Horror: A Very Short Introduction

Very Short Introductions #676

by Darryl Jones

Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring Four o'clock in the morning, and the lights are on and still there's no way we're going to sleep, not after the film we just saw. The book we just read. Fear is one of the most primal human emotions, and one of the hardest to reason with and dispel. So why do we scare ourselves? It seems almost mad that we would frighten ourselves for fun, and yet there are thousands of books, films, games, and other forms of entertainment designed to do exactly that.As Darryl Jones shows, the horror genre is huge. Ranging from vampires, ghosts, and werewolves to mad scientists, Satanists, and deranged serial killers, the cathartic release of scaring ourselves has made its appearance in everything from Shakespearean tragedies to internet memes. Exploring the key tropes of the genre, including its monsters, its psychological chills, and its love affair with the macabre, this Very Short Introduction discusses why horror stories disturb us, and howsociety responds to literary and film representations of the gruesome and taboo. Should the enjoyment of horror be regarded with suspicion? Are there different levels of the horrific, and should we distinguish between the commonly reviled carnage of contemporary torture porn and the culturally acceptablebloodbaths of ancient Greek tragedies?Analysing the way in which horror manifests multiple personalities, and has been used throughout history to articulate the fears and taboos of the current generation, Darryl Jones considers the continuing evolution of the genre today. As horror is mass marketed to mainstream society in the form of romantic vampires and blockbuster hits, it also continues to maintain its former shadowy presence on the edges of respectability, as banned films and violent internet phenomena push us to questionboth our own preconceptions and the terrifying capacity of human nature.ABOUT THE The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.First published in hardback as Sleeping with the Lights on.

Genres: Horror, Nonfiction, History, Literary Criticism, Literature, Audiobook, Philosophy

160 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2021

About the author

Professor of English and Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Trinity College Dublin

Reviews

[Nicolai Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my second outing into the “A Very Short Introduction” series. My first one was about literary theory, and that one was just okay, but good enough for me to explore other subjects in the same series. This one was even better! If you love horror, you get exactly what you want and need here. Even though it’s supposed to be a very short introduction, I found it to be a highly informative survey of the genre. Keep in mind it’s not limited to literature, which I initially assumed, but it’s all the better for it. The topics were well-chosen, and Darryl Jones introduced the most important monsters and tropes along the way, carefully adding critical analysis into the mix and connecting the dots intelligently and with a bit of personality. He managed to keep me engaged all the way through!

Here is a table of contents:

Acknowledgements
List of illustrations
Introduction
1 Monsters
2 The occult and the supernatural
3 Horror and the body
4 Horror and the mind
5 Science and horror
6 Afterword: horror since the millennium
Further reading
Index

I intend to keep this for reference, actually, as I was inspired to do a deeper dive into some of the topics discussed here. The further reading section and bibliography gave me tons more to explore! Much thanks to Darryl Jones for inspiring me with his enthusiasm and knowledge.

[Ryan Denson · Rating 5 out of 5]

"There's an essential question that you have to answer, and it's basic when you make a film. There's two kinds of [horror]. There's a left-wing horror and a right-wing horror. Now, the right-wing horror - we're all a tribe, and evil is out there. [Points to the distance.] It's gonna come and get us . . . There's also left-wing horror, and it's right in here. [Points to his chest.]"

Jones deploys the above quote from John Carpenter to point to one perspective on the horror genre that is not conventionally thought of: the underlying political dimension to many horror films. This short book touches upon a variety of other such perspectives on the nature of horror both as psychological phenomena and a form of entertainment. Monsters in their varied forms take the stage first as the classical object of fear for human societies, highlighting the themes inherent in some more modern iterations of monsters, such as colonialization and sexuality (Vampires), death and economic forces (Zombies). Other, more thematic, chapters grapple with the issues concerning the occult and magic in horror as well as the philosophical issues embed within the genre concerning the mind and body. These concern the themes of destabilizing the boundaries between human and animal (Werewolves), personal identity (Jekyll and Hyde), radical otherness (Michael Myers), and urban anonymity (serial killers), among many others.

Perhaps one of the book's strongest points is the ending chapter on post-millennial horror, predominately that found in film. This deals with several distinctively modern strands of horror such as economic horror and ecological horror brought on by the present realities of modern economic inequality and climate change. New media forms for horror as a genre are also touched on, such as podcasting and the proliferation internet meme culture through creepypastas. This chapter comes to a close with a coda inserted as Jones was revising the manuscript for this book during the COVID pandemic. It serves to bring the more fantastical aspects of the horror genre to the current horror of our (still ongoing) reality. As he does throughout the book, Jones once again brings forth an instance of the horror genre being sculpted by historical realities with the film Host (2020) being similar to a traditional found-footage style, yet being recorded entirely over Zoom. Thus, while so much of people's lives were displaced onto Zoom in the wake of the pandemic, horror has duly followed the online transition as well. So much of the genre, after all, concerns frightening elements that disrupt normality in some sense. It is only natural see such a genre carry over its disruptive effects with the new normality.

Overall, this short book is notable for its interesting, though understandably cursory, ruminations on a large range of horror topics, albeit still very Western-centric. From the ghosts in Homer to the body horror running throughout Ovid's Metamorphoses to Bram Stoker's Dracula to the modern slasher genre, Jones' book aims to give a brief sampling of a vast assortment of horror elements. In that regard, it is a lovely and entertaining read that promises a useful introduction into the deeper study of horror as a genre.

[Shuhan Rizwan · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

বেশ কিছু চমৎকার আলাপ পড়া হলো।

[Z. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really excellent little critical guide to horror fiction and film. Jones does a commendable job wrangling western (well, mostly English-language) horror's hydralike accumulation of themes, preoccupations, historical trends, subgenres, and monsters into 160 readable pages, with just enough personality to keep it from dryness and an admirable unwillingness to indulge the scholar's vice of pushing one particular thesis or personalized reading at the exclusion of other valid ones. There's maybe a slight whiff of kids-these-days crankiness in the final chapter on contemporary horror, but even that doesn't get too much in the way of a solid analysis. All in all a gold-star example of what an entry in the Very Short Introductions series can and should be, and a catalyst for me to seek out more of Jones' work in the future.

[Jassmine · Rating 4 out of 5]

In these works, the thread is radically Other, emanating from the outside, from different categories of being or philosophies of existence. But running alongside this is a tradition of internal horror, in which that which we have to fear is inside us.

I am thinking about writing a Master thesis focused on marginalised horror and therefore this book seemed like a quite natural place to start, especially since I had access to the audiobook. But who am I kidding I will always take an excuse to read another Very Short Introduction, looking at those covers is just so satisfying to me...

Overall, I think this introduction was quite good. It did a lot in the limited amount of pages, but it wasn't quite what I needed. It gives quite a good chunk of the book to zombies, vampires and werewolves so if that is of interest I quite recommend the book. It also gives some space to the idea of right wing vs. left wing of horror but sadly it provides no good sources for this and doesn't really go deeper into it. I am looking for recommendations for books/articles about that and especially for books on body horror if someone has them!

Bodies, I have suggested, can be viewed as symbolic systems, sites of meaning, power, threat, and anxiety. Viewed in this way, our skin functions as a boundary, as we have seen - a vulnerable, malleable, porous, leaky border between inside and outside, self and other, a site of abjection and of pain.

This book definitely wasn't a waste of time though. I'm coming away with several good recommendations - I never before heard about I Walked With a Zombie (1943) a Caribbean rewriting of Jane Eyre that predates Wide Sargasso Sea and there is some basic secondary literature recommendations that I might give a quick look. This book also felt quite inclusive for book so short and focusing on a theme that's not inherently marginal or social justice theme, so I really DO appreciate that.

Overall, not a bad start to my searching journey, but I did hoped to get more from this.

[Steve Wiggins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although not everyone likes horror, we all have experiences of it. For some of us it becomes a kind of aesthetic, and reading about it helps us to understand a bit more about ourselves. Darryl Jones is a fairly well known writer on the subject, and the Very Short Introduction series requires no introduction. As I note elsewhere (Sects and Violence in the Ancient World), I’ve read quite a few of these and this one is one of the best.

The book covers horror as a topic before moving on to brief chapters on monsters, supernatural horror, body horror, mind horror, science and horror, and finally modern renditions of horror with some guesses as to where it may be going. The one problem with being Very Short is that topics are given one a brief treatment, but Jones invariably chooses the the right ones, it seems to me. You’ll find vampires, zombies, werewolves, Frankenstein’s monster and Mr. Hyde all hiding in here.

For those who may not like the sense of being scared, there’s nothing here to put you off. For those who’ve read a lot on horror there’s still a thing or two to learn in this brief treatment. Most VSIs are quickly read and informative. This one holds a special place for me, probably because it makes me feel less strange for liking the dark.

[Sue Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I never thought of horror as being a medium to influence you to behave differently or as a statement against something. However, much to my surprise it's all that and more ......Indigenous people's beliefs are dangerous and will end up killing you ....... if you don't lead a pious life, you will die in the hands of '____' (insert evil of choice) ......... Catholics will kill you ...... Protestants will kill you ....... people who live in the hills will kill you ....... Premarital sex will kill you ..... environmental issues will kill you ......

Well. You get the drift. Funny how you don't see it until someone points it out though.

This is a great but short book on thinking outside the box and seeing things for what they are. Certainly worth a second read and would be a great group discussion.

[Phil Livingston · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable survey of my favorite genre. Jones deftly intertwines the historical development of the genre with critical analysis. One minor complaint would be the focus on horror from the Anglosphere and its failure to address the presence of horror in comics, videos games, and music. Though he does briefly address non-Anglo horror films in the conclusory chapter.

[Louis Thomson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The introduction to this introduction is really quite excellent, examining core questions as to the nature of horror as a genre though an academic lens. Each page has several meaty ideas to grapple with; such as horror versus terror, and the role of transgression and liminality.

The chapters that follow are a bit less analytical and more historical, going through developments in different facets of the horror corpus. A little drier, though probably unavoidably so if this introduction was to cover all the ground it had to.

I can't say as to whether an absolute novice to horror would find this book useful, though I suspect they would, given that I found myself noting down books and films new to me to look into later.

The last chapter, which attempts to cover horror in the 21st century, is regrettably a bit unfocused in my opinion. The writing doesn't flow nearly so well as the rest of the book, and the afterword regarding Covid 19 seems frankly a bit rushed, and not how I would like such an otherwise engaging book to end.

[Ben Boulden · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent look at the history of horror and its cultural implications.

[lola · Rating 4 out of 5]

probably the best one of these i've read so far

[Charlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The greater part of the Western literary tradition follows, or celebrates, a faith whose own sacrificial rites have at their heart symbolic representations of torture and cannibalism, the cross and the host. A case could plausibly be made that the Western literary tradition is a tradition of horror. This may be an overstatement, but it's an argument with which any honest thinker has to engage.
- Darryl Jones, Sleeping With the Lights On [Republished as Horror: A Very Short Introduction]

A superb little volume that understands the value of contradictions. A lot of literary introductions tend to just be dull book reports that flatly summarise the narratives they should be analysing. You probably know the sort: 'The plot of X is Y. This reminds me of the plot of Z which is A. Wow, look at how the genre has changed!'

Darryl Jones does include a lot of plot summaries, but what makes the book surprising is his decision to include large portions of classical literature and the mainstream canon as expressing elements that, when repurposed in other narratives for lower class audiences, get branded derisively as 'horror' by middle- and upper-class critics. Jones is sceptical about the idea of horror as a 'genre' so much as a tendency within art towards rendering taboo, ritual, and the sublime with disquieting directness. Though he doesn't cite this directly, his approach reminded me of Lovecraft's own suggestion that the 'Weird' is never something that sustains an entire novel, but instead only appears in its uncanny perfection for brief moments within works of art, sandwiched between larger swathes of comparatively unfocused verbiage.

For this reason, I was surprised to see that one of the first tools Jones defiantly tosses out of the box is the cliched notion that horror is about the pursuit of 'catharsis', which he sees as a kind of moral dodge designed to gentrify the transgressive in art as 'actually' being a respectable purgative of our darkest drives. Instead, he pays much more attention to how horror inspires moral censoriousness, banning, and the reification of the barriers that horror transgresses, which he takes as a sign that those transgressions are what makes horror distinctive. If every age develops its own borders between what is acceptable to think, say, or present about the body, the mind, or society, then horror is going to creep in whenever artists cross those thresholds outside of the decorum of common sensibility.

This is all obviously very political, but Jones is keen to avoid cliches by showing how ambiguously protean the politics of horror can be: sometimes radical, sometimes reactionary, sometimes a guilty day-trip to the other side of your own repressed ideology. One of the more impressive character sketches he draws out of this phenomenon is the weird disjunction between Arthur Conan Doyle's fervantly pro-imperial public pronouncements with the Irish colonial anxieties expressed in the more subtle nuances of his own fiction, or the lurid conservativism of Dennis Wheatley's Satanic Panic novels that mixed sleazy condemnations of modern sexuality with lurid covers and excessive interest in the fluids he was declaiming.

There's not really a coherent through-line argument to most of this. Jones begins with an introduction to his particular understanding of horror, deliberately citing Shakespeare, bible stories, niche 1960s Marxist historical drama films and the like to demonstrate the unusual places from which horror's tentacles can stealthily emerge, before moving into a chapter about monsters that mostly focuses on the evolving class dynamics of vampires and the socio-economic anxieties illustrated by Zombie fiction.

After that we get a look at horror's representation of the occult and supernatural, linking in modernist concerns over the 'disenchantment of the world' with post Second Vatican Council (1962-65) anxieties over the theological status of Evil.

Another chapter covers horror and the body, using werewolves and Ovid as classic case studies of metamorphosis and the isolation of the body from the mind or soul's control, before tracing the evolution of body horror (he's a big fan of Cronenberg) to torture porn. The latter receives an admirably level-headed treatment as simultaneously reflecting post-9/11 anxieties over the normalisation of torture in public discourse whilst also exemplifying the uneasy co-opting of radical grindhouse transgressions into a corporately sanitised sadism, the disgusting-but-at-least-legitimately-transgressive and obscure niche becoming polished and digestibly bland for the consumption of the mainstream masses:

Many of the films that fell afoul of the 'video nasties' scandal of the 1980s were certainly disreputable or sleazy (Cannibal Holocaust, I Spit On Your Grave), but they were generally low-budget affairs, often characterized by a manic energy and a certain DIY integrity. Part of the mystique of these films was the challenge of getting to see them in the first place - they rarely had theatrical runs, and could be difficult to find in video libraries. These were films which had no desire to be mainstream. One of the most disturbing things about modern torture porn is its corporatization. The Hostel and Saw franchises were mass-distribution multiplex releases. As a Japanese client says of the torture company in Eli Roth's Hostel(2005), 'Be careful. You could spend all your money in there.'

It is difficult to know whether this is critique or celebration.

Next up we get a sensitive investigation of horror's depiction of the mind, which opens with the perceptive observation that liberalism's constant finger-wagging over the 'problematic' nature of mental health in horror media perhaps misses the more surprising possibility that horror is quite deliberately transgressing a modern taboo against marking insanity as 'Other'. His discussion of how John Carpenter, a filmmaker who elsewhere quite openly discusses his progressive intentions with regards to horror, has Donald Pleasance react to Michael Myers' inpatient therapy with such unremitting violence rather put me in mind of that pointed gag from Garth Marenghi's TerrorTome where the knock-off Dr Sam Loomis character, after raving about the implacable evil of the mentally ill patients docilely trundling out of his asylum, starts racing after them in the pouring rain, still sombrely monologuing to the reader, before abruptly blasting them with his gun.

This is followed by a wonderful overview of differing interpretations of 'The Double', particularly the queer connotations of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Tales of Terror which seem to have been elided by subsequent heterosexualisations of the character. Nevertheless, the highlight of this section is almost certainly his précis of the Psychoanalytic approach:

Both Freud and Rank suggest that the figure of the double was originally a religious one, expressive of the sense of the duality of body and soul. If our double is originally the embodiment of our soul, then it follows that an encounter with the double should portend death, that moment when body and soul are finally divided. Paradoxically, then, the double, originally an embodiment of our immortality, is also a reminder of the mortality of our own bodies. An encounter with the double is a rupture in time and space, a moment when the world of matter and the world of spirit, this life and the aftermath meet.

I'm sorry for mocking you, Psychoanalysts. I wasn't familiar with your game.

After a brief sojourn into serial killers and slashers, Jones then turns to depictions of science in horror. Mad scientists are obviously at the forefront here, though I was quite struck by his description the Promethean Myth as being one of creativity itself being an act of transgression, not just technology or the civilizing process, which I'm sure many avaunt-garde horror artists will appreciate in their own myth-making:

The Prometheus myth, then, simultaneously warns of the dangers of forbidden knowledge (the stolen fire) and insists that knowledge, creativity, and human civilization itself are all transgressive acts. In the quest for knowledge, the Promethean disregards social norms, which are the constraints (the chains) punitively enforced (the eagle).

Frankenstein: The 1818 Text is then covered, but Jones manages to avoid the cliches by focusing on the poisonously persuasive Enlightenment rhetoric of the Monster and its echo of Burkean anti-revolutionary anxiety.

Jones concludes the book on a more pessimistic bent by commenting on the increasing mainstreaming of horror in the 21st century, which he sees as blunting and appropriating its ability to radically transgress boundaries, although he points to the rapid cultural production of the internet as containing its own folkloric possibilities that may complicate (if not entirely escape) this trajectory of corporate genre gentrification.

Of particular note here is his observation that some of the most iconic, transgressive works of horror, such as H.P. Lovecraft, Matthew Gregory Lewis, Marquis de Sade, grindhouse flicks or exploitation media all emerged from the margins, and were "deliberately cheap and shoddy, an affront to aesthetic as well as moral and social norms; [they are] the product of single-minded, bloody-minded independent film-makers, or reclusive, autodidactic writers who seem to be trying to remake the world, but are really addressing only themselves, and perhaps a tiny handful of cultish devotees."

Whilst reading this book, I've been simultaneously grappling with reading the works of a Weird-Horror TTRPG writer by the name of James Edward Raggi IV that produces decidedly... complicated feelings in me, and I think that Jones' ambivalent admiration here captures something of what I'm struggling to unpick in my reaction to his writing. Raggi's stuff is offensive, ugly, grotesquely politically incorrect, probably misogynistic, and ripe with mid 2000s edginess that was already losing the culture war by the time he was publishing in the increasingly corporatised, sanitised world of 2010s TTRPG publishing. I nearly came away in tears just from reading one of his modules last night, and have felt physically nauseous whenever I remembered some of its images during idle moments at work today - and yet there is still something of that "manic energy and a certain DIY integrity" that Jones mentioned earlier that I can detect in his output - a genuine message, or perhaps even moral sensibility, underpinning these vicious little playscripts that wants the audience to understand violence as violence, cruelty as cruelty, and the unspeakable as something that is actually confronted by abyssal quantities of victims who are all so easy to ignore in their mute voicelessness throughout history.

It would be easy to sneeringly declare my moral superiority to these texts by reference to whatever staid political cliches I have in my repertoire, but Jones' book is making me wonder if that impulse to reject the transgression is in itself an affirmation of how threatening the power of that art is to my sense of self. When someone who reads and studies as much horror as me is getting queasy, defensive, and feeling the impulse to publicly wash my hands of them, perhaps that's a sign that I should be paying more attention, not less, to what is making me uncomfortable.

Whatever the result, I'm grateful for Jones' little volume giving me some tools for thinking about transgression within modern horror, rather than simply cataloguing the historical ones that are so much easier for a modern reader to swallow. After all, I can hardly snigger at my ancestors shrieking before once-sharp texts made rusty and docile by the passage of time if I then flinch at the fresh, cutting edge of horror jabbing towards my own eyes.

[Baylor Heath · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scary good.

I’ve had a growing frustration over the years with many Christian’s response to the genre of horror. I’ve encountered several generally smart and nuanced thinkers who, when it comes to horror, become simplistically reactionary and narrowly formulaic: fear = bad, so horror = bad and sinful. The person who engages with the genre must only be considered foolish, regressive, and shameful. Not only is this offensive but it underestimates what the genre is capable of. Take the (Stephen) King for example. The man is not a propagandist for evil, but instead a man of faith who is endlessly exploring the theme of good vs evil (just as classic fantasy does) through the genre of horror. Fear is an indisputably dominant human emotion (as much as an aggressively evangelical man of bravado may triumphantly claim he has never feared a thing!). The basic tropes of horror make their way into most good works of fiction as they explore fear within their characters, but the moment you expand those same tropes into an entire work it becomes something to avoid like a demonic plague? This is just narrow-minded, fundamentalist non-thinking that negates horror’s role in any good storytelling (including the Bible itself!). The genre has shown itself time and again to be uniquely poised to exposit cultural commentary, sometimes almost prophetically so! Horror films of late have, no doubt, shown themselves to have much more to say than most of the vapid and empty Marvel or Star Wars films coming out. I completely respect anyone who steers away from the genre out of preference (I steer clear of certain sub-genres!), but please, don’t do yourself the disservice of displaying your ignorance and holier-than-thou-shaming-pride by dismissing those who engage with this genre and find value in it. Anyway, I’ll step off my soap box now and actually say something about this terrific book.

Darryl Jones seems to cover it all in this “very short introduction:” vampires as metaphors for capitalism, zombies as metaphors for slavery, the role of horror’s OG (Satan), the conservative horrors of what’s “out there,” liberal horrors of “what’s in here,” artificial intelligence, films of the 2010s as expressions of post-Millennial economic anxiety, horror’s manifestations in mediums like the internet with phenomenas like Slender Man, and even the horrors of the pandemic. I’ve only just mentioned a few of the delicious spoils Jones pulls from the great works of horror. In the end, I suppose I found this as satisfying as I did because Jones extensively validates the genre and all that is capable of saying in a way I’ve been, obviously, looking for someone to do. He is able, in a myriad of ways, to answer the simple but profound question: why is something scary? It inherently takes a level of courage to answer a question like that and the answers almost always reveal something important about human nature. This is what makes horror worth our time.

[Brigitte · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my reading goals for 2022 includes reading nonfiction/theory books about the horror and crime genres in order to level up my fiction writing. This is the first one, and it provides a solid understanding of how horror functions in lit. I just thought the final chapter, an overview of horror in the 21st century, focused too much on film.

[Ken H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Earlier today I finished Darryl Jones' books, Sleeping With the Lights on: The Unsettling Story of Horror. A few hours later I sat down to follow it up with this book and...was shocked and disappointed to discover they're the exact same book. They do mention this in the copyright page, but I kind of wish they had made this connection clearer so I could have avoided double dipping on it.

[Ai-sha · Rating 4 out of 5]

A handy introduction to horror as a sum of its (Anglophonic) cultural products; and the social, political, and psychological theories seeking to explain their appeal. I am surprised that the chapter 'Horror and the Body' supplies no gender analysis of monstrous birth, despite calling upon relevant media elsewhere (Rosemary's Baby, Frankenstein, etc.) Maybe it's silly to point out something that could've been included; it's a Very Short Introduction on an expansive centuries-long tradition; of course not everything can be included. But analysis of monstrous birth as a response to the rollback of women's rights to bodily autonomy, would have lended itself nicely to other conclusions Jones draws from the post-millenial fasciation with zombies (economic and ecological powerlessness) and torture porn (the War on Terror).

[Tim Pendry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Darryl Jones gives us one of the neatest and most informative accounts of what counts as horror in his introductory chapter although the rest of the book, despite many insights, will not contain many surprises or fresh thinking for any but those with no previous knowledge of the genre.

As an 'introduction' (which is what it is supposed to be) it is solid and to be recommended but it is not without minor flaws and absences. Nevertheless, it has the virtue of clarity. Someone new to the field will get sufficient information to suggest a useful private reading or watch list.

Not everything can be covered in 'a very short introduction' but the over-emphasis on literary fiction and film with only a passing mention of British television not merely misses out horror in gaming but horror in eighteenth century poetry and some important writers.

If mention of Caitlin Kiernan, Robin Ramsey or Adam Nevill might be forgivable for reasons of space, it seems perverse not to mention Thomas Ligotti or Dan Simmons or refer to a wider range of popular literary parallels to some of the films he mentions.

He is overly dismissive of Lovecraft, picking out his racism with the same core ignorance of those who disrespect Heidegger for his Nazi experiment without looking at the man as a whole. It might be a slog but he really should read S T Joshi's 'I am Providence' before making jejune judgements.

There is also a fair degree of over-thinking at key points with the academic mind coming into play, sometimes missing the commercial and popular point with an over-emphasis on politics and a certain Adorno-derived 'snobbisme' about popular taste and desires.

There is a point where the general reader can almost predict (I am sure that an advanced AI could do this) the ideological formulations that will get trotted out whenever an academic is asked to introduce his subject to the great unwashed.

Some of the political commentary is justified to be sure and it is not, to be fair, overly obtrusive in most of the book but, when it appears, it can be over-egged and makes one realise just how ideologically conformist the academy has become over the last half century.

There is not much more to say. The final chapter on contemporary horror is the least useful as so often happens but the introduction is very good and (if you are a newcomer to the field) the bulk of the book is going to be very helpful as an initial guide so I can recommend it on those grounds.

[Dovide · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a superb introduction to the horror genre in both film and literature. Jones presents the genre as a whole, commenting on its psychological, historical, and sociopolitical roots. He runs through some of the most formative monsters, subgenres, movements, and prominent authors and texts. The introductory chapter is most certainly my highlight, which provides a neat, succinct, and very informative presentation of the genre.

I especially appreciated the investigation of the sociopolitical and historical roots of certain aspects of horror. For example, Jones offers a great breakdown of the Haitian origins of the zombie myth, showing how its birth was inextricably tied to the nation’s experience of slavery—the zombie as a mindless beast of burden, a body meant to be thoughtless and working. He then traces how George A. Romero later imbued it with contemporary characteristics like cannibalism, a permutation that came to criticize American consumerism.

The analysis of orientalism and othering in horror is also compelling, such as the image of the cannibal as a stand-in for the colonial "barbaric" subject versus the "advanced" Western imperialist.

A weakness of the work is that it is largely limited to “Western” conceptions of the genre. Jones begins by speaking of horror as a fundamental component of human art across civilizations, a notion that he returns to throughout the work. However, his analysis is devoid of any mention of Indigenous, Asian, African, or Latin American horror (save for a brief mention in the afterword of some Japanese and Hispanic works). While I’m cognizant of the severe length constraints of the format, it would have been nice to see more cultural diversity, especially given the universal nature of the genre he establishes at the outset.

[James Tester · Rating 3 out of 5]

Since their inception, "A Very Short Introduction" has become by far my most prized contemporary book series; giving just enough of the important basics of a subject for you to explore on your terms without bogging you down in too much exposition or fact checking.
This is why it feels churlish to level any real complaint that would have merit, the books themselves being almost walled against any whinging from the masses (except maybe high-brow "intellectuals" who should know better anyway). However, and maybe because Horror itself is one of my oldest loves, I have found Jones' writing on the subject to yes cover all the basic beats, but that comes with an odd sensation that a little more; be it a couple of sentences or a paragraph, could have been dedicated to the chapters. This isn't to say he doesn't run the gauntlet, for he certainly makes the effort including everything from primal human experience to existentialism and the social and policitical influences and the fear of technology, and the most imperative names that helped to shape what Horror is, the complaints from myself come because it feels like a greatest hits album. The most popular tracks selected whilst others are overlooked or just excised out as not important.
But then, like the "intellectuals" I mock, I should have put more effort into a more expensive tome if I already had foundation knowledge.
So really, it may be best to ignore my rating, for that will surely depend on your own experience/interest with the world of Horror, and this book will still sit proudly with its siblings in my collection.

[FrancescoInari · Rating 5 out of 5]

It rarely happens to me to get very involved, or even emotional, while reading non-fiction and essays. This is probably related to the fact that most of them ultimately talk about the sterile, maybe even sad, reality of the physical (and the sometimes not very distant theoretical) realm.

This was absolutely not the case. Horror (a very short introduction) is one of the most compelling, well written, passionate, mesmerizing (and many more adjectives) love letters to a genre that has accompanied humanity since its very beginning and keeps - haunting - us to this day. From The epic of Gilgamesh to Slenderman, Darryl Jones composes an almost pornographic (in terms of sheer enjoyability) analysis about the most important tropes, examples, allegories and cultural/historical consequences of horror. May it take take form of books, folk stories, movies, legends and every single representation of the subject of "scare" and "terror" Jones offers an undeniably brilliant perspective of every single, little aspect of focus (in direct and ironic contrast with the title of the book).

With an astounding 17'000 words worth of notes I gathered from this single read, this masterpiece claims its place as absolutely one of my favourite books of all times.

"Give me a sign. Like ghosts, we are slipping away from our bodily
moorings. Horror culture is beginning to reflect this."

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

The English Professor Darryl Jones published Horror: A Very Short Introduction in 2021. The book covers both literature and cinema. Each chapter of the book is on a specific theme. The book has illustrations and a section of references. The book has an index. The book has a section entitled “Further reading” (Jones 127-131). The first chapter is on monsters (Jones 22-45). The second chapter is “the occult and the supernatural” (Jones 46-62). Chapter 3 discusses “horror and the body” (Jones 63-78). Chapter 4 discusses “horror and the mind” (Jones 79-93). Chapter 5 is on “science and horror” (Jones 94-105). The last chapter is on horror in the 21st Century. Darryl Jones’s book is in conversation with literary scholar Nick Groom’s The Goth: A Very Short Introduction (Jones 7). Jones offered an explanation about why Zombies are so popular in the United States and Europe that I found convincing (Jones 39-45). That is something I always wondered about. I found it interesting that Stephen King is a bit of a philosopher when he writes about the meaning of horror, which I found interesting (Jones 9, 12). I read the book on my Kindle. I thought Darryl Jones’ book was an excellent introduction to horror, one of the best books in the series.
Works Cited:
Groom, Nick. 2012. The Gothic: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. Kindle.


The English Professor Darryl Jones published Horror: A Very Short Introduction in 2021. The book covers both literature and cinema. Each chapter of the book is on a specific theme. The book has illustrations and a section of references. The book has an index. The book has a section entitled “Further reading” (Jones 127-131). The first chapter is on monsters (Jones 22-45). The second chapter is “the occult and the supernatural” (Jones 46-62). Chapter 3 discusses “horror and the body” (Jones 63-78). Chapter 4 discusses “horror and the mind” (Jones 79-93). Chapter 5 is on “science and horror” (Jones 94-105). The last chapter is on horror in the 21st Century. Darryl Jones’s book is in conversation with literary scholar Nick Groom’s The Goth: A Very Short Introduction (Jones 7). Jones offered an explanation about why Zombies are so popular in the United States and Europe that I found convincing (Jones 39-45). That is something I always wondered about. I found it interesting that Stephen King is a bit of a philosopher when he writes about the meaning of horror, which I found interesting (Jones 9, 12). I read the book on my Kindle. I thought Darryl Jones’ book was an excellent introduction to horror, one of the best books in the series.
Works Cited:
Groom, Nick. 2012. The Gothic: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. Kindle.

[Gabriel Benitez · Rating 5 out of 5]

En español no es lo mismo Terror que Horror. El terror, la emoción resultante ante un peligro o amenaza inminente, la entendemos en literatura como el miedo resultado de un encuentro con lo desconocido, con aquello que no es como nosotros o no es humano, por lo cual los temas sobrenaturales y extraños pertenecen a esta denominación. "El exorcista" es un ejemplo de lo anterior.
En tanto el Horror es el resultado de nuestros encuentros con la parte oscura de la naturaleza humana. Las novelas e historias se asesinos en serie, como "El silencio de los corderos".
En inglés, la palabra Horror abarca ambos conceptos. Este libro de Darryl Jones no es en realidad un viaje a la literatura de Horror sino al concepto de Horror mismo y los elementos que lo conforman, que por lo general acaban siempre manifestándose en la literatura, el cine y otros medios. Por tal razón si vamos a encontrar muchas referencias a ambos, pero NO es una historia del GÉNERO de terror en sí misma. El terror en la civilización, el terror gótico, lo misterioso y lo extraño (en realidad nuestro terror y horror) los monstruos, lo oculto y lo sobrenatural, el horror y el cuerpo humano, el horror y la mente, el horror y la ciencia, el horror a final del milenio y al principio del nuevo, son lo temas que Jones toma en consideración para introducirnos al tema.
Realmente muy buen libro.

[Hannah Palmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first of the A Very Short Introduction series. This book helped me get through a reading slump post-election where I couldn’t find something to hold my attention. All the news felt like horror or the foretelling of horror, so this made sense to me to understand more about horror.

The book is laid out by subject matter, eg, Monsters (vampires and zombies), Science (mad scientists and technophobia). It covers a broad scope of horror, which is great, but not in much depth, which I would have sometimes appreciated. Luckily, there is an entire section on recommended reading for many of the topics. It also covered a great timeline, referencing stories and books from hundreds of years ago, all the way to current movies, stories, and podcasts.

I highlighted a lot of sections in this book and look forward to going back to read them!

[connie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Obviously this is incredibly condensed and doesn't quite cover all its bases, but the introduction serves as a great reference point for my dissertation.

I did find it interesting that Shirley Jackson didn't get a single nod, even when Jones discusses the haunted house trope, considering most of Jackson's work-even those that aren't explicitly horror or horror adjacent-revolve in some way around the home. Also there was no mention of Ari Aster, even after a whole breakdown of Folk Horror (Midsommar) and, again, the home (Hereditary). I know you can't expect a mention of every author/director, but Shirley Jackson and Ari Aster aren't exactly little names, ESPECIALLY Aster in recent years.

[Ronnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is exactly what the title proclaims it to be: a very short introduction to horror. It touches on a variety of different flavours of horror: Monsters, occult, body horror, psychological horror, and scientific horror, and gives a brief overview of them from a critical analysis perspective.

It is just a brief introduction, so none of the analysis goes super deep. But newbies to analyzing horror through a critical lense will find if useful, and even oldbies might find something useful in the pages. If not, it is, at least, extremely readable; it is not bogged down with academic writing, and even if you haven't read or watched everything it discusses, you can still understand the central arguments (but it's even better if you have).

[Otto Hahaa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tämä on aloittanut elämänsä ihan toisen nimisenä kirjana ja nyt on A Very Short Introduction -kirja. Oletan, että tässä välissä on sakset käyneet nips naps. Ehkäpä siksi tämä on välillä kovin luettelonomainen. Välillä taas ihan hyviä huomioita. Mutta jää vähän epäselväksi kenelle tämä on tarkoitettu: asianharrastaja tietää melkein kaiken ja aloittelija voi jäädä vain ymmälleen kun kirjoittaja viittaa johonkin hahmoon jota ei sitten selitetä mitenkään. Idea: Jos joku läheisesi/rakastettusi/alaisesi/pomosi on kiinnostunut kauhusta, mutta et itse tiedä siitä mitään, niin tällä pääsee jyvälle asiasta. Hauskahan tämä oli toki lukea, mutta välillä vähän silmäillen. Itselleni hyötyä oli huomata jotain juttuja joita en ole tullut lukeneeksi tai katsoneeksi. Ja kirjallisuusluettelosta voi bongata jotain syventävää lukemista.

Kovin anglosaksisesti painottunut, mutta onhan tämä englantilainen kirja, joten mitäpä muuta voi olettaa näinä päivinä. Ja 1800-luvun loppupuolen kauhukirjallisuuden peilaaminen brittiläisen imperiumin pelkojen kautta oli ihan jännää.

[Abby Messina · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I could give this book a 4.5, I absolutely would. This book is indeed a short, great introduction to the history and cultural implications of the horror genre in media. That being said, it's a very short introduction. So if you're looking for more in-depth thoughts on each subgenre of horror and the innermost societal anxieties that influenced and are implicated by each, you will have to do further reading. That being said, this book references a lot of media and provides a lot of further reading, so if you're not quite sure where to start on your reading journey, this book is a great jumping off point.

[Document Of Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's so difficult to encapsulate horror in the media into one short book - however Jones has done it. I would love to read a longer, more in-depth version of this book. It did a great job at capturing the history of horror, mostly in books & film, and its genres, tropes and cultural importance. Well worth the read, perfect to take on a short journey where I didn't have space in my bag for a massive book. Brilliant and profound for such a short book. The only thing I think I would change is some nod to real life horror that inspired certain books & film mentioned - but I am aware that that would make it a much thicker book and no longer a short introduction.

[JJ Powell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fun little introduction to the academic study of horror. Splitting it up into the various genres of horror was a good way to approach it, and I've added quite a few movies and books to my watching/reading lists. I wish it would've gone a little deeper into how horror affects us and why people enjoy it, in addition to the cultural factors that lead to it, but there's only so much you can expect from a book with "A Very Short Introduction" in the name. Either way, I'm glad that I read it!

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a thorough introduction and analysis of horror in books and film from how it developed to where it is now and the different broad categories such as monster horror, body horror etc. It does have a largely western emphasis but Jones does cover the increasing influence and presence of eastern horror in the modern era, including how it has been adapted (softened?) for western audiences. This is a very insightful book and despite my years of reading and watching horror, it has given me a whole new appreciation for the genre.