It wasn’t until I watched Train to Busan for a second time that I realized I hadn’t been watching a zombie movie.
Sure, it’s set on a train during a zombie outbreak and there are hundreds of reanimated corpses running around, but when the credits rolled, I wasn’t thinking about any of that. I was left with how emotional its ending made me feel.
I’ve always believed that horror is one of the most compelling ways to examine the human experience. It’s an opportunity to not just face what scares us, but better understand it. An invitation to explain the unexplainable. A vehicle to unpack the soul.
While some do that better than others, and some are more upfront about that exploration of humanity, rewatching Train to Busan emphasized one thing:
There’s something special about horror with heart.
The more I think about it, the more I appreciate the humanity that made stories so memorable.
In John Langan’s The Fisherman, I loved the eldritch creatures and dark magic but was left more impressed by the way it dealt with grief. In Jennifer Thorne’s Diavola, I enjoyed exploring a sun-soaked haunted villa, but it was the exploration of family dynamics that left a lasting impression. Shirley Jackson’s supernatural is often a catalyst to dwell on loneliness, isolation, and mental health, and Mark Z. Danielewski is on record agreeing that House of Leaves is a love story.
I already knew I resonated with these themes, but revisiting them under an umbrella of heartfelt horror makes it more endearing. A story can have all the blood, fear, and supernatural suspense in the world, but the humanity makes it real.
It brought me back to when I was reading Stephen King’s IT, and how invested I was in the wellbeing of the Losers Club. Being a doorstop of a book, you end up spending a lot of time with them, but if anyone is good at creating characters that mean something, it’s King.
I didn’t know how invested I was until I read 11/22/63 (arguably another love story) a few years later and a couple of characters from the Losers Club showed up. It was just a few pages – a fleeting nod for those who’d read some of King’s other work – but it felt real. Emotional. A reminder that if you create characters with heart, reuniting them with a reader will feel like bumping into old friends.
It also made me think of Presence, a new movie about a haunted house told through the eyes of the ghost. I won’t go into what it’s about, because the entirety of the movie is a set up for the final few minutes, but know that it’s not a horror. This is an emotional story with a twist that felt like a punch to the gut.
As a consumer of horror, all of this is a reminder of why I love the genre, as well as what I want to enjoy within it. Monsters, seances, and slashers are fun, but there’s a different satisfaction when it helps you understand something complicated like grief, loss, or love, and you walk away with a deeper appreciation of how they operate.
There’s also an odd comfort in knowing those stories exist when the going gets tough. Will I re-read The Fisherman when I next meet grief? I don’t know, but I’m glad it’s there.
The idea of exploring humanity was a key driving point when I was writing Waxwing Creek and no doubt future projects will be the same. In all my writing, I want to create stories that have an emotional appeal and introduce characters that are complicated, flawed, and irreparably human. I hope they’re entertaining but I hope they arrive with feeling.
In short, I’m taking this as a reminder of the genre’s possibility, and how much opportunity we as writers have in being able to create that space for someone.
How can we open a door that invites someone to not just explore but reimagine a certain feeling? How can we craft a story so powerful it makes someone ache?
Before you go
My latest book, Waxwing Creek, is out now. It’s a collection of interconnected horror stories about a haunted motel in a small town called Hunt. It’s available in paperback and on Kindle (including Kindle Unlimited).
Feel free to check out reviews on Goodreads or click the button below to grab a copy.
If you want to read some of my fiction for free, check out:
💡 Lightbulb: A short horror story about a haunted lamp.
🔒 483: A short horror story about the things we keep locked up.
If you want to connect, I love hearing from readers. I keep an Instagram updated and post regularly to Threads and Notes. You can also find me on TikTok.
/ JJW
This is why I love to read and write horror and other dark fiction. It hits a visceral nerve like no other.
“Horror with heart” is my favorite genre regardless of whether it’s ghost, monster, killer related. Like the move “The Ritual”, wouldn’t have been as good if it didn’t focus on the grief and cowardice of the main character or his redemption.