This Was the Year of Elevated Trash

You don’t hear the term elevated horror so often these days, and for that, we can be grateful. Ever since it was skewered in 2022’s Scream — literally: Jenna Ortega’s character is stabbed repeatedly after revealing her preference for movies like The Babadook — the vague designation has all but disappeared from reviews and online discourse. Horror fans and critics have spent years pushing back on elevated horror as a concept, arguing that it’s simply a way of denigrating mainstream genre films, many of which are just as thematically rich and visually stimulating as movies attached to the specialized label. There’s also the fact that it’s hard to define and based almost entirely on vibes. Elevated horror can be interchangeable with “A24 horror” (The Witch and Midsommar), or a catchall for horror without jump-scares. It’s horror with something deeper on its mind, but any genre devotee can tell you that’s often true for even the grimiest of slashers.