Critics at Large | The New Yorker

Episode: Why Horror Still Haunts Us
Date: October 30, 2025
Hosts: Vinson Cunningham (A), Naomi Fry (C), Alexandra Schwartz (B)
Guest: Alex Barasch (D), Editorial Advisor & Horror Enthusiast

Episode Overview

In this Halloween-timed episode, the Critics at Large team delves into the enduring appeal and cultural function of the horror genre. Guided by editorial advisor (and resident horror aficionado) Alex Barasch, the panel discusses how horror films both reflect and process society’s anxieties, reports back on contemporary horror assignments, draws connections to classic tropes, explores the social context and shifting business of horror, and considers why audiences keep coming back for more.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Personal Relationships to Horror

• The hosts open with anecdotes about Halloween costumes for their children, swiftly pivoting to their own complex (and sometimes ambivalent) relationships to horror movies.
  • Vinson (A): Admits to being a “scaredy cat” and only watches horror occasionally. [02:20]
  • Alex (B): Used to spook herself as a child and has a history of scaring others with campfire stories. [02:27]
  • Naomi (C): Finds the hosts' wholesome Halloween plans at odds with horror’s scary traditions, setting up the episode’s shift from lightheartedness to the genre’s darker appeal.

2. The Business and Cultural Role of Horror

• Naomi introduces the topic with striking statistics: horror films have grossed over $1 billion domestically this year, representing 17% of movie ticket sales—more than drama and comedy combined [03:51].
• Horror is reframed from mere adrenaline rush to a vehicle for expressing and confronting societal fears: “[Horror] has also historically been a way for artists to explore their era’s worst fears, from nuclear proliferation to Satanic panic—but crucially, at a remove.” [03:56]

3. Welcoming the Horror Expert – Alex Barasch

• Alex Barasch joins as a guest, revealing early interests in both “emo classics” (Greek tragedy, Gothic horror) and the pleasure of shared fear: “There is a desire to be scared together rather than scared alone.” [06:06]
• On why horror appeals: “If you completely give yourself over to it … it’s cathartic to be afraid and then to have that as a contained experience.” [07:01]
• Emphasizes that genuine fear and the communal aspect are central to the genre’s impact.

Horror Assignments: Recent Films as Case Studies

4. The Babadook (2014) – Assigned to Alexandra Schwartz

• Synopsis: Single mother Amelia struggles with her son Samuel, who is haunted by “the Babadook”—a terrifying picture-book monster whose power grows the more you deny him.
• Themes Discussed: Maternal horror, the burdens (and terrors) of motherhood, and the societal lens on women feeling trapped by circumstance.
  • Alex B: “It’s a cult phenomenon… maternal horror… making horror from motherhood and the things you cannot say to or about your child but are maybe thinking. That’s rich terrain psychologically and cinematically.” [11:54]
  • Alex S: Links to feminist film criticism around domestic horror (e.g., “Rosemary’s Baby,” “The Exorcist,” and “The Shining”), situating the Babadook amongst movies that serve as analogs for women “trapped in your everyday life in a much bigger system.” [13:06]
  • Listener Mallory’s Memo [14:18]: Expresses sensitivity to recent waves of maternal/child horror after a difficult childbirth, prompting discussion about trauma, vulnerability, and broader social trends (e.g., women’s loss of bodily autonomy, rise in female filmmakers).
  • Vinson (A): “A kid is an extension of your vulnerability into the world... Life is suspenseful enough.” [16:36]

5. Saint Maud (2020) – Assigned to Vinson Cunningham

• Synopsis: A mentally fragile hospice nurse develops a dangerously intense relationship with a dying patient, pursued by visions and religious ecstasy.
  • *Vinson describes the protagonist's disturbing mortifications and growing psychosis, noting the film is “a social cautionary tale about loneliness and untreated mental illness masquerading as religious horror.” [21:45]
  • Suggests horror movies ought to be rated like hot sauce: “how spicy is it?” Ultimately, finds this film “unsettling” but not truly scary—“half a ghost” on his personal scale. [22:10]
  • Alex B: Called “elevated horror”—part of a current trend where horror crosses into prestige cinema. Notes the genre’s shift: “It used to be that horror would be something external that is disrupting a previously idyllic town or life. … [Now,] the bad thing has already happened to you. You already have a trauma at the beginning of the film…that is eating you from the inside or trying to kill you.” [25:02]
  • Vinson: “I am generally more afraid of supernatural things… but another thing I’m very afraid of… is going crazy. It’s one of my biggest fears, that my senses will one day betray me.” [23:03]

6. Weapons (2025) – Assigned to Naomi Fry

• Synopsis: In a Pennsylvania town, children mysteriously disappear at night, leading to a Rashomon-like investigation and the emergence of a supernatural interloper, “Gladys.”
  • Naomi enjoys early “character study of a town” and the slowly unraveling mysteries, but finds the supernatural reveal “a little goofy” and less satisfying than the tension leading up to it. [32:23]
  • Alex B: “The anticipation of the monster is more satisfying than the reveal. The most effective ones keep the force in the background so you can project your anxieties and fears.” [32:28]
  • Compares this to “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”—where sympathy for the monster, Leatherface, arises, showcasing horror’s ability to “confront shared condition” and blur victim/monster boundaries. [33:27–34:09]
  • Discussion on Babadook, Gladys, and Megan as “gay icons”—monstrous outsiders embraced as camp or symbols of marginal identity.
  • Alex B highlights the gentrification of horror: as budgets increase (Weapons cost $40M—much higher than traditional genre films) and as prestige filmmakers (example: Jordan Peele, “Get Out”) bring horror into the mainstream. [36:07]
  • Alex S and Alex B warn that gloss and respectability might sap horror’s outsider “charge,” even as it enables higher production values and new forms.

Listener Memos & Audience Roles

7. Horror’s Psychological & Social Functions

• Memo from Caio [26:01]: Watching horror is “a safe space to be scared, but not too scared… I know it’s safe and fictional.”
  • Alex B: “A horror movie, that’s the genre where the contract between the filmmaker and the audience is the most explicit. You know exactly what it’s gonna do to you.” [27:25]
  • The panel debates whether horror “purges” anxiety or embeds unsettling images (“You can’t shed them. They stay with you.” – Alex S. [52:18]).

8. Signs, Symbols, and the Purge

• Memo from Aiden [41:14]: Enjoys both horror’s sense of cosmic meaning and its striking, lasting imagery: “The idea that everything is sort of an omen, portending a larger plan … horror movies have some of the most iconic and impactful imagery of any movies.”
  • Alex S: “That’s exactly what scares the shit out of me… the idea that everything has meaning.” [42:01]
  • Vinson: “If life were like literature, that is actually horror.” [43:01]
  • The genre gives viewers a sense of order, catharsis, or meaning—albeit a frightening one.

9. Trauma and the Evolution of Horror

• Contemporary horror increasingly operates from the premise that trauma has already happened and is internalized, rather than invaded from without. [25:02]
• Alex Barasch maintains that horror remains potent despite predictability and even after repeated exposure: “There are things that don’t faze me… but you never really run out of [anxieties].” [44:34]

Broader Genre Trends & Social Commentary

10. The Internet as a New Source of Horror

• Alex B. discusses “creepypasta” and the rise of horror born from online folklore (ex: Talk to Me, 2023, “viral challenge” premise)—framing the web as a digital campfire where new forms of scary stories emerge. [46:14]
  • Alex S: Terror is amplified by “blurring the boundary” between fiction and real life—social media and found-footage style horror play on this permeability. [48:23]

11. Horror as a Mirror and Outlet

• Panel reflects on why we seek out horror: as rehearsal for disaster, as psychic preparation, as catharsis, as a way to confront vulnerability and test ourselves. [49:35–51:10]
  • Vinson: “Constructing an extremity is a kind of test of the person… If there is a corollary to now, it’s like, oh, the extreme is possible.” [50:59]
  • Alex S: “You do not shed [the experience]. You do not just excrete them. They stay with you.” [52:18]
  • The act of horror, then, is both an individual and a communal ritual of meaning-making; it acknowledges chaos, anxiety, and vulnerability, organizing dread into narrative.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On being scared together:
  • “There is a desire to be scared together rather than scared alone.” —Alex Barasch (D), [06:06]
• On horror’s appeal:
  • “[Horror is] cathartic to be afraid and then to have that as a contained experience.” —Alex Barasch (D), [07:01]
• On maternal horror:
  • “One of my favorite horror movies of all time is Hereditary. Both of these films [Babadook, Hereditary] have a majestic soliloquy that begins, ‘I am your mother.’ … horror is primal, and family is the most primal thing there is.” —Alex Barasch (D), [17:05]
• On trauma and horror’s evolution:
  • “Now it’s… the bad thing has already happened to you… and that is eating you from the inside.” —Alex Barasch (D), [25:02]
• On empathy for monsters:
  • “When you feel sympathy for the creature… you’re confronting some kind of shared condition. And that is very uncanny because you have to see yourself differently. That’s scary.” —Alex Schwartz (B), [34:33]
• On horror’s audience contract:
  • “A horror movie, that’s the genre where the contract between the filmmaker and the audience is the most explicit. You know exactly what it’s gonna do to you.” —Alex Barasch (D), [27:25]
• On rehearsal for the worst:
  • “Constructing an extremity is a kind of test of the person… If the extreme is possible, how will I respond?” —Vinson Cunningham (A), [50:59]
• On horror’s lingering effect:
  • “When you read a book, when you see a movie… They live on in you. They become part of your own experience.” —Alex Schwartz (B), [52:18]

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 03:51 — Horror’s box office dominance and genre framing
• 05:19 — Introduction of Alex Barasch, horror expert
• 08:32 — The Babadook: maternal horror, feminism, and trauma
• 14:18 — Voicemail (Mallory): Why so much horror about motherhood?
• 19:41 — Assignment 2: Saint Maud—religious horror & mental illness
• 26:01 — Voicemail (Caio): Horror as safe anxiety, audience contract
• 28:22 — Assignment 3: Weapons—a contemporary supernatural mystery
• 32:23 — The problem of monster reveals vs. anticipation
• 33:27 — Sympathy for monsters and the archetype’s evolution
• 36:14 — “Gentrification” of horror, Jordan Peele, and prestige politics
• 41:14 — Voicemail (Aiden): The symbolic meaning & imagery of horror
• 46:14 — Internet horror, “creepypasta,” and evolution of the medium
• 49:35 — Why heightening & supernatural horror, not realism?
• 50:59 — Horror as rehearsal for disaster; horror’s psychological function
• 52:18 — Horror’s lingering, transformative power

Conclusion

The conversation underscores horror’s resilience and adaptability—it’s a genre that continually reinvents itself to meet the anxieties of the time, whether focused on the inside (personal trauma, mental illness) or the outside (social/political unrest, technological change). Horror’s power lies in its capacity to make the unspeakable visible and, paradoxically, to unite audiences through collective dread. As the panel considers the genre’s increasing mainstream and the evolution of its tropes, they zero in on why horror continues to “haunt us”: because it forces us to grapple, together, with the worst inside and outside ourselves—and because those fears, once manifested, refuse to let us go.

“It is like living with something and living with a piece of real experience, the worst and the most extreme real experience, and just carrying it with you. [...] Maybe it is totemic, and maybe it’s just, you know, what we all have to go through because we’re alive, and this is the world, and your eyes need to be open a bit to it.” —Alex Schwartz (B), [52:18]