I tagged the fears in 500 horror films (1913–2025) and trained a graph model on them. Here's what horror fears now compared with before 1980
I built a corpus of 500 horror films spanning 1913 to 2025, tagged the story elements in each (what threatens, who suffers, how it ends, the rules, and more), and trained a graph model on the whole network. This chart compares films made before 1980 (n=126) with films since 2000 (n=269).
The biggest shifts:
Families moved to the centre. Horror that falls on families and parents rose from 35% to 49%; horror that falls on spouses and lovers fell from 47% to 25%.
The evil wins more often. Endings where the evil is destroyed fell from 36% to 20%; endings where it's passed on rose from 3% to 13%.
The rules got harsher. "A fatal weakness" (the silver bullet) fell from 27% to 18%; "everything has a price" rose from 6% to 16%.
The restless dead doubled, from 10% to 22%, while blood drinkers fell from 11% to 4%.
Explore all 500 films and the fear network! Let me know what you think!
liverandlung.com/bloodline
82-second video version: https://youtu.be/C9Ziwl8q6tU
Code and data: https://github.com/shafeeqshajahanliver/bloodline