Over the past decade, many terms have emerged to characterize what seemed to be the revelation of a new subgenre - a "new" horror that blends the formal aesthetics of auteur cinema with the construction of an affective experience of fear and suspense. Associated with low-budget films produced by independent American studios such as A24 or Blumhouse, terms like Post Horror or Elevated Horror have become common among critics and audiences, emerging to classify an "escape" from classic horror cinema, which has become repetitive, boring, routine, and formulaic over the years. Praised by critics for supposedly transcending the genre's status quo, films associated with these terms have also won over more mainstream audiences, seemingly relegating to the background and devaluing all other commercially-oriented horror in an effort to "escape" the genre and make it more prestigious.

Following the two previous cycles on the subject, we again highlight Slow Horror as the term that we find most meaningful to characterize this new trend in the genre, this more authorial, differentiated, or experimental aspect of horror. Here, there is an accumulated tension, a constant terror, a general feeling that something is wrong, and the focus is on creating a sense of discomfort, dread, and anxiety, privileging the visual and auditory aspects of the film. Slow Horror films often use space as a source of terror, exploring slowness, static or minimally moving shots, long takes that facilitate contemplation and introspection.

We emphasize this "slowness" of horror because, in addition to increasing tension and apprehension, it also functions as a reaction against the increasing speed of the 21st century, a resistance to a cinema of "acceleration," to the increasingly fast and chaotic editing and camera movements of post-1990s Hollywood cinema, relegating jump scares, blood, and gore to the background. These are films that have innovated with their floating, circular, and open narratives, ambiguous and psychologically complex characters, and various forms of spatial and temporal manipulation. They address themes such as grief or loss, racism, coming-of-age, marital or familial relationships, motherhood, depression, social commentary, isolation, loneliness, social anxieties, among others. This slow aesthetic in Slow Horror elevates these fears and apprehensions that more conventional horror films choose to sideline or ignore.

In this third cycle dedicated to Slow Horror, we have decided to screen two European films that, using characteristics and themes associated with this new concept of horror, explore domestic space and family relationships, creating increasing tension and anxiety until the inevitable conclusion of shock, surprise, and astonishment. "Miss Violence" (Alexandros Avranas, 2013) begins with a tragic event that would presumably affect any family, but here all the elements seem to continue living as if nothing had happened. The reasons for this "normalcy" are gradually revealed, and we discover what frightening events occur within this tightly closed family unit. In "Goodnight Mommy" (Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz, 2014), a mother and her twin sons live in an isolated country house in the middle of the woods. The woman is wrapped in bandages after a facial plastic surgery, and throughout the film, doubt arises in the brothers (and in us, the audience) as to whether that person is really their mother. With stylistic references to Haneke, these are films where the use of silence, the exploration of space, and the slow pace allow for a gradual increase in uncertainty, ambiguity, and suspense, thus creating an experience of terror and fear characteristic of Slow Horror.