The horror genre is fairly limitless in what it offers us—body-melting horror from Cronenberg and The Substance, dangerous slashers that are alternately serious, hilarious, and kooky, supernatural scares, monsters, and more.
But a new subgenre has emerged within the last few decades that softens horror's rough edges.
Welcome to cozy horror.
The term might sound like an oxymoron. How can something designed to terrify also be a comfort?
But cozy horror occupies that strange middle ground where the spooky meets the soft, where dread gets filtered through humor or nostalgia, and where you can be unsettled without being traumatized.
Over the Garden Wall Credit: Cartoon Network
Defining Cozy Horror
Writer José Cruz described cozy horror in Nightmare Magazine as horror that emphasizes familiarity, distance, and fun. (Cruz is widely credited with defining and naming the subgenre.)
Instead of exploiting our fear of the unknown, cozy horror leans into recognizable tropes and settings. It keeps the terror at arm's length. Most importantly, it leaves you with warm, fuzzy feelings, not nightmares.
On the horror podcast Books in the Freezer, the hosts defined it as horror with all the spooky elements intact, but paired with guaranteed happy endings, lower stakes, humor, romance, or other elements that lighten the scariest moments.
In horror storytelling, there's always a buildup of tension right before a big scare. And that can happen in cozy horror, but the tension might be lighter, the buildup briefer, and the scare less dramatic. The conflict often resolves more quickly or less brutally than in traditional horror.
Cozy horror still has ghosts, monsters, and darkness. It just doesn't want to destroy your peace of mind, too.
What Makes a Horror Movie Cozy?
Several elements are typically present in cozy horror films.
Humor is frequently used to purposefully undercut tension. Maybe it's through dark comedy or goofiness. Either way, laughter provides emotional distance from the scares.
Nostalgia plays a role, too. Many cozy horror films tap into childhood memories of being safely scared. Remember Goosebumps? What about Are You Afraid of the Dark or The Twilight Zone? Or maybe you have a favorite Halloween special from your favorite cartoon or children's show.
The atmosphere is usually all about autumn. You'll see a lot of leaves turning with the season, maybe some cooler, shorter days, the warmth of candles or firelight. Halloween decorations fill each set. But cozy isn't trapped in the fall; there's been a rise of "Summerween" movies, too, set in the sunshine and warmth of summertime. Those can be cozy, too.
On a deeper level, horror has grown into a genre where "the other" feels safe. The genre often explores societal issues, politics, and emotional themes through the guise of monsters and murder. There's a reason, for example, queer culture tends to intersect with the horror genre in many ways.
For some viewers who feel themselves on the margins of society, horror becomes a home, which can be inherently cozy.
Beetlejuice Credit: Warner Bros.
Classic Examples of Cozy Horror
You've probably watched cozy horror without realizing it had a name.
- The Addams Family: These films perfectly capture the vibe. They're macabre and delightfully creepy, but they're actually a really good example of familial love and the value of being yourself. These characters are viewed as monsters, but often, "normal society" acts more monstrously than they do.
- Hocus Pocus: This flick is a Halloween classic because it balances its witchy scares with children's comedy. The Sanderson Sisters want to steal kiddies' souls, but nothing ever gets too serious.
- Halloweentown: This movie is full of monsters, but they're neighbors and shopkeepers, and magic runs through everything.
- Beetlejuice: Where death and the afterlife become opportunities for comedy.
- Over the Garden Wall: Plays with American legends to explore a kid-friendly version of Dante.
- Death Becomes Her: This qualifies because it's body horror softened by camp.
Check out our list of favorite cozy horror films for more recommendations.
Why Cozy Horror Matters Now
Horror has been booming at the box office, accounting for about 10% of revenues in 2024.
As the genre continues its renaissance, filmmakers are exploring every corner of what horror can be.
Cozy horror isn't dumbing down the genre or making it less sophisticated. These films can still have complicated characters and beautiful cinematography. What they don't have is the punishing intensity that makes some viewers avoid horror entirely.
Many viewers want to explore darkness without getting dragged under by it. As Quill Black wrote, "I don't want to drown in dread. I don't want shock for shock's sake. I want a place to rest with the monsters, not from them."
The real world already provides plenty of horror. Sometimes you want to hang with the monsters, not run from them.
This creates an interesting opportunity for filmmakers. Cozy horror opens the genre to audiences who might otherwise skip it. It allows horror fans burned out on extreme content to stay engaged with the genre they love. And it shows horror's versatility. The genre can adapt to different tones and purposes while still being fundamentally horror.
House on Haunted Hill Credit: Monogram Pictures
The Debate Around Cozy Horror
Not everyone embraces the concept. There have already been numerous social media arguments about the idea of horror being cozy, and you can imagine how well that went.
Some critics argue that removing horror's edge makes it cease being horror at all. Others worry that cozy horror represents a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes horror work, that the tension and discomfort are essential, not optional.
"Cozy horror troubles me not due to the lack of violent or shocking content, but because its existence illustrates how wildly off-base our current cultural understanding of the horror genre is," Kate Stallworth wrote in Porter House Review.
But Stallworth is critiquing from a literary, not a filmmaking, standpoint.
Stallworth's core argument is that the definition of cozy horror (emphasizing comfort and distance from genuine dread) removes the tension that makes something horror in the first place. She points to works like Over the Garden Wall and What We Do in the Shadows as examples that blend humor and darkness, but argues they shouldn't be labeled "cozy" because they retain their macabre elements. And then avoids engaging with them further because they are from a visual medium, and "cozy horror is defined by aesthetics above all else."
It's a fair point about definitions. But the filmmaking perspective differs from the literary one.
Film is an inherently different medium from prose. In film, you're working with image, sound design, performance, editing, and atmosphere. A movie can make you feel multiple things at once in ways literature can't replicate. Dialogue can be funny while the score is not; terrible things can happen within a set with warm, inviting production design.
The visual language of film allows for more complex emotional layering. When Stallworth writes that "cozy horror is defined by aesthetics" and dismisses visual examples because they're from a different medium, she's actually making the case for why cozy horror works better in film than in literature. Those aesthetics aren't superficial. They're fundamental to how cinema communicates meaning and creates emotional experience.
The question isn't whether cozy horror removes all tension (good cozy horror doesn't), but whether comfort and dread can coexist in the same frame. Cozy horror creates a distinct emotional cocktail with its own artistic validity.
There's plenty to debate here about the purpose and value of horror and its subgenres. For Stallworth, cozy horror represents a move toward "shallow, sanitized versions of narrative art," but I think this is slightly reductive.
What makes cozy horror valuable isn't that it's easier or safer. Horror can serve different emotional purposes while still being fundamentally horror. They're just using the genre's tools differently.
'Death Becomes Her' Credit: Universal Pictures
Making Your Own Cozy Horror
If you're interested in crafting cozy horror, start by understanding what you want viewers to feel afterward. Traditional horror might end on a low note with little resolution, and viewers might feel unsettled. Cozy horror probably leaves them satisfied and happy.
Balance is everything. You need horror elements, but you pair them with warmth. Maybe it's the comfort of familiar horror tropes used in new ways.
Cozy horror usually resolves positively. That doesn't mean every character survives or every mystery gets explained, but you probably won't have that "false ending" that happens often in traditional horror.
Consider your setting and atmosphere. The production design itself can provide comfort and warmth that balances the horror elements.
Where Cozy Horror Is Headed
Horror filmmakers are using the genre to explore current themes like mental health, politics, identity, technology, and more. Cozy horror fits into this evolution.
As audiences get more sophisticated about genre, they're looking for variety. Some nights you want the intensity of elevated horror. Other nights you want something gentler.
If you want to make horror movies and are ready to experiment with tone, maybe try cozy horror. In a genre as creative and resilient as this one, it's only a new opportunity to play with how and why you tell stories.
Let us know how you feel about cozy horror.
