Splatter: horror where the gore is the point
Splatternoun
Splatter is horror in which graphic, often deliberately excessive gore is the main attraction rather than a side effect of the story.
Splatter is horror that puts the gore front and center. Not violence that happens to be graphic, but violence staged as spectacle, often with a wink, where the question is not whether someone dies but how inventively.
Where it comes from
Herschell Gordon Lewis started it with Blood Feast (1963), a film with no idea beyond showing what other films cut away from. George A. Romero gave the word currency describing Dawn of the Dead (1978), and the 1980s made it a movement: Tom Savini's effects, The Evil Dead (1981), Re-Animator (1985), and Peter Jackson's Braindead (1992), which ends with a lawnmower and is still the high-water mark for volume. Japanese splatter (Tokyo Gore Police, 2008) took it into the absurd. Terrifier (2016) and its sequels brought the form back to multiplexes with a clown and a bone saw.
Splatter and body horror share a makeup trailer and little else. Body horror wants you to feel the change in your own flesh. Splatter wants you to laugh, groan, and ask how they did it.
Why it matters
Splatter is the subgenre most honest about horror as entertainment. It is also the one that most depends on craft: a bad splatter film is dull, and a good one is a showcase for practical effects that computer graphics still cannot match for weight. It has a long relationship with censorship, from the British "video nasties" list of the 1980s onward, which is part of why its fans are so loyal.
In Gasper
Splatter & Gore is a Discover shelf resolved from TMDb keywords, next to Torture and Cannibal. On rankings it collects Gross above all, with Disturbing and Rewatchable close behind. It is the subgenre that most clearly separates scare from love on Gasper: in the "Which was scarier?" head-to-head, splatter films usually land low for everyone but the most squeamish, while the heart (Loved) gets a lot of use. A film with a modest Community Scare and a high percentage who loved it is very often a splatter film, and that pairing describes the subgenre better than any single score could.
Questions people ask
Who coined the term splatter?
George A. Romero, describing Dawn of the Dead (1978). John McCarty's 1984 book Splatter Movies spread it.
Is splatter the same as torture porn?
No. Torture films like Saw and Hostel are grim and serious. Splatter is usually gleeful, often funny, and proud of its effects.
Is splatter scary?
Rarely, in the dread sense. It is physical and loud. Many fans love it without ranking it high on scary, which is exactly what the Loved heart is for.
Go deeper
- FeatureSubgenre browsingThirty-three subgenre shelves, from Slashers to Cosmic Horror, resolved from TMDb keywords.
- GuideThe Horror Marathon Guide: Pacing a Night of ScaresPlan a horror marathon that lands: order films by subgenre and intensity, copy a sample four-film night and rank each film in the break after it
Related terms
- Body horrorBody horror is horror in which the human body itself transforms, mutates, decays or betrays its owner, often in graphic detail.
- Cosmic horrorCosmic horror is horror built on the dread of forces vast and indifferent to humanity, whose true nature cannot be understood or survived.
- Folk horrorFolk horror is horror rooted in rural landscapes, old beliefs and isolated communities that turn on an outsider or one of their own.
- Found footageFound footage is horror presented as real recordings discovered after the fact, shot from the characters' own cameras.
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