Why Horror Still Haunts Us

Critics at Large | The New Yorker · Oct 30, 2025 · 56m

Horror movies are big business: this year, they’ve accounted for more ticket sales in the U.S. than comedies and dramas combined, bringing in over a billion dollars at the box office. And the phenomenon goes beyond a hunger for cheap thrills and slasher flicks; artists have been using horror to explore deep-seated communal and personal anxieties for centuries. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz, along with the New Yorker culture editor Alex Barasch, use three contemporary entries—“The Babadook,” “Saint Maud,” and “Weapons”—to illustrate…