Titane (2021)

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.

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!