Art horror

Art-horror films tend to rely on atmosphere building, psychological character development, cinematic style and philosophical themes for effect - rather than straightforward scares. They are almost always created by an auteur. Like horror films, Art-Horror films attempt to evoke fear, terror or revulsion; but like art-films, they tend to be cerebral, contemplative, and inventive in terms of both content and form.

Art-horror films have been described as "a fascinating byproduct of the collision of art and commerce, of genre convention and personal vision".[1] Historically, the genre was loosely related to J-horror and Italian Giallo.

• The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920)
• Häxan (Benjamin Christensen, 1922)
• Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau, 1922)
• The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (Alfred Hitchcock, 1927)
• Vampyr (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1932)
• The Leopard Man (Jacques Tourneur, 1943)
• Eyes without a Face (Georges Franju, 1960)
• Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
• The Innocents (Jack Clayton, 1961)
• Carnival of Souls (Herk Harvey, 1962)
• Onibaba (Kaneto Shindo, 1964)
• Kwaidan (Masaki Kobayashi, 1965)
• Repulsion (Roman Polanski, 1965)
• Hour of the Wolf (Ingmar Bergman, 1968)
• Rosemary's Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968)
• Images (Robert Altman, 1972)
• Cries and Whispers (Ingmar Bergman, 1972)
• Don't Look Now (Nicloas Roeg, 1973)
• Ganja and Hess (Bill Gunn, 1973)
• Sisters (Brian De Palma, 1973)
• Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1975)
• The Tenant (Roman Polanski, 1976)
• Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1977)
• Opening Night (John Cassavetes, 1977)
• Suspiria (Dario Argento, 1977)
• Hausu (Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1977)
• The Brood (David Cronenberg, 1979)
• Nosferatu the Vampyre (Werner Herzog, 1979)
• The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)
• Possession (Andrzej Żuławski, 1981)
• Angst (Gerald Kargl, 1983)
• Videodrome (David Cronenberg, 1983)
• The Fly (David Cronenberg, 1986)
• Dead Ringers (David Cronenberg, 1988)
• Begotten (E. Elias Merhige, 1989)
• Laurin (Robert Sigl, 1989)
• Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (David Lynch, 1992)
• Safe (Todd Haynes, 1995)
• Funny Games (Michael Haneke, 1997)
• Audition (Takashi Miike, 1999)
• Pulse (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2001)
• A Tale of Two Sisters (Kim Jee-woon, 2003)
• Twentynine Palms (Bruno Dumont, 2003)
• Inland Empire (David Lynch, 2006)
• Antichrist (Lars von Trier, 2009)
• Beyond the Black Rainbow (Panos Cosmatos, 2010)
• Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky, 2010)
• Stoker (Park Chan-wook, 2013)
• Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2013)
• Only Lovers Left Alive (Jim Jarmusch, 2013)
• Enemy (Denis Villeneuve, 2013)
• The Babadook (Jennifer Kent, 2014),
• The Witch (Robert Eggers, 2015)
• Under the Shadow (Babak Anvari, 2016)
• The Wailing (Na Hong-jin, 2016)
• Mother! (Darren Aronofsky, 2017)
• Hereditary (Ari Aster, 2018)
• Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)
• The House That Jack Built (Lars von Trier, 2018)
• Midsommar (Ari Aster, 2019)
• The Lighthouse (Robert Eggers, 2019)
• Saint Maud (Rose Glass, 2019)
• Roh (Emir Ezwan, 2019)
• Impetigore (Joko Anwar, 2019)
• Relic (Natalie Erika James, 2020)
• Masking Threshold (Johannes Grenzfurthner, 2021)

• Social thriller
• New Hollywood
• Arthouse science fiction film
• Arthouse action film
• Vulgar auteurism
• Extreme cinema

• Hawkins, J. (2000) Cutting Edge: Art-Horror and the Horrific Avant-Garde, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
• Hanscomb, S. (2010) "Existentialism and Art-Horror", Sartre Studies International 16:1, pp. 1-23

• List of art-horror films - Taste of Cinema blog
• "The Ultimate List of Art-house Horror" - IMDB