Millennial horror

Unemployment, mutant viruses and pains at the gas pump haunt moviegoers, but like Vietnam three decades ago, the war on terror following the Twin Towers Tragedy seems to have inspired both filmmakers and film fans."'Dawn of the Dead' looks like 'Finding Nemo' compared to some of the stuff that's been coming out of Iraq," Zombie said.

"Even though we may not contract SARS on a trip to Toronto, we can see it played out in a film like '28 Days Later,' " Timpone added. The years since the ironic-horror heyday of the '90s have seen the economy collapse, war return and terrorism hit home in ways previously unimagined. The result is the sort of general malaise and dread that usually means good business for horror. 

The plundering of horror film history gained steam, including sequels, homages, and remakes of, films long established from previous decades. Some notable box office revivals included the merging of two old franchises in Freddy vs. Jason (2003) or Alien vs Predator (2005), the re-imagining of the Universal monsters in Van Helsing (2004), the prequel to The Exorcist, as well as further entries in the Halloween and Child's Play series. Remakes of previous successes included Gore Verbinski's American version of Ringu (The Ring (2002)), and remakes of Dawn of the Dead (2004) and The Amityville Horror (2005).  

Original horror entries in the 2000s were a mixed bag of teen exploitation like the Final Destination movies, starting in 2000, and more serious attempts at mainstream horror, notably the further horror-suspense films of M. Night Shyamalan.

The zombie genre enjoyed a revival around the world, fuelled, in part, by the success of the "survival horror" genre of videogames (themselves inspired by films). Some of these games were also turned into films (for example Resident Evil (2002)). Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses and Eli Roth's Cabin Fever were both homages to the horror films of the late 1970s and early 1980s, with the latter using body horror as its primary method of scare.

There has also been a small revival in British horror film production, with some of the more successful examples including 28 Days Later, Dog Soldiers and The Descent. "It's a wide variety of horror films," Zombie said of the current surge. "It's everything from 'Freddy Vs. Jason,' which felt like an '80s throwback, to '28 Days Later,' which was more serious and had a cool vibe. It's all over the place, including stuff like 'Van Helsing' that seems like it's for little kids."

Ringu launched a revival of serious horror filmmaking in Japan ("J-Horror") leading to such films as Takashi Shimizu's Ju-on (2000) and Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Pulse (2001). Other advances in horror were made through Japanese animation (for example the gruesome 'guro' animation), as Japanese culture reached new heights of popularity in the West (the first horror-themed anime began appearing in the west in the late 1980s).

"It seems like the last thing anyone would want to do is watch death and destruction on TV, and then pay nine bucks to watch more death and destruction, but for some reason, people always want to," Rob Zombie said.  

In the 2000s, the Fantasy genre become the most popular with universal hits such as The Lord of the Rings films and the Harry Potter films not to forget Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Unbreakable, Holes, Pirates of the Caribbean.