As Superheroes Wane, Is Horror Hollywood's Hottest Genre?
We all know that superhero fatigue has well and truly set in. The Marvel Cinematic Universe once ruled the cinema landscape with an iron fist, churning out film after film after film. Recent years, however, have seen a shift in release strategy.
Movies featuring either DC or Marvel characters are being limited to only a handful a year, rather than the old pattern of what felt like one every month. With superhero movies taking a slight step back from the spotlight, cinemas obviously need to fill those slots and keep bringing viewers in, and it appears that the horror genre is happy to plug that gap.
A very quick glance over the cinema releases thus far in 2026 reveals zero superhero movies to date, but almost one new horror movie a week. Right from the start of the year, when Primate and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple were released, to May featuring Hokum, Obsession, Passenger and Backrooms, this is a stacked year for horror content.
Why Has Horror Become Popular?
Horror films have always performed well at the box office, primarily because they are far cheaper to make. When you consider that the average cost of a Marvel movie is somewhere between $175 million and $250 million, they have to make far more money to be considered profitable.
On the flip side, films such as Paranormal Activity were made for approximately $15,000 and went on to earn $193 million. Even the more expensive horror movies like The Conjuring: Last Rites cost a fraction of a superhero budget, with the Warrens’ swan song only costing around $55 million before grossing almost half a billion worldwide. The profitability of horror makes it easy to understand why studios keep producing them, but in order to be profitable, audiences still have to go to the cinema. So why have tastes changed?
Horror has always had a dedicated fandom, but more recently, the audience pool has been expanding outwards. If you track its recent surge in popularity, it goes back to the pandemic. With everyone stuck at home, people turned to movies for entertainment, but it was not light-hearted comedies that people were drawn to, but rather horror. One of the most talked-about films of the pandemic era, for instance, was Rob Savage’s Host, which featured a Zoom call gone wrong after a group of friends perform a virtual seance. The film tapped into the zeitgeist of pandemic life, but was equally terrifying outside of that.
The rise of horror viewing during this time has a simple psychological explanation. The expectation was that people would watch comedies for comfort, but in reality, watching the beaming faces of the happy characters in these movies made people sad, as they were stuck indoors. In contrast, characters in horror films are always having a terrible time, and so watching genre films became a cathartic experience and proved that there were worse scenarios to be in.
Once lockdown was over, these newly turned fans wanted more, and so attendance at horror movies began to increase, and as superhero movies began to wane, the horror genre took its crown.
What Sinners Winning At The Oscars Means For Horror
A key signifier that the appeal of horror has broadened is the response genre films had during the most recent awards season. It is a long-known fact that horror has always been overlooked by the Academy and other similar establishments. However, with Sinners, Weapons, and Frankenstein each winning Oscars, and The Ugly Stepsister also nominated, the tide appears to have shifted. It should also be noted that in 2025, The Substance was the first to get a handhold on awards, but ultimately lost out to everything except Best Make-up.
The arrival of the term ‘Elevated Horror’ has softened the stigma the genre holds for more snobbish cinephiles. The truth, of course, is that elevated horror is merely a term to justify the genre, as films like those seen as pioneers of this subgenre have always existed. This is likely one of the main reasons that films such as Sinners and Weapons were more fairly assessed for awards and rightly won some.
With the door now wide open for horror, 2027's award season could be very exciting. Given the sheer number of horror films released this year, there will be no escaping the genre for voters. It might only be partway through the year, but there are already some strong contenders. Ralph Fiennes is remarkable in 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, Hokum is surely a contender for Production Design, and Obsession should get a Screenplay nod at the very least.
Can Clayface Mark A New Way Forward For Superhero Movies?
Horror might have taken over the cinema right now, but superhero films remain waiting in the wings. This year we get a new Spider-Man, Supergirl, and Avengers movie. All of them will perform well, but also won't be doing anything new with the genre. One film that might play differently, however, is Clayface.
DC co-chairman James Gunn has gone on record as stating that Clayface is “100%” a horror movie. The first-look trailer for the film confirms this, and with Gunn, a renowned fan of horror, having started his career working on Troma movies before directing horror comedy Slither, he understands its worth. Perhaps Marvel could learn a lesson from DC and get to work on that long-gestating Blade reboot. The original Blade is, of course, one of the pioneers of the MCU. Most attribute the popularity of the superhero movies to Iron Man, but Blade was far earlier and proved that there was an interest in the genre, whilst also leaning into horror themes.
Similarly, Constantine 2 is still on the horizon, so perhaps the future of cinema is neither superhero nor horror, but rather a fusion of the two.
