It feels like a strange time to be a horror fan, because if you had walked into a studio meeting a decade ago and told a producer that a film done by a content creator with no experience, who built his empire playing games, they would have probably laughed you out of the room.
Today, that same producer is likely scouring Discord for the next big viral hit.
The Algorithmic Pivot
We are witnessing the total collapse of the traditional gatekeeper model in horror, as for years, the genre moved in predictable cycles - the Slasher Era, the Found Footage Era, and the recent "Elevated Horror" trend where every monster was a heavy-handed metaphor for grief.
But the current shift, which I will call the Algorithmic Pivot, is something entirely different.
For the last several years, horror felt like it was trying to earn an Oscar, with the "A24 Effect" - beautiful, artistic, and slightly repetitive. (Yes, I am a fan of these kind of films, though)
But the new wave of horror, led by creators like Chris Stuckman (Shelby Oaks), Markiplier (Iron Lung) and Kane Parsons (The Backrooms), doesn't care about your childhood trauma, they care about geometry.
Now, I wasn't a huge fan of Iron Lung, but no doubt it has been successful, with its claustrophobic atmosphere, but its DNA isn't found in Hitchcock or Carpenter, it’s found in the "Let’s Play" format, because modern audiences - specifically those raised on Twitch - aren’t terrified by the "unknown" as much as they are by unresponsive interfaces.
There is a unique dread in being trapped in a simulation with no "Exit" button.
The Power of the Built-In Community
There’s no 'marketing' needed here in the traditional sense either, as there’s just a direct line of communication between the artist and the fan, and where traditional studios face a massive trust deficit, as announcing the eighth reboot of a franchise now usually elicits a collective sigh, where the corporate committees have likely sanded off the edges to ensure a PG-13 rating.
In contrast, Kane Parsons built a digital mythology in The Backrooms that felt organic and grassroots, and when he directs a feature, the studio wasn’t buying a script - they were buying a pre-vetted, fiercely loyal audience.
The $40 million mid-budget horror movie that isn't based on an established IP is becoming a rarity, and you are either a massive franchise or a viral anomaly.
Why We’re Obsessed with the "Void"
Current modern horror isn't something that is going to jump out and kill you, it’s that you are alone in a space that wasn't designed for humans to exist in, where Liminal Spaces - empty malls, quiet offices, abandoned school hallways - reflect a culture in a permanent waiting room.
We aren’t fighting traditional demons, we’re wandering poorly rendered corridors.
Horror has always been the "trash" genre - the fastest to react to cultural shifts, and our culture lives through screens, where we want to see the things that haunted our browsers brought to the big screen.
It’s a gamble, but considering we’re still talking about Michael Myers forty years later, regardless of what I personally think, it's good to see and experience the results.
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