How post-horror movies are taking over cinema

From It Comes at Night to A Ghost Story, a new breed of horror is creeping into the multiplex, replacing jump-scares with existential dread. We talk to the auteurs breaking all the rules DO NOT GO SEE IT COMES AT NIGHT, ITS SO NOT WORTH WATCHING, WORST MOVIE EVER HANDS DOWN. Twitter was filled with countless such posts after the US release ofthe movies trailer, whose ingredients include a post-apocalyptic scenario, a cabin in the woods, gas masks, shotguns, prisoners, a stern patriarch (The Tree of Life. I dont know if he knows, but he changed the course of my whole life, says Shults. What I was inspired by is just how unorthodox you can be just think outside of the box and find the right way to make a movie for you.

Low budget, mass appeal Daniel Kaluuya in Get Out. Photograph: Allstar/Blumhouse Productions Thats not a sentiment horror producers really want to hear these days. Horror is the most profitable genre in the industry and its booming. This year is set to be horrors best ever, led by titles likeSplit ($277m on a $9m budget). As a result, theres a market for horrors with low budgets and mass appeal. Which basically means variations on well-established themes: supernatural possession, haunted houses, psychos, zombies.

This is the market post-horror is reacting against. Shults cites the influence of Roman Polanski, whose celebrated apartment trilogyRosemarys Baby were similar exercises in refashioning horror tropes with an auteur sensibility, as were Nicolas RoegsThe Shining. But those were in the era of well-resourced studio horror, now young film-makers like Shults must make a distinctive impression on an indie budget. (It Comes at Night has already recouped its budget many times over, incidentally.) Refashioning tired horror tropes Nicolas Roegs Dont Look Now. Photograph: Moviestore Collection/REX A number of other recent films could fit into the post-horror category. Last yearstrailer suggested a straight horror movie, but while it was steeped in authentic satanic lore, The Witch was short on jump-scares and frantic chases, and explanations. It did, at least, have a witch in it. But again, it was marketed at mainstream audiences, who felt like theyd been conned, and took to Twitter with WORST MOVIE EVER sentiments.

Taking a different tack was Olivier Assayasplayed by Kristen Stewart. Shes seeking a sign from her dead twin brother. She believes in ghosts, and from what we see, shes not making it up either, so when a stalker starts texting her, were not sure if theyre living or dead. Technically, its a horror movie, but nobody would confuse Personal Shopper with The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2. In a similar vein, so to speak, Nicholas Winding Refn brought bloodthirsty lesbian vampire supermodels to LAs fashion world inA Ghost Story, an extraordinary, exploratory film that goes on the release in the US this week (and comes to the UK in August). Again, its a title that creates certain expectations. There is a ghost, but its Casey Affleck draped in a white sheet

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with two eye holes cut out of it. Hes basically a human emoji of a ghost. Having been killed in a car crash, he haunts the house of his grief-stricken young widow, played by Rooney Mara, but she cant actually see him. When she moves out, hes stuck there. Forever. New tenants come and go. The building itself eventually goes. Time loops in on itself, and the story expands from personal trauma into the realms of cosmic speculation.

I wanted to engage with the archetypes and iconography of ghost films and haunted house movies, without ever crossing over into actually being a horror film, says writer-director David Lowery, who made A Ghost Story with the proceeds of his previous movie, aThe Conjuring 2. But Lowery also draws on a more east-Asian view of spirits and the supernatural. Tsai MingliangsApichatpong Weerasethakul, in which the ghost of a dead wife can casually turn up at the dinner table or a son can be transformed into a forest-dwelling wookiee and nobody bats an eyelid. Weerasethakuls entire career is basically post-horror.

It is telling that It Comes at Night, The Witch and A Ghost Story were all put out by A24 Films, a young company that has already found Oscar success with the likes ofRoom. If anyones pushing horror into new realms, its them, but isnt it about time? There will always be a place for movies that reacquaint us with our primal fears and frighten the bejesus out of us. But when it comes to tackling the big, metaphysical questions, the horror framework is in danger of being too rigid to come up with new answers like a dying religion. Lurking just beyond its cordon is a vast black nothingness, waiting for us to shine a light into it.