Every generation gets the horror films it deserves.
In the 1950s, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” pulsed with postwar fears about Communist infiltration. Vietnam-era distrust of American institutions haunts 1970s classics like “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” and “The Exorcist.” The slasher films of the 1980s — made popular by suburban, latchkey Gen X-ers — typically feature absent parents, or monstrous ones. And mid-aughts “torture porn” like the “Saw” series can be read in the context of Guantánamo Bay and the Abu Ghraib scandal.
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