Horror is a genre that viewers love to classify and categorize. Oftentimes it can be intellectually rewarding to recognize trends and ideas that link certain kinds of films together — whether it be body horror, slashers, “elevated” horror — but sometimes it can be a rigid way of engaging with a work that might be too broad or too hyper-specific to pin down.
Already there are conversations grouping together the success of movies like Obsession and Backrooms to the nebulous concept of Gen Z horror, and there’s a cynical inclination to ask whether it’s motivated by Hollywood’s desire to identify a marketable niche by which to profit off how well-received those movies were with younger audiences. It’d be easy to assume that the success of those movies can be boiled down to a simple formula, a single answer that will unlock an easy path to perpetual buzz and untold riches. But as proved by It Ends, a brisk, youthful-minded indie horror flick that has fought tooth and nail to get to theaters, the genre bucks simple classification and easy answers as hard as the increasingly incomprehensible world around us.
