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Why Horror In The 21st Century Is The Fastest Growing Genre - We Have The Answer!

Horror and the macabre has always held a special place in this countries history, hell many counties histories. From the lent era on greats like Lon Chaney in THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA to Conrad Veidt’s THE MAN WHO LAUGHS LAST to the Universal Clascs involving THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, DRACULA, THE WOLFMAN and THE MUMMY to Hammer Horror and the slasher boom in the 70's and 80's with LEATHERFACE, MICHAEL MYERS, FREDDY KRUEGER and JASON VOORHEES, horror has always held a certain niche market like no other. But it wasn't until SCREAM in 1996 that horror really came back to the masses.

Now while big budget horror films continue to struggle at the box office, break through films in the POV "handheld" genre, the low budget installments continue to strive such as THE BLIAR WITCH PROJECT,

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY and I'll even include SAW in the mix as that film started out as a low budget "indie" type of film.

So why am I saying that horror is the fastest growing genre in the 21st century when big budget horror seems to be misng the mark more times than not? It is the effort we have lately on the small screen, the televion market, that seems to be taking the horror world by storm and brining the love of our beloved genre to the masses like never before. While science fiction standouts like THE TWILIGHT ZONE broke barriers mixing sci-fi and horror the genre has never been exploited quite like it is today with shows like AMERICAN HORRO STORY, THE WALKING DEAD, DEXTER, TRUE BLOOD, and GRIMM being huge success that are brining in the everyday crowd that regular horror fans love but the average everyday family can enjoy as well. That is, if the family is in the teenage range of course.

The small screen is taking horror to a new level. Showing that we can still tell amazing stories that involve horror and the macabre without creating reboots after reboots of the tried and true horror films that were successful in the past. Movie studios are looking for dollars and with the big budgets of todays horror films it is hard to create a successful franchise let alone a ngle movie and that is why the small screen is the perfect place to tell new horror stories and it is creating a generation that will love and appreciate the genre the likes we haven't seen before.

No longer are people in offices around the water cooler talking about tcoms, now it's what happened in the latest episode of THE WALKING DEAD or what took place in the crazy, spectacular FX series AMERICAN HORROR STORY. The future of horror may indeed lie on the small screen and while that may be a bummer for some die-hard fans it's great news for us that love the horror genre so much and want to see it succeed.

4 years ago when we started HorrorBid many people told us to go in the direction of the "comic book movies'. That is what was taking the world by storm at the time and many people thought it was crazy to dedicate a stie solely to one genre that has had it's fair share of setbacks.

It was a no brainer however. Our pason lies with horror both good and bad and while horror may be struggle at the box office the real audiences lies with the small screen gems that are getting "average" fans involved in our genre like no other time in the history of horror.

With the continued success of these shows expect many more networks to take advantage of the love for horror right now. While many will crash and burn, there will continue to be the greats that turn "average" fans into "Bidites" overnight. It is because of this great saturation that the light of the horror community is burning brighter than ever and why the future of horror has no where to go but up.

Skeptics will say this is just a phase but I disagree. Our fascination with things that go bump in the night are embedded in our DNA and the continued support and ease of watching horror on regular televion is nothing but great for us true fans that just want to be able to come out of the dark every once in awhile and share our love for the "darkness" with the "regular" folks that make up much of the general population.

Horror is on the rise and right now is the time that we "Bidites" shine. Our knowledge is what will lead us to better and better horror films and the genre is just getting started. Great horror is still to come. The 21st century belongs to us and no comic book superhero or wand waving child with a lighting bolt on his head can stop our momentum.

TRUE THAT!! we got a bit of steam going our way, and it looks like its being capitalized on. we just need to keep taking chances on indie horror, where the true creativity lies.

Agreed....!!

Great read!

Good article. I really like the effort put into everything written on HB. It keeps the wheels spinning.

Clap clap clap! Well said!