Teen Horror

And you thought your school years were a horror story.

"When you're in a horror movie, nothing's more dangerous than a building full of 14- to 18-year-olds. Not demons, not serial killers, not chemical weapons — nothing."

— How to Survive a Horror Movie

Teen Horror is Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Horror that is geared towards an audience comprised primarily of teenagers and/or young adults.

What sets teen horror apart from "adult" horror is right there in the name. The main viewpoint characters are between the ages of 13 and 19, with allowances for people in their 20s provided that they're college students or otherwise interacting primarily with teenagers. As such, their characterization, their problems, and the setting are likely to contain a lot of Teenage Tropes, High School Tropes, and Tertiary Education Tropes, and the tone of the story may superficially resemble a Teen Drama, with the horror typically rooted in themes relevant to teenagers (coming of age, puberty, bullying, loss of innocence) while more adult fears usually aren't lingered on except to flesh out the adult supporting characters. Due to the age of the target audience, teen horror has a reputation among horror fans for being Lighter and Softer and Tamer and Chaster than adult horror, if not in the seriousness of the subject matter than certainly in the graphic content — or lack thereof, as would be the case here. That said, every stereotype has exceptions, and there do exist teen horror movies that are also notorious for graphic violence and gratuitous nudity.

The idea of making teen-friendly horror stories goes back almost to the birth of the "teenager" as a demographic. In 1957, American International Pictures, a studio that specialized in youth-oriented films, struck box-office gold with the pulpy B-grade horror flick I Was a Teenage Werewolf, which took a Universal Horror premise and imagined what it might be like if Larry Talbot was an edgy Greaser Delinquent at an American high school. The secret of AIP's success was that they realized that horror movies make for great date movies, and young people typically go out on a lot of dates and usually have a lot of free time after school. Ever since, teenagers have been common characters in horror movies in hopes of picking up an audience of the same. Also, having teenagers as the heroes is a good way to signal to the audience that they are inexperienced, immature, lacking in survival skills, and vulnerable, not the kinds of people who can easily solve any problem they face with a cool head, without running afoul of the taboos around killing off prepubescent child characters.

Teen horror is a fairly divisive subject among both horror fans and non-fans. Film critic Roger Ebert famously referred to them as "Dead Teenager Movies", a derisive phrase that he applied to "any movie primarily concerned with killing teenagers, without regard for logic, plot, performance, humor, etc." with the implication that they were Lowest Common Denominator garbage marketed to people too young to have seen better horror movies. Some horror fans take a similar view towards the genre, seeing it as the Poor Man's Substitute for the "real thing". Moral Guardians too despised them, seeing them as morally bankrupt trash that was corrupting the minds of the youth, a view that reached its apex in the '80s and '90s amidst the Slasher Movie wave and the ensuing controversies surrounding violence in the media. On the other hand, teen horror has also been described as a Gateway Genre for young people dipping their toes into the horror genre and a bridge between Defanged Horrors and adult horror, serving up characters who look and act like them without showing much in the way of brutal gore that they're not ready for. As such, it's not unusual for teen horror stories to come in for reappraisal many years later once their target audiences are all grown up and nostalgic.

Slasher Movies are an especially popular genre for teen horror. Compare and contrast Teens Are Monsters. Also see Defanged Horrors for horror media designed to be safe for children ages 8 and up.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Highschool of the Dead: A Zombie Apocalypse descends on a high school.

Comic Books

• Archie Comics: In the 2010s, the teen comic book publisher created the Archie Horror imprint in which they dropped their famously wholesome characters into decidedly non-wholesome scenarios.
  • Afterlife with Archie: The kids from Riverdale battle a Zombie Apocalypse after a spell by Sabrina the Teenage Witch to save Jughead's dog goes horribly wrong.
  • Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: The witchcraft that Sabrina and her family are associated with is now the classic horror movie kind, complete with Hollywood Satanism.
  • Archie vs. Predator: The kids from Riverdale go on a tropical vacation where they're targeted by a Predator... who is himself implied to be a teenager on his first hunt.
• Bad Kids Go to Hell: A horror take on The Breakfast Club in which six prep school students in detention decide to hold a seance.

Films — Live-Action

• Alien: Romulus: A group of teenaged and twentysomething space colonists get attacked by xenomorphs. Writer/director Fede Álvarez has stated that he chose to make the protagonists younger for many of the reasons laid out above, specifically focusing on them not being as resourceful or experienced as adults while also using the space colony they grew up in as a metaphor for dead-end towns that young people either try to leave or resign themselves to spending the rest of their lives in.
  Alvarez: I liked this concept of putting people in the front seat of the story who are closer to what the audience is — not that the audience is young, more that the audience is completely virgin to the realities of space. When the characters are professionals, they know more than you do. But when they’re still in their early 20s, they don’t know how to operate the f---ing airlock.
• Anna and the Apocalypse: A group of teenagers in Scotland battle a Zombie Apocalypse... through song.
• The Babysitter (2017): A group of teenagers try to carry out a Satanic ritual involving the adolescent boy who one of them is babysitting.
• Black Christmas (1974): A group of college sorority sisters are targeted by a mysterious killer who makes Harassing Phone Calls to them before killing them.
  • Black Christmas (2006): A remake of the above.
  • Black Christmas (2019): Another remake of the above, this time incorporating a plot about a Fiendish Fraternity.
• Cabin Fever: A group of college kids get infected with flesh-eating bacteria while vacationing at a cabin in the woods.
• The Cabin in the Woods: A Deconstructive Parody of teen horror, slasher movies, and horror cinema in general.
• Carrie (1976): A film adaptation of the below-mentioned novel.
  • Carrie (2002): A remake of the above.
  • The Rage: Carrie 2: A sequel to the 1976 film following a new teenage girl with telekinetic powers.
  • Carrie (2013): Another remake of the above.
• Cherry Falls: A serial killer targets teenage virgins, leading the town's teenagers to plan a huge orgy to keep themselves safe.
• The Covenant: Teenage boys who come from families of witches use their powers to get ahead at their elite boarding school.
• The Craft: Outcast teenage girls in Catholic school use witchcraft to make their lives better and get back at their classmates, only for one of them to get Drunk with Power.
• Cry_Wolf: After hearing about a local murder, students at a boarding school cook up a fake Serial Killer inspired by slasher tropes as a prank, only for it to become all too real.
• Decoys: Aliens arrive in a college town on Earth and take the form of attractive women in order to mate with human men, who they kill in the process.
• Disturbia: A teen version of Rear Window in which the protagonist spying on his neighbors and discovering that one of them is a Serial Killer is now a troubled teenage boy under house arrest after assaulting a teacher.
• Disturbing Behavior: A high school retelling of The Stepford Wives in which the families of troubled teenagers move to a town where they are brainwashed into "model students".
• Donnie Darko: A troubled teenage boy is informed by a demonic-looking rabbit (yeah, it's that kind of movie) that the world will end in about a month.
• The Evil Dead (1981): Five college students at a cabin in the woods accidentally awaken a demonic presence, which proceeds to possess members of the group to attack the others.
• Excision (2012): An outcast teenage girl becomes a Mad Doctor.
• The Faculty: A teen version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers in which Puppeteer Parasites infiltrate a high school in small-town Ohio.
• Fear Street: A loose adaptation of the below-mentioned novels.
• The Final: A group of teen outcasts stage a fake party for their classmates, only to kidnap them and subject them to Cold-Blooded Torture as revenge for their bullying.
• The Final Destination films: Somebody has a premonition of a disaster and saves themselves and several others, but because they were all fated to die, they find themselves being murdered by Death itself in what appear to be accidents. Barring the fifth film, all of them focus on high school or college students as the protagonists.
• The Final Girls: An Affectionate Parody of the genre in which a group of modern-day teenagers get trapped in an '80s teen slasher.
• Freaky: A Horror Comedy version of Freaky Friday in which a teenage girl swaps bodies with a Serial Killer.
• The Friday the 13th films: The teenage counselors at Camp Crystal Lake are murdered by a mysterious killer, revealed at the end of the first film to be the mother of a camper who had died years ago due to the counselors' negligence. In the sequels, that camper, Jason Voorhees, becomes the main villain, slaughtering teenagers and others who try to reopen the camp or otherwise wander into his neck of the woods.
• Friend Request: A college student is stalked by the ghost of a classmate she befriended on Facebook who later killed herself.
• Fright Night (1985): A horror-movie-obsessed teenage boy discovers that his new neighbor is a vampire.
  • Fright Night Part 2: A sequel to the above that moves the action to college.
  • Fright Night (2011): A remake of the original film.
  • Fright Night 2: New Blood: A sequel to the remake.
• The Gallows: Teenagers break into their school at night, only to find that it is haunted by the murderous ghost of a student who died twenty years ago while putting on a production of the titular School Play, which the school is performing once again.
• Ginger Snaps: A teenage girl is bitten by a werewolf and starts turning into one herself, with clear metaphors drawn for puberty, while her sister must grapple with her increasingly unhinged and murderous behavior.
• The Halloween films: An escaped asylum inmate named Michael Myers returns to his hometown and murders teenage babysitters and their boyfriends on Halloween night.
• Happy Birthday to Me: Teenagers at a boarding school are murdered, and it seems to be connected to a girl whose birthday is approaching and who still has issues with amnesia from an accident on a previous birthday.
• Happy Death Day: A college student is murdered only to wake up again in a "Groundhog Day" Loop, and must survive and figure out who's trying to kill her in order to end the loop.
• Haunt: A group of college friends attend an "extreme" haunted house where they find themselves in real peril.
• The Haunting of Molly Hartley: A teenage girl whose parents made a Deal with the Devil to save her life is now being targeted as the Devil comes to collect.
• Hell Fest: Teenagers at a Halloween-themed horror amusement park are stalked and murdered by a mysterious killer.
• The House on Sorority Row: College sorority sisters are murdered by a mysterious killer.
  • Sorority Row: A remake of the above.
• I Know What You Did Last Summer: A loose adaptation of the below-mentioned novel.
  • I Still Know What You Did Last Summer: A sequel to the above that moves the action to a tropical island where a group of college students, including the first film's protagonist, are on vacation.
  • I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer: A loose reboot of the franchise with a similar plot and teenage characters, but a new setting.
• I Was a Teenage Werewolf: As noted above, the Trope Maker for the genre, in which a rebellious teenage boy gets turned into a werewolf by a Mad Scientist's hypnosis.
• It Follows: A teenage girl is targeted by a monster attached to a curse that is passed on through sex.
• It's a Wonderful Knife (2023): An It's a Wonderful Plot story in which the traumatized teenage Final Girl of a slasher killing spree wishes she was never born, leading to a world where the killer she defeated won and kept on killing.
• Jennifer's Body: A teenage girl is sacrificed to Satan and comes back possessed by a succubus.
• The Lost Boys: A pair of teenage brothers move to a new town where one of them is targeted by a gang of punkish teen vampires, forcing his brother to team up with local kids to save him.
• The My Super Psycho Sweet 16 films: MTV's official parodies of their show My Super Sweet Sixteen, in which bratty teenagers hosting lavish birthday parties get targeted by a masked killer.
• The A Nightmare on Elm Street films: The malevolent spirit of the child killer Freddy Krueger returns to murder teenagers in their sleep as revenge against their parents for their Vigilante Execution of him.
• Once Bitten: A Horror Comedy in which a horny teenage boy falls for a very hot vampiress.
• Ouija: Teenagers play with a Ouija Board, and things get ugly.
• Polaroid: A teenage girl stumbles upon a Magical Camera that causes anybody photographed with it to die.
• Prom Night (1980): A group of teenagers who, as young children, were responsible for the Accidental Murder of a young girl are targeted by a killer on prom night.
  • Hello Mary-Lou: Prom Night II: An In Name Only sequel about the ghost of a teenage girl who died on prom night coming back years later to possess another girl and become prom queen once again, by any means necessary.
  • Prom Night III: The Last Kiss: A direct sequel to the last film in which the villainous Mary Lou comes Back from the Dead and starts dating and corrupting a teenage boy named Alex.
  • Prom Night IV: Deliver Us From Evil: Another In Name Only sequel in which a Sinister Minister, who had murdered two people on prom night and was then placed in a medically-induced coma, wakes up and restarts his rampage.
  • Prom Night (2008): A loose remake of the original film in which the killer is now a teacher who is murderously obsessed with one of his students.
• Psycho Beach Party: An Affectionate Parody of '60s beach party films in which that kind of movie gets interrupted by a murderer.
• The Ring:
  • The 2002 American adaptation subverts this in an interesting manner. The film opens with two teenage girls, one of whom is the opening victim while the other is set up as a major character. However, the girl who survives turns out to be a Decoy Protagonist, having been institutionalized after she went catatonic from watching a ghost kill her best friend, while the actual main characters are grown adults.
  • The Ring Two plays this straight, introducing a new cast of teenage characters who watch the cursed video tape after it becomes the subject of an urban legend.
• The Scream films: A Deconstructive Parody of slashers and teen horror in which a masked killer inspired by '80s slashers starts murdering their classmates. The first, fourth, and fifth films focus on high schoolers while the second and sixth focus on college students (many of them characters from previous films, now slightly older), while the third is about the Troubled Production of an in-universe teen horror movie.
• The Sleepaway Camp films: Teenage counselors are murdered at summer camp.
• The Stepfather: An unnamed Serial Killer who killed his whole family moves around trying to find the "perfect family", and killing them if they don't meet his expectations. His newest family has a teenage daughter who starts to figure out the truth.
  • The Stepfather (2009): A remake of the above, with the teenage protagonist now a boy instead of a girl.
• Summer of '84: A fifteen-year-old boy becomes convinced that his next-door neighbor is a Serial Killer who's been kidnapping and murdering teenage boys throughout their rural town. Over the course of the summer, he and his friends need to try and figure out if he's right.
• Talk to Me: A group of teenagers use a ceramic hand statue to make contact with spirits.
• Thanksgiving (2023): A year after a group of teenagers accidentally start a Retail Riot, a masked killer starts murdering the people involved in it.
• Totally Killer: A teenage girl must travel back in time to 1987 to stop a Serial Killer.
• Tragedy Girls: Two deranged teenage girls who host a True Crime podcast decide to start killing people for real.
• Truth or Dare (2018): A game of truth or dare turns deadly for a group of college students.
• Tucker & Dale vs. Evil: Parodied. The protagonists are college students on spring break who think they're in a teen slasher flick, but wind up causing most of the film's problems.
• Unfriended: A group of teenagers are killed by the ghost of a classmate who they bullied into killing herself.
• Urban Legend: College students are killed by a mysterious killer who patterns their murders after famous Urban Legends.
  • Urban Legends: Final Cut: A sequel to the above set at a film school.
  • Urban Legends: Bloody Mary: A sequel that switches gears from a slasher to supernatural horror as a group of teenagers are targeted by the ghost of Bloody Mary after invoking her legend.

Literature

• Another: A high school transfer student realizes that his classmates are dying one by one because of a curse.
• Lois Duncan was a Young Adult Literature author who specialized in horror and suspense novels.
  • I Know What You Did Last Summer: A year after a group of teenagers accidentally killed a young boy in a hit-and-run accident, they receive letters indicating that somebody knows their secret.
  • Down a Dark Hall: A teenage girl sent to boarding school while her mother and stepfather are on honeymoon finds that the faculty are using her and her classmates to channel spirits.
  • Killing Mr. Griffin: A troubled teenage boy and three of his classmates plot to kidnap their most hated teacher, only to accidentally kill him.
• The Fear Street series: A line of teen horror novels by R. L. Stine.
• Discussed in How to Survive a Horror Movie, which argues that, if you find yourself trapped in a horror movie, the absolute worst place in the world to be is around teenagers who break every rule of horror movie survival. If you are yourself a teenager, then the book recommends that you not fall into any cliques (i.e. become a stock character), hang out by your locker (bad things happen by the lockers), or accept any invitations to after-school activities or the High-School Dance, while you should be nice to everybody, because Hate Sinks generally don't last long in horror movies. Also, become friends with the shop teacher, as not only will his blue-collar virtue save the day, he also has power tools.
• Stephen King has dabbled in the genre more than once:
  • Carrie: A bullied teenage girl uses her telekinetic powers to get revenge on her classmates and her abusive mother after a prank at the senior prom goes too far.
  • Rage (1977): A teenage boy shoots up his school and takes his class hostage. The first novel King wrote under the Richard Bachman Pen Name, he had it pulled from print in 1997 after a number of school shootings whose perpetrators were known to have read it.
  • Christine: A nerdy teenage boy gets corrupted by a Sinister Car who turns him into a Greaser Delinquent.
• My Best Friend's Exorcism: A teenage girl in The '80s is possessed by a demon and has to be saved by her best friend.
• Point Horror: A line of teen horror and thriller novels published by Scholastic from 1986 until 2005, with a short-lived relaunch in 2013. Authors who wrote for Point Horror include R. L. Stine, Diane Hoh, Richie Tankersley Cusick, Christopher Pike, and Caroline B. Cooney.
  • Losing Christina: A trilogy originally published under the Point Horror line about a teenage girl staying with her friends at a boarding house run by her principal and her English teacher, who start gaslighting the house's other residents to turn against her and think she's insane.
  • Nightmare Hall: A spinoff of Point Horror by Diane Hoh that told a series of stories all connected to an allegedly haunted campus dormitory.
• There's Someone Inside Your House: A group of teenagers are murdered by somebody out to expose their secrets.

Live-Action TV

• All of Us Are Dead: A high school biology teacher unleashes The Virus on a high school on exam day, and a group of students must band together to fight for survival against a Zombie Apocalypse.
• Are You Afraid of the Dark?: A Genre Anthology series in which group of teenagers gather around a campfire to tell scary stories to one another.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: An homage to the genre, paired with a streak of comedy and Action Horror by having its blonde teenage cheerleader protagonist be a quippy, supernaturally-empowered Vampire Hunter.
• Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: A television adaptation of the comic book.
• Dead of Summer: Teenage counselors at a summer camp in The '80s must survive a series of murders seemingly tied to a Satanic cult.
• Goosebumps (2023): Teens in a small town deal with supernatural horrors from the book series by R. L. Stine.
• The Midnight Club (2022): An adaptation of the Christopher Pike novel about a group of terminally ill teenagers who tell scary stories to one another after dark, only for the stories to become all too real.
• Pretty Little Liars: A number of episodes veered into this, especially when it started wearing its Giallo inspirations on its sleeve.
  • Ravenswood: A spinoff of Pretty Little Liars that went all-in on supernatural horror, whereas its parent series remained more grounded.
  • Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin: A Sequel Series to the show, following a new group of teenage girls.
• Scream: The TV Series: A television adaptation of the aforementioned Scream films.
  • Scream: Resurrection: A Continuity Reboot of the TV series.
• Scream Queens (2015): A Horror Comedy whose first season centers around a college sorority as the mysterious Red Devil killer starts murdering those connected to it.
• Stranger Things: Nancy and Steve's storylines focused on them contending with teenage problems while also battling the growing supernatural phenomena around them. In later seasons, the Kid Hero protagonists grow up into teenagers and do the same.
• Teen Wolf: Teenaged Scott McCall is bitten by and transformed into a werewolf in the woods of Beacon Hills, leading him and his friend Stiles to learn about the supernatural. A Darker and Edgier TV adaptation of the 1985 Michael J. Fox film, this version leaned more into the supernatural horror of werewolves and other creatures and racked up a large body count.
• Wednesday: A Horror Comedy series focused on a teenage Wednesday Addams and her friends at an All-Ghouls School where they solve a series of murders.
• Yellowjackets is set in two timelines. The earlier timeline, where an elite girls' soccer team gets stranded in the wilderness for two years after a plane crash and resort to ritualistic cannibalism, falls under this genre. The later timeline concerns the now-adult survivors of the affair grappling with it in the present day.

Theater

• 35MM: A Musical Exhibition: "The Ballad of Sara Berry" centers around high school Alpha Bitch Sara Berry, who goes through a Sanity Slippage after her prom queen crown and status is threatened by Wheelchair Woobie Julie Jenkins. She ends up killing 6 of her 7 rivals before getting arrested and sent to an insane asylum.
• Carrie: A musical adaptation of the Stephen King book, though it leans less into the horror and more into the tragedy of Carrie's life.
• Evil Dead: The Musical: A parody rock musical Adaptation Amalgamation of the Evil Dead films, which leans into Denser and Wackier Camp but keeps all the bloody gore. Live performances even feature a splatter zone for those in the front rows who want to get hit by fake blood. Like the first film, it centers on five college kids.
• Nerdy Prudes Must Die: Part of the Hatchetfield Shared Universe, this installment in particular was set at Hatchetfield High with all-teenage main characters, as a ghostly quarterback haunts the halls looking to murder nerds.
• Stranger Things: The First Shadow: A stage play prequel to Stranger Things following teen versions of Hopper, Joyce, Bob Newby, and Henry Creel in 1959 Hawkins, as strange and gruesome things begin to happen.
• We Are the Tigers: A pop-rock murder mystery/slasher musical centered around a high school cheer squad's annual sleepover, with the girls getting picked off by a mysterious killer. Downplayed because only two people are actually killed by the killer (plus one by accident) and the second act focuses more on the squad trying to put the losses behind them after the events of the first act.

Video Games

• The ObsCure games: A group of high school students discover a conspiracy by their school's principal involving a mutagenic plant after their friend goes missing. The second game, in the grand tradition of teen horror sequels, moves the action to a nearby college. The games' developers intended them as an homage to the teen horror films of The '90s, complete with basing the character of Stan off of Josh Hartnett (who played Zeke in the aforementioned The Faculty).
• Prom Dreams: Starts out as a non-scary teen romance adventure game about finding a date for prom, but turns into a horror story as it progresses.
• Supermassive Games is best known for cinematic Survival Horror Adventure Games inspired by horror movies, and several of their games are rooted in the genre.
  • Until Dawn: A year after a Deadly Prank accidentally claimed the lives of two of their friends, eight young people travel to an isolated lodge in the wilderness in the dead of winter, only to be targeted by a mysterious killer. He turns out to be a decoy villain who consciously based the scenario the characters were in after the horror movies he was a fan of, and didn't intend for anyone to actually die. That comes in with the real, far more monstrous villains.
  • Little Hope: Four college students and their professor are trapped in the titular Ghost Town after their bus crashes, where they are soon beset by malevolent forces.
  • The Quarry: A group of camp counselors decide to stay one more night at the campground after the season is over and all the kids head home, only to learn the hard way why the camp's owner was so eager to get them out of there.

Web Video

• Critical Role:
  • The Cinderbrush: A Monsterhearts Story one-shot is set in high school with four teen characters, three of whom are involved in the supernatural, having to deal with an evil cult that murdered their friend/acquaintance.
  • The Liam's Quest: Full Circle one-shot gives the cast an Age Lift, with Marisha and Ashley aged down to teenagers while the others are preteens or younger, dealing with a Standard Post-Apocalyptic Setting beset with evil creatures that they suddenly found themselves in. Downplayed since not all of the cast are teens and they retain their adult memories.

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