Kids

Not everything deemed scary will be seen as such by every person. A person with a fear of birds would hate Alfred Hitchcock’s movie, whereas a person afraid of the dark might find ‘Paranormal Activity’ a little more chilling. Horror cannot prescribe to everyone’s phobias, it can’t cover all the bases and so, can’t scare everyone.

So has Gen Z ruined horror? I think the short answer is yes. We live in our own little world of horrors and have become desensitised to what we see in the films. Don’t get me wrong, we can still get jump scared and can still get the rush of adrenaline from the feeling of fear, but everything is recycled. It’s all the same content rehashed with a different actor. I don’t believe that the horror genre will ever fully disappear, but I do believe that it is slowly losing the tight grip it has on its viewers and will always be on the uphill struggle to find the next big, scary idea. Maybe it will one day run out of steam? Who knows? Maybe ‘Saw’ will become the next ‘Pointless’.

by Eliza Checkley-Mills.