Topics

Horror, sci-fi, adventure

295 articles · Page 1

This section gathers our writing on horror, science fiction and adventure cinema, and the places where the three overlap. It covers psychological horror and psychological thrillers, haunted house and ghost stories, cult horror classics, kaiju and animal attack films, alien invasion and apocalypse movies, post-apocalyptic and survival stories, plus adventure films about exploration, sailing, treasure hunting, mythology and fantasy worlds. Alongside broad genre guides you will find seasonal lists such as Halloween viewing, recommendation lists built around a single reference film like Alien, Black Swan or The Conjuring, and essays on recurring obsessions in the genre: time travel, virtual reality, absurdist storytelling and films that end on deliberately ambiguous notes.

Frequently Asked Questions

What separates psychological horror from other horror?

Psychological horror builds fear from a character's mind, perception and unreliable memory rather than from gore or sudden shocks. Threats are often ambiguous, and the audience is left unsure how much of what they see is real. Films like Black Swan sit close to the psychological thriller, where obsession and paranoia do the work a monster would do elsewhere.

Why do so many horror and sci-fi films end ambiguously?

An ambiguous ending keeps the central question unresolved, so the viewer carries the film past the credits. In horror and science fiction this often means never confirming whether a haunting, an alien presence or a character's breakdown was literal. The technique is common enough that entire recommendation lists are built around it.

What counts as a post-apocalyptic film rather than an apocalypse film?

Apocalypse movies show the collapse itself, whether by invasion, disaster or outbreak. Post-apocalyptic cinema begins after the event and follows survival, scarcity and the rebuilding of some social order. Many survival stories borrow from both, starting with the catastrophe and then living in its aftermath.