_What is Hypermodern Horror?
_Hypermodernity, put as simply as possible, refers to an extreme intensification and acceleration of Modernity, as well as to an aesthetic which reflects this intensification. As an ideology it is profoundly utilitarian, viewing all aspects of society, technology, history and psychology as merely tools towards the construction of a single minded (and deeply Capitalist/Neoliberal) future. It is technocratic, atemporal, and self-replicating at all levels, and its proponents would have it become the new default state of our existence.
_Hypermodern Horror is a subversion of this mode of thinking, using the primalness of fear, unease and disgust as lenses through which to view and critique the bleeding edges of technology, sociology and psychology as they exist within our Hypermodern and Capitalist present. It seeks to show the anti-human, anti-nature and anti-reality motives of the current dominant systems, reframing them in new, visceral and appropriately terrifying ways.
_Works which fit within the genre have existed for a long time, but have only rarely been labeled as such. Common themes include anxiety, transhumanist body horror, existential dread, virtual/augmented reality, isolation, Artificial Intelligence, poverty/precarity, digital occultism, economic exploitation, environmental deformation, dissociation, derealization, Kafkaesque bureaucracy, technological assimilation, bent or broken temporalities, and any of the other symptoms or disfunctions of unchecked Modernity.