Christian Horror: On the Compatibility of a Biblical Worldview and the Horror Genre

by Mike Duran

Even if such movies give us no more than evil to fight against, evil itself is a signpost of sorts pointing to goodness and God. A world without God is a world in which good and evil are meaningless concepts,

Stoker’s Dracula brims with explicit Christian content and a biblical worldview. Unlike many trends in contemporary vampire mystique, Stoker’s vampire is not glorified, romanticized, or portrayed as anything but a vile, hellish being,

Any representation of evil, violence, or the grotesque could, at some point, be seen as gratuitous or inappropriate. This is an accusation that is difficult to avoid. Perhaps this is why Koontz not only professed a compulsion to portray evil, but to portray it as evil, to temper it by making it look “pathetic.” In particular, he claimed to accomplish this by refusing to “never glorify a villain.” This seems like a good rule of thumb for the Christian artist.