Raw (2017)

Coralie Fargeat, the director of the much-acclaimed The Substance, once said in an interview that “Being a woman is body horror,” and when you think about the ways we are taught to experience our own bodies, it becomes almost impossible to argue with her. That is perhaps why, when women take control of the camera and explore the physical realities of women’s lives, horror can feel like the genre that speaks most naturally and most honestly to those experiences. From menstruation to pregnancy, childbirth to aging, we are repeatedly asked to accept pain, transformation, and bodily vulnerability as inevitable. At the same time, society demands that these same bodies remain controlled, desirable, productive, and socially acceptable.

Women filmmakers do not need to invent monsters. By turning the camera inward, directors like Fargeat, Julia Ducournau (Raw, Titane), and Hanna Bergholm reveal that the true horror can be the experience of living in a body that is constantly being judged, transformed, and claimed by others. Their films are frightening not because our bodies are grotesque or monstrous, but because we are so often denied complete autonomy.

Horror has a long history of murdering its women characters. This is because horror films uphold the gender ideology that women are far less superior to men; hence, women in horror are often slashed or eaten. One might argue that the lack of a woman's gaze or relatable women characters leads many women spectators to not fall in love with the slasher genre. While Carol Clover's final girl might make women pumped up about seeing a woman survive a horror film, that doesn't mean all women would identify with the final girl (especially if she's written stereotypically). I've discovered that there's a new horror genre: a genre that combines slasher, cerebral (psychological horror), or women's horror that are often directed, written, produced, and/or starring women. Coined by Amy Jane Vosper comes a new hybrid horror genre: cerebral gore.

According to Vosper's Film, Fear, and the Female, “This new subgenre, to which I shall refer as cerebral gore, often purposefully subverts the male gaze or satirically employs it as commentary on its undesirability.” Vosper mentions these films are usually marketed for women, but do not exclude men's viewership. The main goal of cerebral gore is to make a social commentary on gender. Particularly, the role women play in slashers. Another goal is to make women the star of the horror genre without villainizing them. For this reason, cerebral gore films will have a main woman protagonist that women audiences can identify with. Additionally, cerebral gore allows women spectators to enjoy the gore and violence as, what Vosper describes as, "visceral imagery." This proves that women do love gory films, but probably not the ones where women are the victims. I have come up with a ranking list of five cerebral gore films, so we can further evaluate what makes a horror film a cerebral gore. Who knows, maybe you've watched a cerebral gore film without even knowing it.

If you’re a fan of Katharine Isabelle, you will love her in American Mary (2012). Katharine Isabelle is no stranger to the horror genre. Most people know her in Ginger Snaps (2000) as a werewolf, and if you’re like me, you know her as the character Ava in Supernatural. Watching her in Ginger Snaps and Supernatural, I can tell that Katharine Isabelle is great at playing a villainess, but it’s hard to say if she’s a villain in American Mary. Directed by The Soska Sisters, a.k.a. The Twisted Sisters, American Mary, focuses on a surgical med student (Mary) who is struggling to pay her tuition. So, she makes a living giving surgical patients body modifications. The film doesn’t sound as scary, but one of the horrors of the film is watching Mary slicing the nipples off a woman, who wants to remove her breasts and have a sealed vagina. The reasoning behind this procedure is to bring social commentary on how women are constantly erotized by men. In order for the woman to avoid being a sex toy for her husband, she wants her body to be censored like a Barbie doll. Check out Ateryo's, "15 Modern Horror B-Movies To Watch This October" referencing, American Mary. 

Things take a turn when Mary is raped and drugged by her professor at a party he invites her to. Once Mary realizes what happened, she exacts revenge by kidnapping her professor and torturing him by performing a severe body modification and mutilating him. Ultimately, her obsession with body modification kills her in the end. Amy Jane Vosper specifically mentions American Mary as a cerebral gore-horror film that utilizes gore to not necessarily frighten women spectators, but that “appeals to the artistic and aesthetic sensibilities of the viewers.” This can be seen in Mary’s death scene. As she lies on the floor bleeding to death, we see her in a restful pose, and her blood smeared on the floor looks like splattered paint, making her death look like a painting. 

When you think of the horror genre, the LGBTQ+ community is probably one of the last things you think of. After all, most of the genre is dominated by cishet people who have movies filled with promiscuous women, American-Dream families, and heroic men. However, horror is much more queer-coded than you may think.

Several novels could be made about the homoerotic subtexts in horror, but for our purposes, know this: horror is ultimately fueled by otherness. We're scared of things that are different. That ghost is from a mysterious dimension? Scary. That man is hiding in the alleyways? Frightful. Does that monster have scales and horns? Terrifying. If someone is acting differently from societal norms or looks different than everyone else, people become uneasy. As a long discriminated group seen as "strange" for the past several decades, it's easy to see why the genre is important to LGBTQ+ culture. Many in the Drag community have even claimed Halloween as "Gay Christmas". Despite this, horror has still mainly been strictly heterosexual... until now. We are currently in a boom of fantastic LGBTQ-led horror films, and you deserve to know about it!

So, without further delay, here are 8 modern LGBTQ+ horror movies that you need on your list!