Recent releases like Terrifier 3 show that the business of scaring cinema audiences is in rude health. But such horror flicks are standing on the blood-soaked shoulders of giants

How do you like your horror? Elevated arthouse or sleazy splatter? Comfortably cliched or disturbingly groundbreaking? Disgustingly gruesome or so subtle you can’t work out why you’re uneasy? Do you limit your consumption of horror films to Halloween but steer clear the rest of the year? Or are you a horror fiend who just can’t get enough of it, whatever the season?

The good news is that the horror genre has been going strong for more than a century, so you’ll never run out of films to scare you. From early silents Le Manoir du diable (1896) and The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920) to this year’s genuinely gruesome slasher hit Terrifier 3 – which recently knocked Joker: Folie à Deux off the top of the US box office – there has never been any shortage of audiences lining up to be chilled, unsettled or downright freaked out. Just look at this year’s robust box office on Abigail, Immaculate and Longlegs, as well as artier offerings such as The Substance. The future of cinema, it seems, is horror. And not just in terms of profit, but in visual imagination, envelope-pushing and audience enjoyment.