Weird horror: aspects of genre-philosophy

Abstract

The article examines the growing prominence of horror culture (including in Lithuania) and its philosophical foundations, focusing on two key concepts – determination and the Other. Drawing on early sources (e.g., Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” and the notion of wyrd) and modern examples (such as Ari Aster’s “Hereditary”), it explores how the subject operates between the constraints of fate and the illusion of freedom. The social and political atmosphere of anxiety – wars, post-pandemic uncertainty, artificial intelligence, ecological threats – helps explain horror’s appeal and its capacity to express helplessness and the intrusion of the Other. Different understandings of horror are discussed: Anne Radcliffe’s distinction between terror and horror, the phenomenon of the uncanny (Jentsch, Freud), and H. P. Lovecraft’s weird tale, characterized by cosmic dread and inevitability. Later variations of weirdness – Robert Aickman’s minimalist strange stories, queer horror, body/extreme horror, and bizarro – reveal how weirdness individualizes experience and expands the scope of horror. Ultimately, the text argues that weirdness dissolves genre boundaries and functions as a modus of writing and a cultural force that deconstructs accepted structures. Horror, rather than being understood morally, is seen as an epistemological rupture – a confrontation with the unknown and with the Other.