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One of my regular podcasts The Evolution of Horror where each season a particular cinematic sub-genre of horror is examined in chronological order to study its origins and changes over the decades. Some of the sub-genres that have been explored are ghosts, the occult, and slashers to name just three.

Last night as sleep drifted into my brain I thought about another possible sub-genre, Patriarchal Horror. What I envisioned was something closely related to but distinct from feminist horror. I would categorize feminist horror about the claiming of power and agency by female characters but that does not require an explicit depiction of patriarchy to exist. For example, Bob Clark’s Black Christmas, a key film in the development of the slasher sub-genre coming a few years before Carpenter’s Halloween exploded in the culture is specifically about a sorority house dealing with a stalker and murderer but the men and the wider world that they inhabit aren’t depicted as subjugating or dominating the women. It is feminist without dealing with patriarchy.

An example of what I would call patriarchal horror is the original The Stepford Wives. In the film the men of small town of Stepford substitute their wives with perfect robotic replacements, ones that never challenge, always know their place, and perform all their wifely duties without complaint. It is the platonic ideal of horror that draws entirely from the patriarchy.

Promising Young Woman is often slotted into the ‘rape revenge’ sub-genre and that’s not a terrible fit even if the principal character exacting her revenge isn’t herself the rape survivor. It also neatly fits into patriarchal horror because the film depicts quite intentional the culture and male dominated systems that create the environment where men escape any form of consequence for their horrible actions.

What got me started on this line of speculation was this year’s outstanding horror film Immaculate. Starring and produced by Sydney Sweeny Immaculate is very much about men exercising power and domination over women’s bodies. About how control over oneself is a fundamental freedom and right.