A Quick Guide to Horror Subgenres (and Why They Stick With Us)
I have already written extensively about horror in this post. But let’s dive back in and break-down some of the many sub-genres across various mediums of storytelling.
From creeping dread to full-body revulsion—every flavour of fear deserves its moment in the dark.
Horror isn’t one thing. It’s a thousand gnawing little things. Sometimes it’s the thing in the corner you swear just moved. Sometimes it’s the face in the mirror that isn’t quite yours. Sometimes it’s the dread of a phone that won’t stop ringing—because you already know who’s calling.
Horror often swerves into other lanes: sci-fi, fantasy, drama, comedy. It can be psychological or physical, gory or slow-burn, elegant or absolutely feral. Whether you love haunted houses, slasher flicks, cosmic monstrosities or weird rural rituals—horror has a corner for you.
Here’s a quick (and by no-means exhaustive) guide to some of the most distinctive horror subgenres—how they work, and why they stay under your skin.
1. Supernatural Horror
Horror that centres around otherworldly forces—ghosts, demons, curses, or unexplained phenomena. These stories blur the line between the living and the dead.
Novel: The Shining (Stephen King) – A haunted hotel drives a man to madness. Grief, alcoholism, psychic kids, and a pair of ghastly, ghostly twins that don’t want to stay dead.
Film: Ringu (Hideo Nakata) – A single mother investigates a string of mysterious deaths linked to an urban legend about a cursed videotape. Explores themes of unresolved trauma, parenthood, and technology as a conduit for evil.
TV: The Haunting of Hill House – A non-linear ghost story about a group of entitled rich brats grappling with trauma, family, and the long shadow of grief.
Comics: Locke & Key (Joe Hill/Gabriel Rodríguez) – Magical keys unlock parts of the mind with mixed results. Deals with grief, family tragedy, mental health, and an ancient evil with a personal grudge. Features a very creepy gender-bending antagonist.
2. Slasher Horror
The classic “stalk-and-kill” format. Often formulaic but iconic—usually features a killer hunting a group of people, often mixing gore with teen drama.
Novel: Psycho (Robert Bloch) – The original psycho killer tale with a twist. Inspired the classic film of the same name.
Film: Halloween (John Carpenter) – The prototype slasher: silent killer, final girl, and a slow, creeping dread.
TV: Scream: The TV Series – Slasher isn’t a genre that naturally lends itself to episodic storytelling—it works best as a short, sharp shock. Still, they made a series based on the meta-horror classic.
Comics: Hack/Slash (Tim Seeley) – Cassie Hack is the ultimate ‘final girl’: a hot chick with a baseball bat, a bad attitude, and a homunculus sidekick named Vlad. Funny, gory, and surprisingly emotional at times.
3. Psychological Horror
Focuses on fear of the mind—mental instability, delusion, and the breakdown of reality. Often more disturbing than scary.
Author: H.P. Lovecraft – I’ll just include his full body of work. Mostly short stories that often cross into folk, monster, and cosmic horror. Thematically, they explore madness and paranoia—just be prepared for some deeply racist stereotypes.
Film: Jacob’s Ladder (Adrian Lyne) – A Vietnam vet is haunted by horrific hallucinations and possible alternate realities. Explores trauma, the effects of war, and the fragility of sanity. Was it all a dying man’s dream?
TV: Mindhunter – Two FBI agents develop psychological profiling techniques by interviewing serial killers (sadly not applied to politicians).
Comics: From Hell (Alan Moore/Eddie Campbell) – A dark, twisted conspiracy thriller delving into the Jack the Ripper murders.
4. Body Horror
Centres on the grotesque transformation or destruction of the human body. Often visceral, unsettling, and tinged with existential dread.
Novel: Erebus (Shaun Hutson) – A mysterious virus in rural England turns calves into carnivores and humans into ghouls. Lots of gore and sex. A great read for 14-year-old boys.
Film: The Fly (David Cronenberg) – A scientist merges with a fly, leading to a slow, painful transformation. Themes: scientific hubris, identity loss, and alienation.
TV: The Last of Us – Based on the video game. Crosses several subgenres, but body disfigurement and grotesque fungal transformations place it firmly in body horror.
Comics: Uzumaki (Junji Ito) – A town becomes obsessed with spirals, resulting in terrifying, body-warping consequences. A must-read for horror comics fans.
5. Sci-Fi Horror
Blends speculative technology or alien elements with terror—often involving isolation, mutation, or existential dread.
Novel: Frankenstein (Mary Shelley) – A warning about scientific overreach and a meditation on society’s fear of ‘the other’.
Film: Alien (Ridley Scott) – Space truckers encounter a deadly xenomorph. Essentially a haunted house in space, Alien explores themes of isolation, reproduction, female empowerment, and corporate exploitation.
TV: Doctor Who – Okay, definitely more sci-fi than horror, but don’t pretend the Daleks (especially Davros) didn’t terrify five-year-old you.
Comics: Borderline (Trillo/Risso) – A cyberpunk thriller about an exploited young woman caught in a war between powerful corporations. Themes: sexual exploitation, bodily autonomy, capitalist corruption, and religion.
6. Folk Horror
Draws from rural myths and ancient belief systems. Typically involves conflicts with Christian conservatism and patriarchal fear of the feminine.
Novel: Children of the Corn (Stephen King) – A couple stumbles on a town where children have murdered all adults under the influence of a sinister deity. Themes: fanaticism, corrupted innocence, blind faith.
Film: The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy) – A policeman investigates a missing girl on a remote island with pagan rituals. Themes of matriarchy vs. patriarchy, faith, and repressed sexuality.
TV: Children of the Stones – A scientist and his son visit a village to study local standing stones, only to become trapped in a disturbing mystery.
Comics: Thistlebone (Eglington/Davis) – An investigator uncovers the legacy of a rural pagan cult, where ancient rituals blur the line between myth and madness.
7. Found Footage Horror
A format rather than a theme, found footage presents horror through "discovered" recordings. Immersive, cheap to make, and terrifying when done right—works best in film.
Novel: Diary (Chuck Palahniuk) – Told through journal entries that gradually reveal a sinister pattern.
Film: [REC] (Jaume Balagueró, Paco Plaza) – A news crew follows firefighters into an apartment building, only to encounter something truly horrifying. Features one of horror’s most intense finales.
TV: Ghostwatch – A one-night-only 1992 BBC pseudo-documentary posing as a live investigation. Terrified viewers and became an instant cult classic.
Comics: The Eighth Seal (James Tynion IV) – A political horror story partly told through “discovered” documents and transcripts. (Admittedly, examples in comics are rare.)
8. Monster Horror
Big monsters, small monsters, mutated creatures, or ancient beings—this subgenre unleashes the imagination (and the nightmares). Often combines spectacle with primal fear.
Novel: Jaws (Peter Benchley) – A great white shark terrorizes a seaside town. Less a story of nature gone rogue than one of human arrogance, greed, and survival. Spawned one of cinema’s most iconic monster films.
Film: The Thing (John Carpenter) – The Citizen Kane of horror films (fight me). Isolation, paranoia, and a shape-shifting alien in the Antarctic. Explores masculinity, identity, and fear of the “other.” Also crosses into sci-fi and body horror.
TV: Monarch: Legacy of Monsters – Leaning more toward sci-fi than horror, this MonsterVerse series explores multiple generations of a family unraveling the secrets of the mysterious Monarch organization and its ties to Godzilla and other titans.
Comics: Something is Killing the Children (James Tynion IV) – A monster-hunting woman arrives in a small town where only children can see the creatures killing them. Uses its framework and outsider protagonist to subtly explore queer themes of alienation, secrecy, and survival in a society that fears and suppresses difference
9. Apocalyptic / End-of-the-World Horror
When humanity teeters on the brink—zombies, plagues, or cosmic collapse—these stories focus on survival, despair, and the crumbling of civilisation.
Novel: The Stand (Stephen King) – A devastating plague wipes out most of humanity. The survivors are left to choose between good and evil in a sprawling, mythic battle.
Film: 28 Days Later (Danny Boyle) – A man wakes up to find London deserted and society collapsed under the weight of a rage-fueled virus. Raw, fast-paced, and unrelenting.
TV: The Walking Dead – Based on the comic series, this long-running zombie drama focuses less on the undead and more on the human dynamics of survival in a fractured world.
Comics: Crossed (Garth Ennis) – A virus turns people into sadistic killers, stripping away the last vestiges of humanity. Utterly bleak, incredibly violent, and deeply disturbing.
10. Haunted House / Possession Horror
Centred on a cursed space or a body taken over by malevolent forces. These stories thrive on dread, claustrophobia, and the inescapability of evil.
Novel: Hell House (Richard Matheson) – A group of investigators is sent to explore a house with a long and bloody history. The building itself seems to feed on their fears.
Film: Poltergeist (Tobe Hooper) – A suburban family’s peaceful life unravels as their home is invaded by vengeful spirits. Explores suburban repression, lost innocence, and spiritual intrusion and (obviously) capitalism was the cause of all the trouble.
TV: The Woman in Black – A BBC adaptation of Susan Hill’s gothic novel. A young lawyer travels to a remote village to settle an estate, only to be haunted by the spectral figure of a grieving mother.
Comics: The Haunting of Sector House 9 (John Wagner/Bret Ewins) – In this Judge Dredd tale, a Justice Department precinct is besieged by demonic forces. A tongue-in cheek mix of dystopian sci-fi and supernatural horror.
Final Word
Horror’s greatest strength is that it speaks to our most primal fears while also reflecting our culture and politics through metaphor—whether it’s repressed guilt, bodily autonomy, loss of control, or societal collapse. From subtle dread to full-blown gore, every subgenre scratches a different itch.
Horror means something different to everyone, depending on which themes strike a chord with you. For example, I find most slasher movies to be riddled with clichés and bad writing—while also not being particularly scary. But slashers remain some of the most popular films in the genre, so what do I know?
I’ve picked specific examples for each subgenre, but I could have listed thousands! So let me know: what are your favourite flavours of fear? Got a terrifying book, film, or comic to recommend? I’d love to hear it. And if you disagree with any of my appraisals, please do share your thoughts in the comments.
Troy