Knowing the Unknown Beyond: ‘Italianate’ and ‘Italian’ Horror Cinema in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

Since the year 2000, European horror cinema has undergone a major revival. After the 1990s, which saw very few European horror films made, the first fifteen years of the twenty-first century witnessed a groundswell in production from France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Serbia and the UK. Italy was also part of this ‘new wave’, though its horror films typically did not reach as wide an audience, nor experience the critical recognition, of its continental neighbours. Italian horror during this period also faced a great irony. Whereas several filmmakers from America and Europe pastiched the Italian horror boom of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s with films that were widely distributed and commercially well received, Italian directors shooting horror films either in Italy or elsewhere typically lacked access to ‘formal’ distribution (Lobato, 2012) and therefore their films were not as widely seen.