Scary asylums! Creepy disfigured people! People being punished for ‘not moving on and letting their trauma control them’! Violent and dangerous ‘crazy’ people! Poverty coded scary old women who must be a witch!
While asylums are less common horror locations these days, it still doesn’t stop the genre from using pop psychology to frame itself as deep while simultaneously expousing harmful messages. Usually written by people with very shallow understanding of the themes they’re employing for cheap scares at the expense of some of the most marginalized groups.
Also this might be cringe taste but some horror I actually do like are Jordan Peeles movies, because the themes of those are things like “Wow racism is horrificly dehumanising” and “Animals should be respected.”
Get out and Us are brilliant movies. Stuff that has a suffocating sense of foreboding is usually my preferred horror. Only things to have made me feel that way is Possum and Speak no Evil. The descent is also enjoyable and 28 days later is my favourite zombie movie.
But most horror is ass unless its subversive or has an actual point. American horror is just replaying the same old boring tropes until the movies are more comedy than horror.