20 Things Horror Movies NEED To Stop Doing

One of the most strangely pervasive trends in recent horror is to present a naked old person - typically a woman - as something for the audience to either be terrified of or disgusted by.

Some notable examples from the past decade-or-so include It Follows, The Witch, Suspiria, Midsommar, X, Relic, and Barbarian, and while these films are all actually rather good, they do play into a puzzling trend to portray the elderly, naked form as a fear object.

Think-pieces have been written suggesting that this trend might reflect the fear with which younger folk regard the "boomer" generation, but considering that these characters are almost always women rather than men, it's easy to view it all through a lens of sexism - namely society's general refusal to accept the female ageing process with dignity.

Does this mean that every horror film depicting naked old women is sexist? Absolutely not, but at this point the persistent presentation of the elderly female form as "gross" has become cliched and tired, if not outright offensive.