From art-house thrillers to blood-soaked blockbusters, horror has dominated screens in recent years. In 2023 and again in 2024, a record number of 55 horror films graced North American cinema screens, with many earning acclaim from critics and audiences alike. This year, scary films have accounted for 17 per cent of ticket purchases in the US and Canada, compared to just 4 per cent a decade ago. In Australia, homegrown horror productions have raked in millions at the box office. And it seems the devil is in the details. More than many other genres, horror features religion in both overt and subtle ways. Fans of the genre might recall recent films like Heretic, a psychological thriller about two Mormon missionaries in a cat-and-mouse game with a terrifying stranger. Or perhaps The First Omen, which centres on a conspiracy to bring about the birth of the Antichrist in a Catholic orphanage. Both trod well-worn paths for the genre, exploring religion, faith, and subverted spirituality. Upcoming Australian releases follow a similar path, with titles like The Ritual, The Baby in the Basket and Rapture. So, what is it about religious imagery that continues to haunt the horror genre and captivate its audiences? An ancient history Horror and spirituality have long been interwoven. "Horror is as old as we are," explains Barbara Creed, professor of screen studies at the University of Melbourne. She points to drawings made by Aboriginal people tens of thousands of years ago, which were found in a cave "described as a kind of ancient cathedral" in Victoria's Grampians National Park. "These were drawings of a monster that has always terrified Aboriginal people's dreams, the Bunyip, a creature that lived in ponds and waterways and devoured people if it could grab them," she tells ABC Radio National's God Forbid. Skip forward several millennia, and horror found its way to the public via mass media. After the invention of the printing press, horrifying imagery was soon to circulate, often linked to Christian sectarianism and morality tales. One of the first films to ever be made was The Execution of Mary Stuart (1885), which depicted the beheading of Mary Queen of Scots, the Catholic monarch of a Protestant kingdom. The horror genre was first officially named in 1931, with the release of the film adaptation of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula. In the following three decades, changing religious ideals greatly informed horror sensibilities, particularly Christian allegories about sin and demonic possession. Classic films of the 60s and 70s relied heavily on Christian imagery and leant into public hysteria over the Satanic panic — think Rosemary's Baby (1968), The Exorcist (1973) and Carrie (1976). The 80s and 90s brought in themes of divine punishment and mysticism with films like The Entity (1982), Stigmata (1999) and End of Days (1999). The preoccupation with religious iconography carried into the 2000s, as titles like The Witch (2015), Hereditary (2018) and Saint Maud (2019) marked a wave of prestige horror films with critical and commercial success. In the past few years, religious horror has delved into themes of spiritual delusion, institutional control and inherited sin, with critically acclaimed films like The Medium (2021), You Won't Be Alone (2022) and The Moogai (2024) offering fresh, often female-centred takes on faith, fear and trauma. Why we crave horror Parish priest and film scholar Father Richard Leonard says the horror genre fulfils an important function in society, particularly in times of turmoil. "I think it's very important from a psychological, spiritual, theological point of view," he says. He says religious themes in horror films offer an opportunity to explore questions about the nature of our world. "The cinema is famously a place where you can think about those things — be sutured, as they say in cinema studies — into an experience of what it's like to do that from a very safe distance." Coltan Scrivner, a research fellow at the Recreational Fear Lab at Aarhus University and psychologist at Arizona State University, adds that the structure of horror films, which usually pits "an incredibly formidable antagonist" against "a pretty vulnerable protagonist", helps train our brains for real-life threats. "One of the things that I've argued in my work is that horror taps into these anti-predation circuits of the mind," he says. "This is why, if we watch enough horror movies or hear enough horror stories, we learn how to deal with these things that are malevolent and bigger and stronger and more powerful than us. "In the long term, if you're watching scary movies or reading scary books or just engaging generally in what I've called 'scary play', what you're doing is practising regulating your arousal levels, your fear, your anxiety." In fact, Dr Scrivner's research has found that some horror fans are "dark copers", who watch scary movies for therapeutic reasons. "These are people who are telling us they don't enjoy horror for the rush; they actually enjoy it because it helps them challenge their fears, learn the limitations of what they can handle, or see how they would react in a really stressful situation," he says. Facing the devil Professor Creed says religious elements in horror films help us confront evil in its most supernatural, seductive or destructive forms. "Religion itself is designed to help people come to terms with themselves and their lives, but also with [their] darker side," she says. "The other side of religion, of course, is the devil, which is designed to frighten and terrify." Father Leonard argues that horror films and religious traditions are united by their interest in moral failure. "The Bible — and all the great texts of most religions — are [all about] … how we can get corrupted, how we can choose to do evil things," he says. While films about exorcisms, dark rituals and cults once reflected literal fears about slipping morality and satanism, they now examine more existential questions about human choices and redemption. And just because practices like exorcism are "on the decline" in real-world Christianity, "that doesn't mean that people aren't still absolutely interested in this interface between good and evil", Father Leonard says. Using religion to fight patriarchy Historically, many religious horror movies have projected misogynistic ideas, Father Leonard says. Take, for example, the infamous scene in The Exorcist in which a young girl stabs herself in the crotch with a crucifix. "Religion's relationship to women's bodies has been appalling, and we can start to see how that's worked its way out into this genre, that women need to be suppressed," he says. "The male-dominant work in the genre is about controlling women's bodies and seeing them as an enormous threat to their own power." Professor Creed has written extensively on "feminist new-wave horror", a tranche of horror movies directed by women which centre not just on female characters, but "the monstrous feminine". "It's the female protagonists who are, in a sense, the monsters of the film, but they're on a journey," she says. "They usually emerge at the other end transformed in some kind of way, and usually this journey is quite intimate and personal. So it's a whole new approach to horror, and I think it's really important." She points to Titane (2021), an art-house horror film by French director Julia Ducournau about a woman who has sex with a car. "It's got a lot of Christian themes, it's a very religious film," she says. "But it explores the idea of redemption through the grotesque." Embracing old tropes From gory exorcisms to possessed nuns, the horror genre is known for its well-worn tropes. Dr Scrivner says this is no accident, though it may frustrate film critics. "You see the same storylines, the same mistakes that the characters make, the same tropes over and over," he says. "I think that the reason that we see that is that those tropes tap into something universal and common to humans, something that each generation has to learn on their own. "Horror, in some ways, consistently reminds us of what not to do in the face of danger. Don't split up from your group. Don't go into the dark forest by yourself. Don't investigate that bump in the night." Father Leonard says that tropes don't necessarily take away from a film's power to scare. "I can be as blasé as I like about the horror genre, and I can still jump out of my seat at a film at a surprise I didn't see coming," he says. "I think that captures something of the human spirit … We're trying to get ready for that unpredictable moment."