The horror genre continues to regenerate itself ad nauseam. On one hand, the genre may be liberating itself from the weight of many formulaic straight-to-video films that have tainted its image over the past two decades, re-imagining itself through the quintessential films that defined horror cinema in the 1970s and 80s. On the other hand, the genre has perhaps reached a moment of hyper-intertextualization to the point where it has literally mined itself dry of new ideas.

The fall issue of Cinephile looks to examine these issues and beyond, with an eye towards the past in order to understand where the horror genre may be headed in the near future. The issue aims to focus on two key aspects of contemporary horror’s relation to its immediate past. First, does the appropriation of international horror cinema by Hollywood and its many remakes suggest a perverse turn in the globalization of the genre? How do remakes embrace, reject or negotiate the cultural elements of the original for Western and global audiences? Secondly, what is the state of horror’s power to shock? How has the virtual domination of computer-generated effects affected the horror industry, on both aesthetic and technical perspectives? Do digital effects add to the genre’s visceral impact, or instead detract from the sense of plasticity that made the genre infamous in the 1970s and 80s?

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