An Invitation to Reflection about Horror: A Review of Genre Updates

This article reviews A.V. Pavlov's book “Horror Studies: Genre Updates in the 21st Century”, which examines the historiography of horror studies in cinema. The author analyzes foreign academic works aimed at a conceptual socio-philosophical analysis of trends, film series, and movies released in recent decades. The book examines franchises (“Saw”, “Scream”, “The Twilight Zone” series) and recently emerged subgenres (metahorror, posthorror, folk horror) through films focused on socio-political issues as examples. In particular, philosophical trends such as posthumanism, postmodernism, metamodernism, and the cognitive approach are used to represent philosophical ideas of films and series. The main goal of the book is to represent foreign research and to problematize the ethical, social, and narrative aspects of the analyzed movies. Pavlov also mentions video games and literary works in the horror genre in connection with their film adaptations and reinterpretations. The author of the article argues that Pavlov's study is useful and encyclopedically important for Russian-speaking readers interested in the genre.