Horror, by subgenre.
A slasher and a ghost story do not frighten the same way. Pick a subgenre to see what defines it, how it works on you, and how to rank it against everything else you have survived.
Slashers
A killer, often masked, working through a group of people one by one until someone fights back.
- SlashersA masked or hidden killer works through a cast one at a time until someone turns and fights back.tension, gore, adrenaline
- Serial KillersThe monster is a person, usually a plausible one, and the horror is how long it takes anyone to notice.dread, plausibility, unease
- Teen HorrorA young cast, a secret they share, and a killer or a curse that treats the end of adolescence as the end of everything.adrenaline, nostalgia, fun
- Splatter & GoreThe kill is the attraction: horror built around effects so excessive they turn from disgust into glee, and sometimes back.glee, disgust, spectacle
Hauntings
Ghosts, presences and haunted places, and the people who have to live with them.
- SupernaturalGhosts, demons, curses and anything else that breaks the rules of the physical world to get at the living.dread, unease, jolts
- Haunted HousesA place remembers what happened in it, and the people who move in are made to remember too.dread, unease, architecture
- GhostsThe dead who did not leave: a presence with a history, a grievance and a patience the living cannot match.grief, stillness, unease
- ParanormalThe haunting as a case: investigators, recordings, a true story on the poster, and evidence that keeps getting worse.unease, evidence, doubt
Occult & Demonic
Demons, possession, witches, cults, evil children and killer dolls: horror built on rituals and what they call up.
- DemonicThe demon is not inside anyone yet. It is in the woods, the cellar, the abbey, and it wants in.malice, jolts, blasphemy
- PossessionSomething gets inside a person and uses them, and the people who love them have to decide what is left.dread, violation, faith
- WitchcraftThe old craft is real, someone in the village or the school is practicing it, and power always has a price.dread, ritual, temptation
- OccultSomeone opened the door on purpose: rituals, deals, puzzle boxes and the neighbors who have been planning this for years.paranoia, ritual, damnation
- CultsThe community is the monster: a welcome, a belief, a ritual everyone has agreed to, and an outsider who understands too late.dread, daylight, consensus
- Evil ChildrenThe child is the threat, and everyone who should protect them is the last to believe it.unease, disbelief, taboo
- Killer DollsA face made to look alive, a body made to be held, and the moment it turns its head on its own.unease, camp, jolts
Undead
Zombies, infections, vampires and werewolves: the dead or the changed coming for the living.
- ZombiesThe dead come in numbers, and the real horror is what the living do to each other while they wait.panic, siege, despair
- InfectionNobody died and came back. They got sick, fast, and the only question is who in the room is already carrying it.panic, contagion, speed
- VampiresThe undead who need you alive a little longer: appetite, seduction and the long loneliness of not dying.seduction, melancholy, dread
- WerewolvesA person who becomes an animal on a schedule, and knows it, and cannot stop it, and will have to live with the morning.tragedy, transformation, adrenaline
Monsters
Creatures, giant monsters, sharks and animal attacks.
- MonstersSomething with teeth is loose, it is not from around here, and the film is about surviving it, or about what it means.adrenaline, awe, design
- KaijuA monster the size of a city, and the city underneath it: fear measured in blocks, not rooms.awe, scale, helplessness
- Killer SharksA fin, a stretch of open water, and the knowledge that you cannot see what is under you.suspense, exposure, adrenaline
- Animal AttackNothing supernatural, nothing from space: an animal that exists has decided you are food, and it is faster than you.suspense, panic, plausibility
Sci-Fi & Cosmic
Aliens and cosmic horror, where space or something far older than us is the threat.
Body Horror
Films where the body itself changes, mutates or comes apart.
Psychological
Horror that lives in a character's mind: paranoia, grief, obsession and not knowing what is real.
Real-World
Nothing supernatural: found footage, survival, home invasion, cannibals and torture.
- Found FootageHorror presented as recovered recordings, shot by the people it happens to, with the camera as witness.dread, panic, immersion
- SurvivalOrdinary people, cut off from help, against the land, the elements, the locals or the thing in the fog, with no rules and no rescue.panic, exhaustion, attrition
- Home InvasionStrangers at the door, then inside, with no reason you will ever be given and nowhere left that counts as safe.tension, helplessness, cruelty
- CannibalThe oldest taboo, treated as appetite: a family, a tribe, a frontier or a student who has discovered what they are hungry for.disgust, taboo, hunger
- TortureA room, a captive, a person with a plan, and a camera that does not cut away when every other form would.endurance, dread, cruelty
Comedy Horror
Horror played for laughs as well as scares, from splatter farce to vampire comedy.
Fear works differently in every subgenre.
Every film on Gasper is horror, which is what makes a scare score worth comparing. But horror is not one feeling. A slasher gets you with a jolt and a chase. A haunted house gets you with a creak and a long, slow wait. Cosmic horror barely raises its voice. When you answer which was scarier, you are weighing those feelings against each other, and that is the point: your rankings are your own.
How the head-to-heads handle it
You only ever compare a film with films you gave the same answer to “How scary was it?”, so a dread-heavy ghost story will meet slashers and body horror on the way to its place. Answer with how you felt, not how the subgenre is supposed to feel. Over a few comparisons the app finds where the film sits among everything, and the scare score falls out of that order.
Scary and good are separate
A comedy horror can sit near the bottom of your skulls and still be a film you adore. A found-footage film can terrify you and still be a rough watch. The scare score only ever answers the first question; the heart is for the second, and loved films get their own filter on your Rankings tab no matter what they scored.
Where the subgenres come from
These are the app's own 33 subgenres, the same list behind the Subgenre filter on Discover, the shelves and the taste picker. A film is placed by its TMDb keywords, so one film can sit in more than one subgenre, and the page for each says what tends to come with it.
If you scare easily
Start where the dread is gentler and the craft is high: comedy horror, haunted houses, the quieter end of supernatural. The guide to getting into horror if you scare easily has a path.
Rank what scared you.
Free on the App Store. Log a film tonight, answer which was scarier, and watch your rankings take shape.
