The Rise of Horror

A hand holding three books in front of a bookshelf, with text overlaid

As humans we like to be scared. Whether that is with fairy-tale’s as a child (the big bad wolf blowing down the little pigs house? Terrifying) to reading chilling books as we get older, or watching scary movies, there is something innately human in experiencing something horrifying in a safe environment. Science tells us that the rush of adrenaline we experience while experiencing a scary story can actually also release dopamine in our brains: we know that we are safe, and the fright is staged. So do we read and watch horror to feel good? Do we use it as a method of escapism?

Horror as a genre has gained in popularity in recent years, and while there are lots of discussions on the why of this; I want to discuss the future of the genre and where it might go next.

Why is horror so popular these days?

According to Nielsen data (these are the people that track all book sales), horror sales increased a huge 54% in 2023. This is a huge growth, and it is interesting to note that the books being published today are quite different to traditional books in this genre.

There are a lot of reasons behind this increase. One reason could be the global turmoil of the heightened state of anxiety we live in since the Covid pandemic. As well as wars, political uncertainty and global warming, we may want to read something about a world that is worse than ours! An example is He’s The Devil by Tobi Coventry. This debut is a visceral horror novel about demonic possession, but is also a powerful allegory on the housing crisis where young people can often have so little choice in who they share their homes with. “What could more powerfully express the precarity of being a young renter in London than your flatmate turning out to be possessed by the devil?” [John Ash, literary agent]

When we think of horror as a genre, we probably think of Stephen King, slashers, gore and ghosts. This isn’t completely accurately for the modern genre anymore. There is a lot of cross genre inspiration happening in the horror sphere, with Literary Fiction and Thrillers using common tropes. For example, Lucy Foley’s The Midnight Feast has touches of The Wicker Man and Midsommar- both horror’s that we wouldn’t necessarily expect to find in a thriller. Emily St John Mandel is another author firmly in the Literary sphere, yet her recent release Midnight Road can also be classified as a horror.

We’re also seeing horror creeping into fantasy, dark academia and even darker romance stories. This provides an intro to the genre for people who don’t want to read a scary story but do want to dabble their toes in.

As usual with reading habits, we can attribute a certain amount of this to Booktok and Bookstagram. Influencers on these platforms introduce their followers to books such as The Year of the Witching and Ninth House which allows readers to realise that the genre is not just the old style slasher that they may have assumed.

Where is horror going to go next?

I think we will see a lot more genre cross overs. We already have seen some cozy-horror come out from authors such as T Kingfisher and titles such as Someone You Can Build a Nest In. Romance is such a popular genre, that I expect to see more horror-romances too. We see inklings of this with books like The Book of Azrael, or even some paranormal romance. Both have their roots in the horror genre with serial killers and paranormal creatures being typical horror characters.