| Title | Description |
|---|---|
| Anthologies | Works containing narrative material that's subdivided into a series of self-contained segments of approximately thirty minutes each. |
| Arthropods | Stories characterized by a significant and/or menacing presence of hexapods, crustaceans, chelicerates, myriapods, and similar insectoid creatures. |
| Barbarians | Films embodying barbarian stereotypes: crudely clothed men, courageous warriors, inhospitable lands fraught with hidden dangers. |
| Batty Old Dames | Shocking depictions of mentally unstable and/or psychopathic older women, generally played by iconic actresses towards the end of their careers. |
| Below Surface | The alluring world under the sea or below the earth's surface: oceanic trenches, submerged cities, deep caverns, remote lands inside our planet. |
| Blob | An amorphous mass with a gelatinous consistency eager to engulf and digest everything it encounters in its sluggish but inexorable advance. |
| Body Horror | The human body at the center of cinematic reflection: deformities, transformations, somatic deteriorations, cellular alterations, mysterious organs. |
| Botanical Fiction | Sci-fi horror meets the plant kingdom: Films featuring carnivorous plants, rapist trees, mutant ferns, and similar chlorophyll-based monstrosities. |
| Brainwashing | Coercive persuasion employing specific conditioning techniques designed to manipulate the subject's values, beliefs, and conduct. |
| Cannibalism | Man eats man: stories focusing on episodes of human cannibalism, people engaged in anthropophagy. |
| Clown | Films featuring clowns, acrobats, mimes and court jesters with questionable or devious traits/conduct. |
| Colossal | Films characterized by an ample budget with majestic sets, extravagant SFX, an impressive cast, and a robust marketing campaign. |
| Cosmic Horror | Lovecraftian horror: a world obscured by unfathomable monstrosities whose nature lies beyond the comprehension of human intellect. |
| Creatures | Wonders of the animal kingdom: fantastical organisms, mysterious cryptids, beings inspired by mythology, bizarre denizens of medieval bestiaries. |
| Creepy Kids | Disconcerting children with evil intentions who engage in cruel, violent, or perverted behavior to deliberately make others suffer or even kill them. |
| Cult | Groups dominated by charismatic leaders embracing esoteric dogma and magical/astrological rituals in a context rife with paranoia and fanaticism. |
| Cyberpunk | A hypertechnological and transhumanist future, a depersonalized society dominated by the inscrutable machinations of powerful multinationals. |
| Dark Tale | Stories focusing on children/teens, drawing inspiration from the world of fairy tales and accentuating their dark side and penchant for horror. |
| Demon | Films characterized by the presence of demonic entities: devils, Mephistophelian beings, demons from the Far East, creatures from Greek mythology. |
| Dieselpunk | Retro-futuristic sci-fi focusing on fictional advancements in diesel-based technologies within a context evoking the interwar period. |
| Disaster Movie | Plots focusing on natural disasters: atmospheric degradation, asteroid impacts, volcanoes, tsunamis, glaciations, earthquakes, etc. |
| Djinn | Various Middle Eastern genies (ghūl, ʿafārīt, ʿāmir) and similar supernatural beings from European folklore (gnomes, goblins, Icelandic trolls)... |
| Dolls | Films characterized by the presence of dolls, puppets, mannequins, anthropomorphic toys, or other items designed to resemble human beings. |
| Doppelgänger | Physical and/or mental duplicates: multiple personalities, evil twins, space-time alter egos, shape-shifters, clones/somatic copies. |
| Dystopia | Oppressive scenarios in which contemporary sociopolitical elements are extrapolated into worst-case scenarios that serve as cautionary tales. |
| Ecology | Deforestation, pollution, destruction of ecosystems: films that underscore human irresponsibility regarding the environment. |
| Exploitation | Low-budget films that go all in on sensationalism and lurid or politically incorrect content: violence, sex, and stereotypes galore... |
| Expressionism | The emotional exaggeration of reality: estranged, mysterious characters wandering amidst shadowy sets with wildly unrealistic designs. |
| Extraterrestrial | Films characterized by the presence - sometimes indirect - of lifeforms whose origins lie outside the biosphere of planet Earth. |
| Folk Horror | Ancestral ceremonies and rituals, cults practiced by mysterious rural communities, obscure beliefs arising from traditions lost in time. |
| Freaks | Individuals with serious physical deformities or abnormalities, including freaks of nature, sideshow freaks, mutants, monstrosities. |
| Ghosts | Films featuring restless spirits, spectral apparitions, astral presences, ghosts of animals, phantoms, poltergeists, wills-o'-the-wisp. |
| Giants | Unnaturally large or giant-sized organisms, including those subjected to any process that causes an extraordinary increase in their physical size. |
| Gothic | Bleak films set in dusty castles, gloomy basements and foreboding cemeteries, often populated by spectral entities and vampires. |
| Haunted Houses | Chill-inducing haunted houses: isolated hovels, colonial manors, forest chalets, Gothic castles, grand urban buildings, suburban apartment complexes. |
| High Seas | Films of a (sci-fi) horror persuasion, generally set on board boats, ships, or similar means of transport amidst boundless stretches of water. |
| Hospital | Hospitals, medical centers, outpatient clinics: films with a health-care setting or those otherwise focusing on a medical theme. |
| Infection | Films which assign an important role to infectious diseases and contagions: microparasites, mysterious diseases, catastrophic pandemics, etc. |
| Invasion | Films depicting the large-scale incursion of undesirable entities: extraterrestrial organisms, invasive species, supernatural horrors, revenants, etc. |
| Killer Animals | They run, fly, crawl, and pounce... and they want us dead! Enraged - and often biologically mutated - creatures hot on the heels of their human prey. |
| Killer Hand | Revolt of the upper limbs: amputated, detached, or possessed hands... all sharing a disturbing autonomy as well as a nasty personality. |
| Lost World | Action/adventure films characterized by the presence of hostile, isolated settings, often populated by fearsome prehistoric creatures. |
| Lycanthropy | Films featuring bloodthirsty lycanthropes, werewolves, "loups-garous", and man-eating beasts whose appearance resembles that of a large wolf. |
| Mad Doctor | Films featuring mad scientists, obsessed doctors, eccentric inventors, geniuses totally absorbed in their work. |
| Madness | Habitual denizens of mental hospitals, individuals torn by mental illness, psychotics, sociopaths, lunatics of every stripe. |
| Mask | Characters whose faces are masked, covered, heavily made up; individuals wearing costumes or disguises to obscure their identities. |
| Metacinema | Films which consciously reflect on their own role, production, and significance through the use of self-referential scenes. |
| Miniaturization | Characters affected by any process of a fantasy or sci-fi nature resulting in a significant reduction of their physical size. |
| Mummy | Mummies wrapped in bandages, embalmed corpses, shriveled and desiccated cadavers that come back to life, animated by destructive urges. |
| Mutations | Films featuring individuals who undergo significant psychophysical changes after exposure to mutagens or being subjected to experimentation. |
| Nightmares | Movies featuring agitated sleep and parasomnias, with particular attention placed on terrifying dreams or dreams that portend foreboding events. |
| Paranoia | Machinations orchestrated by dark, mysterious entities, conspiracies large and small, devious invasions: Real or the products of disturbed minds? |
| Paraphilias | Abnormal sexual impulses: pathologically intense erotic desires or behaviors, particularly involving inanimate objects or non-consenting individuals. |
| Parapsychology | Psychic powers and other paranormal phenomena: clairvoyance/precognition, telekinesis/telepathy, extrasensory perception, reincarnation, etc. |
| Possession | Films in which an individual's body is partially or totally occupied by one or more entities able to govern the individual's thoughts and actions. |
| Post Apocalyptic | Civilization has collapsed and survivors are left fighting an uphill battle to save whatever they can as they set out to rebuild society. |
| Pregnancy | Sui generis inseminations, extraordinary pregnancies, expectant mothers destined to give birth to offspring apparently from the pages of a bestiary. |
| Prestige | Movies characterized by the presence of magicians, mentalists, hypnotists, charlatans, and other "professional" illusionists. |
| Primitive | Films characterized by the presence of prehistoric populations, cavemen, hairy apemen, paleolithic troglodytes, etc. |
| Radioactivity | Films dealing with radioactivity, the process by which unstable atomic nuclei emit energetic particles which can cause severe biological consequences. |
| Rape & Revenge | Films in which the protagonist plots and takes revenge on those responsible for raping her, generally a group of lowlifes. |
| Reality Crisis | The objectivity of reality itself collapses, everyday certainties begin to waver, the familiar world appears altered, artificial, substituted... |
| Road Movie | Films whose events occur mainly "on the road", with insane drivers, possessed vehicles, psychopathic hitchhikers, desolate, isolated landscapes. |
| Robot | Films featuring robots and other artificial organisms: cyborgs, replicants, androids, "positronic brains", futuristic computers. |
| Scarecrow | Films featuring pitchfork-wielding scarecrows, crude dummies who spring to life and go on murderous rampages, human killers dressed as scarecrows. |
| Seance | Seances and the like: levitating furniture, Ouija boards and planchettes, trances and hands joined in a circle, bizarre hypnotic regressions. |
| Serial Killer | Horror-tinged films featuring serial killers: compulsive individuals who murder with regularity, generally using a recurrent modus operandi. |
| Siege | Fierce surround-and-attack action conducted by an overwhelming aggressor against a handful of characters determined to fight back. |
| Slasher | Films focusing on the evil (and gory) deeds carried out by a homicidal maniac wielding an edged/bladed weapon such as a knife, razor blade, axe, etc. |
| Sociopolitical | Films which take advantage of the allegorical potential inherent in genre cinema to address pressing social and/or political issues. |
| Sorority | Girls, teens, and young women belonging to groups or organizations who face terrible menace and mortal peril. |
| Space | Movies set - partially or entirely - in extraterrestrial locales, regardless of how physically distant they may be from our own planet. |
| Splatter | Films characterized by a marked presence of Grand Guignol SFX: severed limbs, eviscerated bodies, quivering entrails, dismemberments, spurting blood. |
| Steampunk | Sci-fi set in a 19th century characterized by futuristic technological developments based on steam and electrical power. |
| Surrealism | Experimental works which reject rationalism and convention to instead embrace the oneiric realm and unconscious thought processes. |
| Time | Films where the temporal element plays a significant role: time machines, chronoscopes, spacetime distortions, wormholes, etc. |
| Trash | Films characterized by low technical/artistic quality, amateurish Z movies, "So Bad It's Good" movies, campy cult classics, Troma guilty pleasures. |
| Underground | Independent horror films made for the sake of excess: heightened violence, perverse sex, overabundance of scenes provoking discomfort or disgust, etc. |
| Urban | A peculiar mix of sci-fi/horror elements infused in an urban context populated by creatures drawn from folklore or literary tradition. |
| Vampirism | Vampires & Co.: Creatures who are wont to feed on others' vital essence (generally blood) in order to prolong their own unnatural existence. |
| Voodoo | (Stereo)typical situations and characters in a voodoo context: ritual possessions, ruthless bokors, stolen souls, gris-gris, potions, dolls, etc. |
| Wax | Films in which wax plays a significant role, most often constituting the tool the antagonist uses to realize his insane objectives. |
| Witchcraft | Practices of a magical or ritualistic nature performed by experts in black magic with the intent to harm others or to celebrate the forces of Evil. |
| Zombie | Films focusing on the figure of the living dead, or, if inspired by Haitian folklore, on the abulic victims of a bokor priest. |