The atrocities of the Holocaust so deeply damaged the German psyche that to this very day, German cinema still consciously and subconsciously censors itself. Still from Matthew Barney’s punishing and disgusting musical opera River of Fundament. A similar logic is at work within Japanese cinema after Hiroshima and the end of World War II. In Italy, once the shackles of an oppressive top-down regime were unlocked, a flurry of insanely violent and obscene imagery was unleashed that was so extreme, it created some of the most shocking films ever made. While the United States and France have always made transgressive films, Italy’s horror boom corresponds with the fall of Italian fascism. The United States, Italy, Japan, and France have produced some of the most shocking movies of all time, movies that went so far that they become not just shocking and disturbing but unwatchable. The film is a favorite of director Quentin Tarantino. How much is too much? At what point are things too violent? Too obscene? Too triggering? Too unwatchable? When do they cease being horror movies and become unbearably profane to a respective culture? Audition is 2000 horror movie from Japan that is disturbing and towards the top of the list. How far are filmmakers allowed to go without censorship? In a sense, then, the role of the macabre in mainstream cinema is an interesting barometer of a society’s openness.

Historical regimes such as the Soviet Union in Russia and the Nazis in Germany repressed all horror cinema. In more repressive Middle Eastern countries, horror movies are an underground phenomenon. North Korea doesn’t even have a real film industry. Indeed, modern China doesn’t have horror movies, although Hong Kong does. Mother! suffers from screeching (albeit intentional) sound design, plus a preachy, weird and abstract plot. Totalitarian societies don’t allow horror movies because they undermine grand narratives, exposing all-too-human tendencies toward revolution, perversion, abuse, and the terrifying reality of the ever-present force of violence as well as the sheer complexity of being. Perhaps you can judge how free a society is by how many horror movies they’re making. Or, alternatively, it offers a revolutionary new way of looking at the world and thus horrifies audiences. The horror genre is built upon a subversive narrative structuring that mirrors back the worst aspects of human nature. Horror cinema is by default disturbing and shocking.

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