No Hope, Just Vibes: The Bleak Soul of Gen Z Horror
'Bring Her Back' and the Rise of Hopelessness in Modern Horror
In Bring Her Back, two orphaned siblings are placed with a seemingly kind foster mother who, as it turns out, is orchestrating a soul-transfer ritual to resurrect her dead daughter. There's cannibalism. There's possession. A kid vomits up bone fragments. No one is saved. The world is not set right. It just... ends.
What’s more unsettling than the horror itself is how normal this feels now. Gen Z horror doesn’t build toward catharsis, triumph, or even resolution—it circles the drain. These stories don’t ask, "Will they make it out alive?" but rather, "What does 'alive' even mean anymore?"
If the horror of the past was about surviving the monster, today’s horror is about realizing there’s nothing left to survive for. The monster’s already inside. The rot has spread. You’re just trying to make peace with it before it consumes you or someone you love.
The Death of the Final Girl Myth
Once upon a time, Laurie Strode fought back. Sidney Prescott outsmarted Ghostface. Survivors walked away—bloodied but whole. In those stories, horror was a trial to be overcome. You earned your scars.
Now? Piper, the teenage girl at the center of Bring Her Back, might physically escape. But she doesn’t win. She’s not triumphant. She’s not even intact. The system that was supposed to protect her failed. Her brother—who begins the film as the lead character— is killed horrifically and unceremoniously.
It echoes the ending of Talk to Me, where Mia doesn’t survive the haunting—she becomes part of it. In Bodies Bodies Bodies, every character is too wrapped up in ego and paranoia to make it out alive.
Gen Z horror doesn’t believe in heroes. It believes in damage control, at best.
Raised on Collapse: Why This Feels So Familiar
Gen Z didn’t grow up in the shadow of the apocalypse—they grew up in it. Columbine, 9/11, financial collapse, climate anxiety, TikTok videos of police brutality, a pandemic—all backdropped by adults telling them it’ll all work out while visibly cracking under pressure.
Bring Her Back isn’t a cautionary tale. It’s a mirror. The idea that kids are left to fend for themselves while adults lose themselves to grief, delusion, and obsession? That’s not fantasy—it’s Tuesday.
Laura, the foster mom, isn’t a caricature of evil. She’s a portrait of grief gone septic. She thinks she's helping. She needs to believe she's helping. That’s what makes her terrifying. She’s the adult who weaponizes her pain, justifying anything in the name of healing her own wound.
The bleakness in Bring Her Back doesn’t come from demons—it comes from recognizing the emotional math of living in a broken world.
Ghostwritten by Older Siblings: Who’s Really Telling These Stories?
Here’s the twist: most of the horror films that feel deeply Gen Z—emotionally accurate, culturally fluent, aesthetically specific—aren’t actually made by Gen Z creators. They’re made by their older siblings.
The Philippou brothers (Talk to Me) are millennials. The team behind Bodies Bodies Bodies? Also millennials. Kyle Edward Ball (Skinamarink)? Born in 1991. These creators have aged just far enough out of the generational moment to observe it clearly without drowning in it.
This isn’t unusual. It takes time to gain funding, mentorship, and access to filmmaking resources. The art that defines a generation is often created by those who’ve just left it behind. Think of how John Hughes (born in the ‘50s) defined '80s teen life, or how Larry Clark captured Gen X alienation in Kids, at age 52.
What we’re witnessing is a kind of empathic hindsight. These millennial creators aren’t fully in Gen Z’s moment, but they’re close enough to remember what it felt like—and far enough to shape it into art.
So when you watch Bring Her Back, and it hits like an emotional gut-punch tailored for the burnout generation, remember: it’s generational storytelling filtered through the eyes of those who barely made it out.
The Aesthetics of Emotional Numbness
Bring Her Back isn’t shot like a traditional horror film. There are no overblown music stings, no sudden bursts of violence. The horror lives in the quiet. In the sterile lighting. In the moments that hold for a second too long.
Like Skinamarink, it uses empty spaces and droning silence to mimic the sensation of dissociation. The characters don’t scream—they go blank. They freeze. They accept.
Even the gore—when it comes—isn’t shocking. It’s numbing. It feels inevitable, like a clock ticking down.
This isn’t horror that jolts. It’s horror that mirrors emotional shutdown.
No Monsters, Just Grief in a Ritual Mask
The ritual at the center of Bring Her Back isn’t about magic—it’s about denial. Laura isn’t summoning a demon. She’s summoning the version of reality she can still live with. She’s clinging to a corpse because letting go would mean admitting Cathy is truly gone.
The monster is grief with a script.
You see it in Talk to Me, too—Mia clings to the ghost of her mother, even as it leads her down a self-destructive path. The horror isn’t that the dead speak. It’s that we keep listening, even when it’s killing us.
Even Oliver—the boy who eats Cathy’s remains—isn’t a villain. He’s a vessel. A kid caught in a war he didn’t start, shaped by the damage done before he ever had a say.
Gen Z horror trades monsters for metaphor. The evil isn’t a creature. It’s the failure to let go.
Why This Horror Is Comforting (To the Right Audience)
Here’s the twist: Bring Her Back may be horrifying, but to a Gen Z audience, it’s also comforting. Not because it offers hope, but because it doesn’t pretend.
It doesn’t sugarcoat the aftermath. It doesn’t pretend healing is easy, or even possible. It doesn’t lie about who gets protected and who gets sacrificed. And in a world that so often does just that, honesty—however bleak—is a balm.
Older generations often call this wave of horror "too depressing" or "nihilistic." But to many young viewers, these stories don’t feel like surrender. They feel like recognition—a quiet nod from the genre that usually shouts.
This horror isn’t here to make you feel better. It’s here to say, you’re not the only one who feels like this.
The Genre That Gave Up (For a Reason)
Bring Her Back doesn’t offer closure. It doesn’t leave the door open for a sequel or redemption. But in that, it feels honest in a way few films dare to be.
It doesn’t scream "everything is doomed!"
It whispers, "I know you already think that."
This is horror in the age of burnout, disillusionment, and infinite scroll. It’s not here to pump your adrenaline. It’s here to sit beside you in the dark and say nothing.
And sometimes, that’s precisely what we need.
What About You?
What recent horror films hit you the hardest, not because they were scary, but because they felt true? Drop your favorites in the comments, or tell me the scene that made you go, “God, that’s too real.”
As an older sibling to a Gen Z sister, this is how we view and talk about the world together. Glad to see you recognizing the pattern 😂 great post, Ryan!