The biggest jump-scare the film industry has had in 2025? The return of horror as a main player at the UK box office. As a genre, it has impressively outperformed previous years (a 22% year-on-year increase for the UK and Irish box office: \u00a383,766,086 in 2025, compared with \u00a368,612,395 in 2024).<\/p>\n
\u201cLast year, no horror film reached \u00a310m at the UK or Irish box office. This year, five films have,\u201d says Charles Gant, box office editor of Screen International. The big hits of the year \u2013 Weapons<\/a> (\u00a311.4m), Sinners<\/a> (\u00a316.2m), The Conjuring Last Rites (\u00a314.98m) and 28 Years Later<\/a> (\u00a315.54m) \u2013 have all hung about the multiplexes and in the public consciousness. Although much of the industry commentary focuses on the singular brilliance of Zac Cregger\u2019s Weapons and Ryan Coogler\u2019s postmodern epic Sinners, their successes indicate something is shifting between audiences and the genre.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve heard people say, \u2018Even if you don\u2019t like horror this is a film you need to see,\u2019\u201d says Laura Wilson, head of acquisition at distributor Altitude. \u201cFilms like Weapons and Sinners<\/a> play with genre and structure to create something completely different, and that speaks to an audience in a different way.\u201d<\/p>\n But beyond artistic merit, the consistent popularity of spooky films this year suggests they are giving cinemagoers something that\u2019s much needed: catharsis. \u201cRight now, there\u2019s a lot of anger, fear and division that\u2019s being reflected in cinema,\u201d says Mike Muncer, host of The Evolution of Horror<\/a> podcast.<\/p>\n Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Alfie Williams in 28 Years Later, one of the big horror hits of 2025. Photograph: Miya Mizuno<\/p>\n \u201cHorror films are great at playing into people\u2019s anxieties, while at the same time exaggerating them. So you forget about your day-to-day anxieties and focus on the monster on the screen,\u201d says Christopher Frayling, author of Vampire Cinema and Frankenstein: The First 200 Years. Against a real-world news cycle of Gaza, Ice raids, the rise of the far right and climate catastrophe, witches, zombies and vengeful spirits resonate a bit differently with filmgoers. \u201cI read somewhere that the success of vampire movies is linked to economically depressed times,\u201d says Lola Kirke, one of the stars of Sinners. \u201cIt\u2019s the idea that capitalism sucks the life out of people.\u201d<\/p>\n Since the early days of cinema, social unrest has influenced the genre. Frayling points to the boom of German expressionism after the first world war and the chaotic atmosphere of the early Weimar Republic, with films such as The Cabinet of Dr Caligari and Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, followed by the 1930s depression and Universal Studios\u2019 Frankenstein and The Wolfman. \u201cThe classic example is Dracula: you get this invasion of Britain by someone from eastern Europe who then causes this infection that gets spread in all sorts of ways and threatens the Anglo-Saxon heroes,\u201d says Frayling. \u201cSo it reflects a lot of anxieties around immigration.\u201d<\/p>\n The Cabinet of Dr Caligari from 1920 reflected social unrest following the first world war. Photograph: History Archive\/REX\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n The boogeyman of immigration influenced the recently released folk horror The Severed Sun<\/a>. Its writer-director Dean Puckett explains: \u201cI wanted to explore ideas around the rise of populism. Firstly, slogans like \u2018Let\u2019s Make Britain Great Again\u2019, that harken back to some fantasy time when things were \u2018better\u2019, but only if you were a rich white man. Secondly, the idea that you could be with someone you know and then suddenly they blurt out something round the dinner table or in a Facebook post and you\u2019re like, \u2018Where did that come from?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Arguably, the current era of acclaimed, socially switched-on horror began with Jordan Peele\u2019s brilliant satire Get Out<\/a> (2017), released a year after Trump\u2019s first term. It ushered in a new wave of horror auteurs, including the likes of Ari Aster, Osgood Perkins and the Philippou brothers. \u201cIt was a hugely exciting time,\u201d says Alice Lowe, whose film Prevenge<\/a> (2016), about a murderous foetus, was one of the era\u2019s tentpole movies. \u201cI think it was the beginning of an era when people were opening up to doing a really bonkers horror film which had arthouse aspirations.\u201d Lowe, who is writing a new horror original adds: \u201cOver 10 years, audiences\u2019 minds have been opening up to much more of that.\u201d<\/p>\n Jordan Peele\u2019s 2017 satire Get Out paved the way for a new era of socially aware horror. Photograph: Justin Lubin\/PA<\/p>\n At the same time, there has been a reconsideration of the genre\u2019s less celebrated output. Earlier this year, the Nickel Cinema opened in Clerkenwell, London, showing underground films such as The Greasy Strangler, The Fall of the House of Usher and the 1989 remake of Dr Caligari. The re-appreciation of this \u201crough and rowdy\u201d genre is, according to Nickel Cinema founder Dominic Hicks, a direct reaction to the algorithmic content pumped out at the box office. \u201cIt\u2019s a reaction to the sanitised product that\u2019s coming out of Hollywood. You have a film scene that\u2019s more tepid and more predictable. A lot of the Marvel and Netflix films are very similar,\u201d he says. \u201cIn contrast [the films shown at the Nickel Cinema] are a bit broken. It\u2019s like they\u2019ve erupted out of someone\u2019s subconscious and been planted out there without corporate interference.\u201d<\/p>\n Horror films continue to upset the establishment. \u201cThey have this strange ability to seem old fashioned and up to the minute, both at the same time,\u201d Frayling says. Alongside the re-emergence of the mad scientist trope (two adaptations of Mary Shelley\u2019s Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus are imminent), he predicts we will see horror films in 2026 and 2027 reacting to our current anxieties: about AI\u2019s dominance in the near future and \u201cvampires living in the Trump tower\u201d.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, \u201cJesus horror\u201d The Carpenter\u2019s Son \u2013 which tells the story of Mary and Joseph\u2019s struggles after Jesus\u2019s birth, and stars Nicolas Cage and FKA twigs as the holy parents \u2013 is set for release later this year, and will certainly send a ripple through the Christian right in the US. Puckett is already hard at work on his next film. \u201cIt\u2019s a short horror film based on the time a Reform MP came to our door and chatted to us,\u201d he says. Its title? \u201cIt\u2019s called Fuck Face.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The biggest jump-scare the film industry has had in 2025? 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