The Rise Of Bubblegum Horror And The Feminist Pulse Of The Genre

“They’re burning all the witches, even if you aren’t one,” sings Taylor Swift. Because if you rewind your memory the world used to burn women (as they would say ‘witches’) because nothing terrified men more than a woman with opinions?

Somehow, that single lyric feels like the perfect prologue to the horror genre itself. Nothing says “historical horror” like a mob of men, torches in hand, screaming about Satan because someone’s herbal tea worked too well, or some learned a science trick. Centuries later, we may have brought this to multiplexes as well, as they say art imitates life.

And horror cinema, from its earliest frames, took notes. The genre mirrored society’s deepest misogynies, dressing them up as monsters. The hysterical woman. The vengeful spirit. The virgin who must survive. The seductress who must die. From Hollywood’s scream queens to Bollywood’s chudails, women were made to bear the burden of moral panic, punished for desire, ambition, anger, or even existence.

The real horror, of course, was never supernatural. Patriarchy was and has been the monster behind the curtain all along.

Patriarchy, the Original Jump Scare

From Carrie’s bleeding prom queen to the cursed wives of Indian folklore, horror’s legacy is steeped in anxiety about female power. Barbara Creed’s seminal theory of “the monstrous feminine” articulates this perfectly: the idea that the female body itself, with its capacity to bleed, birth, and transform, has always been framed as a site of danger.

Consider how easily cinema equates womanhood with corruption: menstruation as madness (Ginger Snaps), sexuality as sin (Teeth), motherhood as possession (The Babadook). Even when women aren’t villains, they’re the pawn.

In Bollywood, the chudail and daayan have long played the same role: women who transgress, too seductive, too educated, or even unmarried, are punished with possession or death. Films like Raat (1992), Pari (2018) or Bulbul (2020) echo this lineage of fear. Because nothing terrifies a patriarchal world more than a woman who stops apologising.

The Witching Hour 

Witch hunts may have evolved from pitchforks to pixels, but the principle remains chillingly familiar. The internet is our modern pyre, cancel culture, moral policing, slut-shaming, all in the name of “accountability.” Every woman who steps outside the script risks the same flames, proof or no proof. Enter bubblegum horror, the new, pastel-tinted revolution of rage.

 Defining Bubblegum Horror: Where Glitter Meets Gore

Bubblegum horror is the cinematic embodiment of reclamation. It pairs candy-coloured aesthetics, pinks, sparkles, and doll-like femininity, with visceral horror and biting satire. It’s Barbie meets The Substance or Mean Girls meets Midsommar.

The genre thrives on contradiction. You will see the silver screen with soft visuals against brutal violence. Largely femme and queer, reclaiming what was once used to belittle them. The term “bubblegum” evokes sweetness, youth, and superficiality, qualities historically dismissed as “girly” and unserious. Bubblegum horror reclaims those very traits, weaponising them into symbols of defiance.

Weaponised Femininity

In Jennifer’s Body(2009), Megan Fox’s demonic cheerleader isn’t a monster; she’s a metaphor for the ways teenage girls are consumed by male desire and punished for it. Her beauty becomes both a curse and a weapon. Initially dismissed as “too sexy” and “confusing,” the film has since been reclaimed as a feminist classic, a commentary on friendship, exploitation, and the hunger for autonomy.

Similarly, The Love Witch (2016) turns 1960s Technicolour romance into a hyper-stylised critique of the male fantasy. Its protagonist weaponises allure and spells not to please men, but to reveal their absurdity. Tragedy Girls (2017) skewers influencer culture, turning teenage vanity into satire. Ready or Not (2019) makes a bride fight her in-laws to the death, a twisted metaphor for the institution of marriage itself.

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Each of these characters embodies the new monstrous feminine — one that doesn’t hide, doesn’t apologise, and certainly doesn’t die quietly.

The Aesthetic of Contradiction: Pretty, Petty, Powerful

The brilliance of bubblegum horror lies in its deliberate dissonance. The genre refuses coherence because femininity itself, as dictated by society, is a contradiction. We’re told to be soft but strong, desirable but decent, expressive but not emotional.

Bubblegum horror exaggerates that tension until it fractures. The visuals are intoxicating: pastel sets dripping in blood, glitter mixed with gore, tiaras perched on decapitated heads. The violence is almost theatrical, reminiscent of Death Becomes Her (1992), where eternal beauty becomes literal rot.

In Pearl (2022), Ti West’s Technicolour slasher, Mia Goth’s titular character dreams of stardom and domestic bliss, but her ambition festers into psychosis. The film’s glossy veneer hides a study in repression, a woman told to stay small until she erupts.

From Salem to Stree: Global Sisterhood of the Haunted

Across cultures, the witch has always been the same woman: punished for her power. But the modern reclamation of horror is gloriously global. In the West, Suspiria (2018) turned historical repression into transcendence or Midsommar (2019),  Ari Aster’s sunlit nightmare, closed with one of the most cathartic images in horror history: a woman smiling as the patriarchy literally burns.

In India, Stree (2018) cleverly inverted the chudail myth, making men the hunted and flipping centuries of gendered fear. Its feminist undercurrent was subtle but unmistakable: maybe the monster isn’t her. Maybe it’s you.

Queerness in Horror

Horror has always known queerness, even when it pretended not to. For decades, queer-coded characters were hidden in plain sight: the “effeminate” villain, the “unnatural” seductress, the monster lurking in the shadows of moral panic.

From Dracula’s Daughter and Psycho to The Silence of the Lambs, queerness was painted as perverse, something to be exorcised rather than explored. It was the cinematic shorthand for deviance and danger, mostly everything society refused to name but couldn’t look away from.

Bubblegum horror, in particular, borrows heavily from queer camp, that exaggerated, hyper-feminine aesthetic that both mocks and magnifies gender norms. Its glossy pinks, melodramatic blood splatter, and ironic sincerity are straight out of drag culture’s playbook: reclaiming excess as empowerment. Queer characters who are cultural icons, but sometimes they feel stylised, self-aware, but defiantly performative.  Bubblegum horror celebrates queerness not as token inclusion but as the very language of its rebellion.

Feminism in Fangs and High Heels

Underneath the cinematic candy coating, bubblegum horror is a manifesto in disguise, a scream wrapped in lip gloss. It dismantles the binary between good and evil, beauty and monstrosity, victim and villain. It echoes the post-#MeToo cultural shift, where female rage is no longer something to suppress. These films tap into a collective exhaustion of being doubted, dismissed, and disbelieved and transform it into art.

They are love letters to the girls who were called crazy, dramatic, dangerous. They’re revenge fantasies with electric production design.

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