I don't use my imagination to scare myself and I don't seek it out in art either. I watched Hitchcock's 'The Birds' recently and didn't find it in the slightest bit frightening and couldn't see a point to it either. I watch the news a few times a week. UK Education Minister Gove looks like a paedophile in my opinion and PM Cameron looks like a cross between a whore and mongoose. Reproductive cloning, and the possibility of blood-drinking zombies having positions of power over us are quite frightening ideas/realities I don't choose to entertain myself with. Horror as entertainment becomes more gross the more mature you become, I find.

As far as horror in the movies, each generation will try to out-do the last. As the world around us becomes more savage and horrific, so do the movies to match. Gore and realism have replaced the fear factor. But there are a few that slip under the net. The Paranormal Activity trilogy and Insidious, to name a few. Literature on the other hand, will always be strong. Stephen King and James Herbert have already been named. I put forward Dean Koontz. But my all time favourite (and that of my obsessive wife) has to be Graham Masterton. As long as there's dark when the lights go out, there'll be horror.

Of course I meant a cross between a whore and a moose, and not a cross between a whore and a mongoose. That's UK minister in charge of the people's money, Osborne. Our rulers' constant repetition of phrases such as 'The War on Terror' puts the willies up me, so to speak. Listen to the words. The War on Terra. Terra is Latin for Earth and Greek for Gaia, the female principle, if one exists. The War on Earth. Oh woe! I'm not scared of normal aliens, but are these creatures from another planet?

Three of my favourite Horror/Fantasy/Sci-Fi movies are Satire's about the Wealthy and Capitalism. 'They Live', 'Society', and 'The Stuff'. I think that horror can be a really good medium for social commentary. The most famous example that I can think of is 'George Romero's' 'Night Of The Living Dead' which has been viewed as an allegory for social changes, paranoia and conformity aswell as the Vietnam conflict. But also, I love the Cold War paranoia of the original, black and white 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' a classic horror/sci-fi parable in my opinion. However I think that novels like 'Dracula' and 'Frankenstein' ;the novella 'The Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' and the Short Stories of Edgar Allen Poe dealt with timeless, universal themes about human nature and I think that those kind of stories will always be written.

I still write horror and try to make each new story or novel as original as possible. Horror will never die, don't you know that evil only sleeps waiting to rise again. Humankind will forever know fear. It takes many forms. Nests in our subconscious.

Too true, Brian - we are a fearful species, and we'll always find new twists of terror.

Human nature? If only we could remember what it was, before the big farming and domestication. Feeding, fucking fighting. Subconscious? I don't have one. Maybe I did but I lost it. Things are better, and make more sense, without it, in my opinion.