metahorror

Metahorror is a mode of horror that foregrounds its own status as a constructed text, emphasizing self-reference, genre critique, and audience mediation. Works in this mode typically blur boundaries between fiction and commentary, using self-reflexive narration, fourth-wall awareness, or deliberate subversions of horror tropes to interrogate what scares us and how horror is made.

In film and television, metahorror often deconstructs traditional tropes such as the final girl, jump scares, and the narrative safety of the audience. Notable examples include Scream (1996), which treats horror cinema as a dialogue with its viewers, and The Cabin in the Woods (2012), which exposes the script and audience expectations behind a conventional horror scenario. In literature, metafictional horror uses layered narration and textual experimentation to probe authorship and perception, as in House of Leaves (2000) by Mark Z. Danielewski and The Raw Shark Texts (2007) by Steven Hall.

In other media, metahorror appears in comics and video games through self-referential storytelling and commentary on game mechanics and storytelling norms, as well as through media-theory oriented discourse that accompanies horror franchises. The term is used flexibly and can be contested; some critics treat it as a subset of postmodern or self-referential horror, while others view metahorror as a broader, evolving mode that travels across genres and media.