No Hope, Just Vibes: The Bleak Soul of Gen Z Horror

Substack – Cultural Analysis
Breaks down the psychology behind Gen Z’s bleak horror aesthetics in film and fiction.
→ Read it on Substack.

Excerpt:

In Bring Her Back, two orphaned siblings are placed with a seemingly kind foster mother who, as it turns out, is orchestrating a soul-transfer ritual to resurrect her dead daughter. There's cannibalism. There's possession. A kid vomits up bone fragments. No one is saved. The world is not set right. It just... ends.

What’s more unsettling than the horror itself is how normal this feels now. Gen Z horror doesn’t build toward catharsis, triumph, or even resolution—it circles the drain. These stories don’t ask, "Will they make it out alive?" but rather, "What does 'alive' even mean anymore?"

If the horror of the past was about surviving the monster, today’s horror is about realizing there’s nothing left to survive for. The monster’s already inside. The rot has spread. You’re just trying to make peace with it before it consumes you or someone you love.

The Death of the Final Girl Myth

Once upon a time, Laurie Strode fought back. Sidney Prescott outsmarted Ghostface. Survivors walked away—bloodied but whole. In those stories, horror was a trial to be overcome. You earned your scars.

Now? Piper, the teenage girl at the center of Bring Her Back, might physically escape. But she doesn’t win. She’s not triumphant. She’s not even intact. The system that was supposed to protect her failed. Her brother—who begins the film as the lead character— is killed horrifically and unceremoniously.

It echoes the ending of Talk to Me, where Mia doesn’t survive the haunting—she becomes part of it. In Bodies Bodies Bodies, every character is too wrapped up in ego and paranoia to make it out alive.

Gen Z horror doesn’t believe in heroes. It believes in damage control, at best.

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