An Architecture of Horror

Vulnerability as the Gate to Horror

Genres are a funny thing. Most don’t have a good definition or clear boundaries. Instead, they’re more of a “I know it when I see it” type of thing.

I’ve tried to rectify this when it comes to horror in a project than began as an idea on my Substack, was further refined into a sort of formula for horror, and ended up as a published academic article making an empirical case for this new definition of horror.

At the core of this new view of horror is protagonist vulnerability. In essence, a horror story might best be defined as a story where a vulnerable protagonist faces a much more formidable antagonist.

This gets us a more refined approach to defining the genre as a whole, and one that is grounded in our nature as biological organisms. But horror is a vast genre. In fact, it’s so broad that some have claimed horror is no longer a useful term with which to classify films. I’ve disagreed, arguing that horror is in fact the most informative genre when understood properly.

Once we understand horror as being a story about a highly vulnerable protagonist, we can begin to classify types of vulnerability that protagonist might face. I’d argue there are three good contenders for foundational vulnerability: Predator Formidability, Compromised Body, and Coalitional Instability. These three are also interesting because they rely on clearly evolved psychological mechanisms.