A word on ‘elevated horror’

If you’ve read reviews of Ari Aster’s feature-debut Hereditary, you might have come across the term ‘elevated horror’. If not with Hereditary, you might have seen it used in reference to John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place, Jordan Peele’s Get Out, or Trey Edward Shults’s It Comes at Night. Critics were using the phrase years ago to describe Robert Eggers’s masterpiece The VVitch, and Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook before that.

The term is used to describe predominantly independent horror productions that are ‘more intelligent’ than the studio-backed efforts of mainstream horror; like Toni Collette’s Annie Graham, ‘elevated horrors’ lurk high up in the shadowy corners of horror cinema, far above their typically-moronic-horror-protagonist counterparts. And while some might argue that such films are unseen and disliked by general audiences, the box office returns and near universal acclaim of A Quiet Place and Get Out, for example, suggests otherwise.

Such a labelling, though, clearly attempts to separate these films from the genre to which they belong; to use the phrase ‘elevated horror’ implies that these films are above other horror films, patronising and belittling most of the horror canon as lesser works, unworthy of praise or serious critical analysis. Even worse, then, when the makers of these films use the term themselves – looking at you John Krasinski.

The use of the word ‘elevated’ in particular reveals a snobbery on behalf of the person who uses the term, as if they couldn’t bear to admit to liking a horror film without adding a qualifier (and a pretentious one at that). Some will even try to suggest that films like Hereditary, Get Out, or The VVitch aren’t horror films at all, but are in fact dramas, thrillers, anything but horror.

Despite what some reviewers, critics, and audience members will try to convince themselves, a horror film which displays a degree of sophistication or intelligence does not mean that it is ‘elevated’ above the genre. A horror film is a horror film, whether it’s intelligent, dumb, makes a hell of a lot of money, or wins an Oscar. They all belong to the same murky cesspool of depravity, and should be bloody proud of it too.