Call a movie a thriller and plenty of people will lean in. Call it horror and some of those same people may think twice.

That feels especially true in Christian circles, where horror can come with baggage that “psychological thriller” somehow avoids. But the line between the two gets blurry fast. Both trade in suspense, danger, and the sense that something could go very wrong.

Maybe that’s because movies aren’t only telling us what happened. They’re trying to make us feel it.

Comedy makes us laugh. Drama can break our hearts. Horror works with an emotion we’re often taught to resist: fear.

Storytellers have understood that emotional push and pull for centuries. Aristotle wrote about pity and fear leading to catharsis. Christian screenwriting teacher Leo Partible puts it in more practical terms: story tension and release using plot, character and genre to produce and release emotion hormones. What sticks is often the emotional experience underneath the plot.

So maybe the question for Christian filmmakers isn’t simply whether a movie scares us. It’s why the story wants us to feel afraid and where that fear takes us.

This week, we’re looking at the uneasy space between horror and thriller, why one label can feel more acceptable than the other, and what happens when the scare serves something bigger than itself.

Ten years after its original release, Train To Busan recently returned to theaters in a newly remastered 4K edition. The zombie thriller still works because the stakes stay personal, following a distracted father trying to protect his daughter as an outbreak tears through their train. The scares are relentless, but it’s the sacrifice, family, and emotional payoff that make the horror hit as hard as it does.

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Drawing on the 1928 exorcism of Emma Schmidt, a case long linked to the lore surrounding The Exorcist, The Ritual follows two priests confronting something that tests faith as much as courage. Al Pacino and Dan Stevens anchor a story where spiritual conflict matters more than shock alone. It’s a faith-forward horror film that takes evil seriously without losing sight of the people caught in the middle of it.

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Horror can be a big tent. A ghost story, a psychological thriller, and a slasher can all fall under the same label, even though they ask very different things from an audience.

That makes “horror” a pretty weak shortcut for deciding whether something is worth watching or making.

Christian filmmaker Scott Derrickson has made that case for years. In a Christianity Today interview, he argued that horror is unusually equipped to deal with good, evil, the supernatural, and the things we’re afraid to confront. He calls it a genre of “non-denial” — one willing to admit that darkness exists rather than look away.

That’s where Leo Partible’s idea of emotional truth matters too. A story can be logically messy and still connect if the audience feels something real underneath it. Horror and thrillers make that especially obvious: fear can build empathy, dread can expose what a character values, and tension can make the release hit harder.

That doesn’t mean every use of fear is worthwhile. Some movies are more interested in cruelty or shock than what either one reveals. But darkness on screen isn’t automatically an endorsement of darkness.

Christian film critic Josh Larsen makes a similar case in Fear Not!. He argues that the best horror can acknowledge what terrifies us and still take us somewhere beyond it. An academic look at the genre likewise describes horror as both threat and catharsis, confronting anxieties around death, the supernatural, and forces outside our control.

Scripture doesn’t shy away from those realities either. It gives us evil, temptation, and death, then asks what they reveal about us and where we put our hope.

That may be the better line for Christian filmmakers and audiences to draw. Not simply, “Is this horror?” but, “What is this story doing with the darkness, and what is it asking us to feel?”

A thriller can use fear without much purpose. A horror movie can use it to say something true. The label only tells us so much. It doesn’t tell us the heart of the story.

The results are in, and it’s a tie! 50% of you voted for “Yes, definitely” in last week’s poll: Did your church ever consider rock music “too worldly”? The other half voted for “Sometimes, depending on the music.”

The Thing in the Hall is a modern Gothic psychological thriller inspired by E. F. Benson’s 1912 ghost story of the same name. The values-based feature follows a fatal incident through conflicting testimony, using a possible supernatural encounter to explore guilt, complicity, and what happens when someone fails to act when it matters most.

The film marks the directorial debut of Logan Kishi, whose previous shorts have screened at festivals across the country. Kishi grew up loving horror, but says the goal here isn’t simply to scare people. He wants to use the genre to explore subjects people often avoid, giving the tension something deeper to reveal.

The project also shows why horror and thrillers can work so well for independent filmmakers. They can deliver suspense, atmosphere, and emotional stakes without depending on huge budgets or recognizable stars.

The team is currently raising on Wefunder to bring the feature to life.

The project makes sense as an independent film. The story is contained, the genre is clear, and the idea has room to reach beyond a strictly faith-based audience.

_{*Plumb News is not affiliated with “The Thing in the Hall” or Wefunder and does not receive compensation for featuring it. We’re just highlighting it because we believe projects like this deserve support.}

“Say to those who have an anxious heart, ‘Be strong; fear not! Behold, your God will come…’” – Isaiah 35:4 (ESV)

There’s something striking about who this is addressed to. Not the fearless. Not the person who has already worked through the anxiety. It’s for the anxious heart that’s still anxious when the words arrive.

What changes the moment is the promise that God is present in the middle of it. The unease may still be real, but it no longer has to carry the whole weight of what comes next.

Stories work on us in a similar way. We connect because we recognize something of ourselves in what a character is carrying, whether it’s dread, grief, uncertainty, or hope. The feeling draws us closer before the story asks us what to do with it.

“Fear not” doesn’t mean nothing frightening is ahead. It means fear doesn’t get to decide how the story ends.

Until next time,

THE PLUMB NEWS TEAM