There are some works in Horror cinema that will make you think apart from giving you jump scares!
Since the inception of the medium horror has been a genre that has advanced the cinematic medium at every step, it works almost based on adrenaline rush and cultivating fear which are done by employing various cinematic techniques mainly the precise blending of camera movement, montage and most importantly sound design and score. The reason the horror genre has progressed is due to its experimentation of the cinematic medium in every decade. The genre had refined what cinema can be by being crafty with low budgets or even using low budget ingenuity and crafty special effects, to elicit that response from the audience. This fact was clear even in the Silent Era as during the German Expressionism movement one its most widely known and popular work was from the horror genre itself.
Now even in the genre of horror which is a huge and broad category there are various subgenres such as body horror or straight supernatural themed narratives. Yet the purpose of horror is not only to give one the fear or the rush of a jump scare it also to make the audience think and question the society they live in, and a very few works in the history of the genre have truly been able to pull that off. The list contains such unique works that have been able to do both at the same time, while fulfilling the audience expectations with all the classic elements of a horror film, but also giving the audience something of value and to think about long after the runtime has ended and the credits have rolled.
This is work that during the time of release was made with a very low budget but with its subtle commentary on race and the prevailing political situation in the country had taken the audiences by storm, one interesting thing to note is that the work was in production and conception for a long time and was also the debut feature by the director.
Another debut feature on this list, this was a mind bending genre work which was scary beyond measure yet while delivering the goods of the genre, it conveyed a very necessary message tarnished legacies and dysfunctional families and even a relationship between a mother and her daughter.
A social experiment gone wrong is the best way to summarise this work, this too works very well as a classic work of the genre but at the same time has an important message about the duality of human nature.
