Art horror

Art horror (or art house horror) is a sub-genre of both horror films and art-films. It explores and experiments with the artistic uses of horror.

Art-horror films tend to rely on atmosphere building, psychological character development, cinematic style and philosophical themes for effect - rather than straightforward scares. They are almost always created by an auteur. Like horror films, Art-Horror films attempt to evoke fear, terror or revulsion; but like art-films, they tend to be cerebral, contemplative, and inventive in terms of both content and form.

Art-horror films have been described as "a fascinating byproduct of the collision of art and commerce, of genre convention and personal vision". Historically, the genre was loosely related to J-horror and Italian Giallo.

Notable films

• Häxan (Benjamin Christensen, 1922)
• Vampyr (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1932)
• Eyes without a Face (Georges Franju, 1960)
• Repulsion (Roman Polanski, 1965)
• Hour of the Wolf (Ingmar Bergman, 1968)
• Rosemary's Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968)
• Images (Robert Altman, 1972)
• The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, 1973)
• Don't Look Now (Nicloas Roeg, 1973)
• The Tenant (Roman Polanski, 1976)
• Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1977)
• Suspiria (Dario Argento, 1977)
• Hausu (Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1977)
• Nosferatu the Vampyre (Werner Herzog, 1979)
• The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)
• Possession (Andrzej Żuławski, 1981)
• The Fly (David Cronenberg, 1986)
• Dead Ringers (David Cronenberg, 1988)
• Begotten (E. Elias Merhige, 1989)
• Safe (Todd Haynes, 1995)
• Lost Highway (David Lynch, 1997)
• Audition (Takashi Miike, 1999)
• Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly, 2001)
• Pulse (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2001)
• A Tale of Two Sisters (Kim Jee-woon, 2003)
• Let the Right One In (Tomas Alferdson, 2008)
• Christmas on Mars (Wayne Coyne, 2008)
• Antichrist (Lars von Trier, 2009)
• Thirst (Park Chan-wook, 2009)
• The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke, 2009)
• Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky, 2010)
• Stoker (Park Chan-wook, 2013)
• Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2013)
• Only Lovers Left Alive (Jim Jarmusch, 2013)
• Enemy (Denis Villeneuve, 2013)
• The Babadook (Jennifer Kent, 2014),
• Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy, 2014)
• The Witch (Robert Eggers, 2015)
• Under the Shadow (Babak Anvari, 2016)
• The Wailing (Na Hong-jin, 2016)
• Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017)
• Mother! (Darren Aronofsky, 2017)
• Hereditary (Ari Aster, 2018)
• Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)
• The House That Jack Built (Lars von Trier, 2018)
• Us (Jordan Peele, 2019)
• Midsommar (Ari Aster, 2019)
• The Lighthouse (Robert Eggers, 2019)
• Doctor Sleep (Mike Flanagan, 2019)

Notable directors

• David Cronenberg
• Stanley Kubrick
• Takashi Miike
• Roman Polanski
• Ari Aster
• Werner Herzog
• Robert Eggers
• Michael Haneke
• David Lynch

Further reading

• Hawkins, J. (2000) Cutting Edge: Art-Horror and the Horrific Avant-Garde, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
• Hanscomb, S. (2010) "Existentialism and Art-Horror", Sartre Studies International 16:1, pp. 1-23

External links

• List of art-horror films - Taste of Cinema blog
• "The Ultimate List of Art-house Horror" - IMDB