Growing up in a small town in southern West Virginia, I’d always heard that a man wasn’t supposed to show his feelings. I mean, think about it, the Mountain State in those days was where generations of males put on hard hats, work boots, and brave faces before heading into the bowels of the earth to mine coal.

In late 2023, I noticed a new subgenre on the horizon, emerging from the intersection of celebrity culture and horror. I call it “Stage Fright”—save the groans, it’s a working title. With the release of Trap, Smile 2, and MaXXXine, this new wave reflects a zeitgeist increasingly disillusioned with the glittering facades of billionaires and icons, and eagerly tuning in when these stars find themselves ensnared in tragic circumstances.

Anyone who’s read Edgar Allan Poe knows that he was fascinated—alongside many others of his era—by the prospect of premature burial. It’s not hard to imagine why: prior to modern imaging equipment, and particularly in Western traditions where corpses were buried intact, a person could, at the hand of their own well-meaning family, end up interred and helpless.

Fashion is, and always has been, about expression; what you wear can send a message about who you are. For entertainment like film and television, it’s a way to explain to the audience who your characters are immediately and without subterfuge. It’s the “show, not tell” of characterization and this is especially true for films in the horror genre.