The Face of Horror: Ageing Anxiety in Horror Cinema and the 'Hag Horror' Tradition

With the ageing of contemporary societies, anxieties surrounding old age and bodily decline have become increasingly visible in popular culture, particularly within horror cinema. While feminist film studies and ageing studies have addressed representations of older women, the specific cinematic strategies through which ageing female bodies are rendered horrific in the "hag horror" tradition remain insufficiently systematized. This article examines how ageing anxieties are narratively and visually articulated through elderly female characters in horror cinema, focusing on the persistence and transformation of this subgenre across different historical periods. The central research question asks how ageing femininity is constructed as a source of horror and which narrative, visual, and thematic mechanisms sustain this construction overtime. Drawing on feminist film theory, the study engages Barbara Creed's concept of the monstrous-feminine and Julia Kristeva's notion of abjection, alongside interdisciplinary scholarship on ageism and gendered representations of ageing (Kristeva 205; Creed 33). Using qualitative textual analysis, the article examines three films from different decades-The Leech Woman (Edward Dein, 1960), Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? (Curtis Harrington, 1971), and X (Ti West, 2022)- selected for their explicit engagement with ageing female protagonists and their representative position within distinct phases of the Hag horror tradition. A comparative reading reveals how themes such as bodily decay, loss of youth, sexual deviance, and psychological instability are mobilized to produce fear, while adapting to changing ci-nematic styles and cultural contexts. The findings indicatethat despite aesthetic and narrative shifts, elderly female characters continue to function as sites of anxiety shaped by intersecting ageist and patriarchal discourses. The article argues that contemporary horror cinema reformulates rather than dismantles the core logic of hag horror, thereby sustaining cultural fears surrounding the ageing female body.

Journal

EKPHRASIS-IMAGES CINEMA THEORY MEDIA

Year

2025

Volume

34

Issue

2

Pages

24-41

ISSN

2067-631X

eISSN

2559-2068

DOI

10.24193/ekphrasis.34.3

WoS UID

WOS:001666480700003