HORROR IS SO G4Y: Letter From the Editor

Here we are again. For the fourth year in a row, Autostraddle will spend the month of October publishing sticky, squelchy, bloody good essays by queer and trans writers about horror movies. Most of those movies we write about are not explicitly or obviously queer in nature, but from them we will excavate hidden meanings and metaphors. In addition to those personal essays, we’ll also present you with some more service-driven articles that do highlight explicitly queer works of horror, including lists of books, films, and shows to lose yourself in during this fearsome month.

Horror Is So Gay (dubbed HORROR IS SO G4Y in this fourth year) is hands down my favorite project I’ve launched since becoming Autostraddle’s Managing Editor in 2021. Through these four years, we’ve published some incredible essays, and I encourage you to dig through the archives in addition to jumping into the new work we’ll publish this month. There is never an explicit theme to the series, but every year, it seems as if one emerges organically. This year, unsurprisingly, HORROR IS SO G4Y is greatly informed by the real-world horrors we’re writing these pieces from within. Horror movies so often act as warning beacons, signaling the dangers of real-life threats from AI to capitalism to state-sanctioned violence. What can we learn from those warnings? What do Final Girls teach us about the art and urgency of survival?

We’re also going to have fun with this series, I promise. We always do, even as we’re wading through the muck of monstrous stories. We hope you’ll discover a new horror recommendation, weigh in with your favorites, and briefly immersive yourself in something other than The Horrors™. As I wrote in my first introduction to this series, “horror is quite possibly the queerest genre” — historically so, not just in recent years. This series is a celebration and dissection of that.

Let’s start with a conversation in the comments, inspired by Ghostface:

What’s your favorite scary movie?

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Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya is the managing editor of Autostraddle and a lesbian writer of essays, fiction, and pop culture criticism living in Orlando. She is the former managing editor of TriQuarterly, and her short stories appear in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Joyland, Catapult, The Offing, The Rumpus, Cake Zine, and more. Some of her pop culture writing can be found at The AV Club, Vulture, The Cut, and others. When she is not writing, editing, or reading, she is probably playing tennis. You can follow her on Twitter or Instagram and learn more about her work on her website.

Kayla has written 1101 articles for us.

30 Comments

  1. i recently told someone i could not pick a favorite scary movie but have a “big three” horror movies that i feel explain me/my tastes when combined and they are Jaws, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Jennifer’s Body. the person i told this was like “you should write an essay about that” which is MY LINE 😫

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  2. There are so many I love but the one that’s my must see, the foundational text….gotta be Jaws! Second would be An American Werewolf in London, my first intro to body horror! The effects really are beyond.

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  3. I’ve only been watching horror for a year (this genre exploration made possible by anxiety medication!) and I don’t know if I could pick a favorite. Sinners floored me in the best way and is the first movie I’ve seen multiple times in theaters since 2016, so that’s high up there. I think of other horror movies I’ve watched this last year, Black Christmas and The Exorcist have stuck with me the most, which I think is interesting – they were both formative texts for a lot of horror of the last fifty years, and to me, still remain top notch even with all the fantastic movies that have come after, and I found both pretty haunting. For sheer re-watchability, I’d go Alien or Jennifer’s Body.

    I’m so excited to engage with this series as someone who actually watches the genre now!

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    • Ooh, no idea what my overall favorite is, I would have to spend some time with a list, but my favorite recent one is Talk to Me. I loved the creator’s second, Bring Her Back, from this year, but the body horror was right on the line of too much for me, whereas I thought Talk To Me was flawless.

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    • there’s a REALLY good essay about The Exorcist in the queer horror essay anthology It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror called “A Demon-Girl’s Guide to Life.” I don’t think it’s available online anywhere but I highly recommend checking out the book for that one alone!

      also, we might have something interesting cooking for you this year related to Alien 😎

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  7. Favorite horror films: The Others, Final Destination: Bloodlines, the original When a Stranger Calls, the Fear Street trilogy

    Favorite horror TV: Midnight Mass, AHS seasons of Asylum, 1984, Roanoke

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  8. favorite horror movies: the shining, carrie, nightmare on elm street 2, get out, scream,

    favorite horror tv: AHS Asylum & NYC, haunting of bly manor, the fall of the house of usher, and also does true blood count

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  14. As a kid I was fascinated the first time I saw “Dracula”; I watched it every day for the week it was on “Movie of the Week”, and it’s still my favorite. And I have the same birthday as Bela Lugosi.

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