Horror is undoubtedly one of cinema’s most multifaceted genres. Each decade, it seems, a new streak of films comes along which, while clearly subsumed within the overarching category of horror, feels so distinct from what preceded it that both fans and critics feel the need to categorize it as either a new cycle or a new subgenre. Following the release of such films as It Follows (David Robert Mitchell, 2014), The Babadook (Jennifer Kent, 2014) or The Witch (Robert Eggers, 2015), many fans and critics argued that the genre of horror was witnessing the birth of another cycle, yet no one seemed to agree as to how it should be named or defined – some even arguing that these films should not be considered as a distinct cycle at all.

The purpose of this issue of Imaginaires is threefold. It aims at giving film scholars a chance to weigh in on this taxonomic debate which has thus far largely been held by fans and critics, with a few notable exceptions – chief of which David Church’s only book-length study of the cycle (2021). It also purports to shed new light on the narrative and stylistic commonalities, as well as on the extrafilmic qualities, uniting the films of the corpus. Finally, it seeks to offer in-depth analyses of the films themselves, the study of which has often been overshadowed by the many generic and axiological questions raised by their categorization as instances of “post horror” or “elevated horror”.