Queer Horror That Actually Slaps: A Watchlist

Horror and queerness have always had a complicated, fascinating relationship. Outsiders. Bodies. Transformation. The fear of being seen and the fear of being erased. The best queer horror doesn’t just include queer characters. It uses the genre to say something true. Here’s where to start.

For the Art House Lover: Bones and All (2022)

Luca Guadagnino directed this, so you already know it’s going to be beautiful and devastating. Timothée Chalamet and Taylor Russell play two young cannibals falling in love across rural America in the 1980s. The film is absolutely a metaphor for queerness, for being something the world doesn’t have a name for yet, for loving someone who exists outside every category. It’s a road movie and a love story and a horror film and it’s gorgeous. iykyk.

For the French Cinema Brain: Knife+Heart (2018)

Set in the 1970s Paris gay porn industry, Knife+Heart is a slasher film that is also a grief film. Anne (Vanessa Paradis) is a producer whose ex-girlfriend has left her, and someone is killing the men who work for her. The film is drenched in neon and sadness and is genuinely stylish in a way most American horror hasn’t figured out yet. It’s also deeply weird, which is a compliment.

For the Religious Trauma Fan: Saint Maud (2019)

Rose Glass’s debut film is a slow-burn psychological horror about a private nurse who becomes obsessed with saving the soul of her terminally ill patient. The film is about devotion, repression, and the terror of believing your desires are divine punishment. It is not explicitly a queer film, but it is a film about a woman whose inner life is consuming her, told with enormous care and dread. It builds to one of the most striking endings in recent horror. Watch it with the lights on.

For the Ghost Story Fan: The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020)

Mike Flanagan’s Netflix series is softer and sadder than its predecessor Hill House. It’s a ghost story about grief and love and the ways people haunt each other. The central romance between Dani and Jamie is one of the most genuinely beautiful sapphic love stories in recent television. The show is slow. Lean into it. The payoff is worth it. Bring a blanket and someone you trust.

For the Body Horror Connoisseur: Titane (2021)

Julia Ducournau’s Palme d’Or winner is not for everyone. A woman with a titanium plate in her skull, a car, a firefighter who has lost his son, and a story about bodies that refuse to stay inside the categories assigned to them. It is loud and strange and violent and unexpectedly tender. It is also one of the most genuinely trans-coded films of the last decade, even if it never uses that word. You will think about it for weeks.

For the Comfort Horror Mood: What We Do in the Shadows (TV Series)

Not scary, technically, but this mockumentary about vampire roommates in Staten Island is full of queer energy and deeply funny. Laszlo and Nadja are chaotic bisexual disasters. Colin Robinson is a phenomenon. Guillermo’s whole arc is a love story. It’s horror-adjacent joy and sometimes that’s what you need between the heavy stuff.

The genre has room for you. These films and shows prove it. Dim the lights and settle in.