Modern horror has figured out what’s actually terrifying young people

Films like Obsession say a lot about young people’s most pressing anxieties (Picture: Focus Features/Shutterstock)

For decades, horror movies warned teenagers that having sex would get them killed.

Now, increasingly, horror seems frightened not of the consequences of intimacy and lust, but of intimacy and lust themselves.

That might sound flippant, but look at some of the most talked-about horror films of recent years and a pattern begins to emerge.

The monsters are still there, obviously, but they are increasingly standing in for something less tangible than death. They are about anxiety, alienation, bodily autonomy, surveillance, loneliness, and the terrifying ...