"When taken from the right perspective, every story is a horror story: for henchmen just trying to earn a paycheck, James Bond is a horror slasher with a body count (and, let’s be honest, style points) to rival Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers. Let’s not forget that Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, while yes, a nuanced family drama for the ages, also features a cameo from Lucifer himself, discussing the call—and the point—of the pit with Ivan Fyodorovich in the depths of a feverish nightmare. Even Elden Ring (all of Miyazaki’s Soulsbourne games, really) is really just cosmic horror masquerading as vaguely-post-apocalyptic high fantasy.

I’ve written before about horror’s profound genre inclusivity, and let me tell you: once you start looking at your favorite stories through that lens, you can’t really unsee it ever again. But that’s only because horror has always been there, lurking in the shadows of every story, hiding in the attics and the sewers, just waiting to be uncovered…"