George A Romero died today. He was one of the biggest influences the horror genre has ever seen and his impact will definitely be felt for many, many years. It got me thinking about the amount of time I’ve invested as a film student and enthusiast, studying his films, studying films influenced by his films, and the social impact that especially Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead had on fans and the culture they were released in.

I have loved horror ever since I was much too small to have been watching it thanks to my liberal parents and a terrible influence of a big brother. The first horror movie I remember watching was Jaws (which then spawned a life-long obsession with sharks, go on, ask me anything about sharks) and those painted fingernails sticking out of the sand are the first thing I remember giving me that sense of dread and intrigue that I love about good horror.

In an extremely uncertain world its natural to have feelings of anxiety about well, everything? We are actively destroying our planet, the future for young people looks atrocious compared to the generations before it, and the threat of world war really isn’t that far-fetched. Not to mention everybody’s day to day stress of jobs, love, money, family. Horror in my opinion more than any other genre is a reflection of our culture’s anxieties. Look through film history you can point out countless correlations between horror trends and the socio-political climates they were made in. and there’s definitely something cathartic about watching your fears play out on screen, whether you’re conscious of it or not.

I had my first panic attack when I was nineteen and it was brought on by a bad decision I made. Since then I have battled anxiety as part of my Bipolar and it might be the most destructive symptom I have. When mixed with a hypomanic state, I am unable to concentrate on anything and have dread and delusional thoughts that terrible things are going to happen to me or the people I love. When mixed with a depressive state I simply do not leave the house. I would not wish generalised anxiety on anyone and I know its something that many, many people and especially around my age group struggle with.

When I’m sitting in my house in the dark watching a horror movie I can forget about being scared for no reason and be scared of something actually scary. I can laugh at a well-placed jump-scare and sympathise with characters in their fear. Our darkest fears are legitimized and quite often made a bit silly in horror and it’s much easier to confront these fears in a roundabout way with the fiction we consume.

The Babadook directed by Jennifer Kent is an especially great example of the horror genre taking on the issue of mental health. The main character is dealing with (massive spoilers ahead) the loss of her spouse and monster metaphorically embodies the form of her declining psyche and fear that she is no longer fit to be a mother. In the climax scene she screams, “This is my house! You are trespassing in my house! If you touch my son again, I’ll fucking kill you!” in a defiant stand against her own mental illness. By the end of the film she is keeping the monster in the basement and lovingly feeding it worms, which is totally something I aspire to in dealing with my own mental health.

The legacy that George Romero has left is one of a celebration of the oddballs and morbid people that love horror, and a finely tuned sense of what scares us and why its important to look at these things from a different angle. I know that tonight I’ll be watching his old films, wearing my zombie t-shirt and having a laugh.