Horror genre and monstrous Other in the last fifteen years partly remain true to their classic forms with clichéd jumpscares, grotesque monsters, and bloodied bodies. At the same time they pave the way for stories that reflect collective fears and anxieties of our contemporary society, which makes the lack of comprehensive study of this genre almost abnormal. Taking into account the psychoanalytic, cultural, and sociological assumption that films reflect and represent ideologies, the goal of this work is a semiotic examination of representations of societal fears in the form of monstrous Other as common thread in all horror films, regardless of its subgenres, since 2010. If monstrous Other once served as our unconscious projection and relief from our own frustrations, today, they confront us, in close-up, with domestic violence, sexual violence, xenophobic pretences of a warm welcome for foreigners, an obsession with success and cultural, economic, and social capital, perhaps unconscious (post)racist practices of exclusion, our exploitation of the environment, dependence on technology, and neglect of our younger generations. Horror films thus serve as cultural texts, through which we can question and deconstruct modern myths, and also transfer the debate to our reality.
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