To my mind, there are at least two kinds of horror: sophisticated horror and gratuitous horror. Sophisticated horror is ultimately perlocutionary, which means it attempts to convince and persuade filmgoers to act. It might do this by means of allegory, commentary or critique, for example, and/or by creating a threat or monster to function as a metaphor, mirror or sign post, concretising some abstraction, externalising some inner reality or magnifying humanness. The point of this is to expose, question or discuss some aberration. Just as others have noticed before, sophisticated horror, “properly seen, is not aberration but transcendence” (Wilson, Secret Cinema, 2006). It is intentionally memetic, designed to “train us in the...transcendentals,” (Vanhoozer and Anderson, Everyday Theology, 2007). Sophisticated horror is sophisticated, because it seeks to speak in order to elicit action.

The gratuitous kind is gratuitous, because it misses this point, and instead aims at mere shock, intrigue and entertainment. Therefore, it has earned itself a bad reputation among some. However, it remains attractive among others. I suspect its attractiveness lies mostly in its appeal to a perverse pleasure and amusement derived from cruelty, violence, suffering and peril. Of course, depending on the maker’s intention, this itself could be sophisticated in the way it exposes the pleasured’s perversity simply by the fact they show up to watch. Some would probably agree that the initial but mistaken (and therefore somewhat ironic) response to Romero’s Night of the Living Dead seems more appropriate for this kind: perceived as the pornography of violence, peril and suffering, gratuitous horror "casts serious aspersions on the integrity and social responsibility of its…makers…and about the moral health of filmgoers who cheerfully opt for this unrelieved orgy of sadism.” (Supreme Court’s verdict on Night, Paffenroth, The Gospel of the Living Dead, 2006) Of course, sophisticated horror might work hard to evoke filmgoers’ pleasure and amusement in order to serve their lesson, but if mere sadism appears to be the goal and perlocution appears absent, then I tend to classify it as gratuitous.

More often than not, horror speaks about the human condition. Even if some ideology or system is in view, this still ultimately critiques humanness, as humans are the source of these things. More often than not, horror is designed to elevate us above ourselves, so we can examine ourselves. We are supposed to identify ourselves with the story and experience aberration. We are to encounter the exposure, the critique even the indictment concerning the evil and the ugly. Just as plots make the “protagonist find the real monster…within his interiors,” (Wilson, Secret Cinema, 2006) often, so do we. We are to recognise, then, that "we are them" and "they are us”, and then to ask “why are we what we are?" For me, nothing typifies and achieves this more than the zombie sub-genre. For this reason, it is my favourite horror sub-genre. And it was this sub-genre that first introduced me to the sophistication, persuasiveness and usefulness of horror. (see Zombies! They're Us! My analysis of Romero’s Zombie).

The Exegesist also goes beyond this to interpret and explain horror as a cultural artefact. It seeks to go beyond filmmakers' intentions to exegete artefacts as if they were texts—to read horror, as it were—to analyse what lies beneath the skin philosophically and theologically, to discuss what these artefacts might assume concerning worldview, ideology, morality, beliefs, human desire and so on. This in turn will seek to explain horror’s popularity and very existence. For example, why is Dexter’s warped personification of justice, so captivating? What does this reveal about human assumptions and longings? Why has the zombie genre enjoyed exponential growth cross-culturally and cross-demographically? What evidently universal and essential ingredient of our humanity accounts for its appeal? These are the sort of depths, or heights, The Exegesistseeks to explore, so that you can appreciate horror on a whole ’nother level.