🎃 Horror is a Safe Space for Dangerous Questions
Horror has always given us permission to peek into the dark corners we don’t want to face head-on. Death, violence, punishment, trauma; the genre doesn’t just entertain, it lets us explore dangerous questions in a controlled way.
For criminal justice advocates, horror offers a surprising gift: a language for systemic harm. The monsters, prisons, and shadows on screen are metaphors for the real systems we fight. They help audiences confront injustice safely, through allegory, myth, and ghost story, before they’re ready to confront it in policy and practice.
Here’s a recap on a few movies we talked about this month:
Freddy Krueger & Dream Warriors (1987): Punishment Without Healing
Freddy Krueger is a nightmare born of vengeance. In Dream Warriors, the third Nightmare on Elm Street installment, the survivors learn that the only way to fight him is together — to turn isolation into solidarity.
Justice Lesson: Freddy represents cycles of unaddressed harm. The parents burned him alive, believing punishment would solve the problem. But punishment didn’t end him; it made him more powerful, more invasive. Just like incarceration, punitive “solutions” only pass harm down to the next generation. The Dream Warriors survive by building community, supporting one another, and sharing power; that’s restorative justice in action.
Candyman (2021): Say His Name, Remember His Story
Jordan Peele and Nia DaCosta’s Candyman reminds us that horror stories aren’t just entertainment — they are archives of trauma. Each Candyman is another Black man killed by systemic violence. Cabrini-Green becomes a haunted graveyard not because of superstition, but because of history: over-policing, gentrification, erasure.
Justice Lesson: The film demands we say their names. Not just Candyman, but George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Laquan McDonald, and the countless others. Our work in criminal justice reform is the same — refusing to let the system bury names, twist narratives, and sanitize violence. Storytelling is itself an act of justice.
Let the Right One In (2008)
Justice Lesson: Cycles of Violence and the Blurred Line Between Victim and Perpetrator
At its core, Let the Right One In is a story about loneliness, abuse, and survival. Oskar, a bullied child, befriends Eli, a vampire who lives by taking life but also offers him protection and a sense of belonging. The film complicates morality: Eli is both victim and predator, and Oskar’s violence is born from desperation, not malice.
For justice advocates, this mirrors how cycles of harm play out in real life. Many people who cause harm have also been harmed. Bullying, abuse, neglect, and systemic failures can turn victims into perpetrators. The lesson is that justice must recognize this complexity — not flatten people into “good” or “evil.” Restorative justice offers a way to interrupt these cycles, creating safety without turning victims into monsters or punishing trauma with more trauma.
The Purge (2013)
Justice Lesson: Law-and-Order Narratives as Tools of Oppression
The Purge imagines a world where, for one night each year, all crime is legal. What looks like “release” is actually social cleansing; the wealthy hide in their fortresses while the poor are left to be slaughtered. The government frames this as a way to keep order, but it’s really about eliminating those deemed disposable.
This is not at all far from our reality. Mandatory minimums, cash bail, stop-and-frisk, and “tough on crime” policies are all versions of The Purge, tools that criminalize poverty, reinforce racial hierarchies, and protect privilege under the banner of “public safety.” The lesson here is clear: when “law and order” is weaponized, it doesn’t protect everyone. It protects power. Real justice asks us to dismantle systems that use punishment to erase the marginalized, and instead build safety rooted in equity and community care.
Horror Shows Us the System is the Monster
Across both films, one truth emerges: the scariest monster isn’t the dream demon or the hook-handed ghost. It’s the system that produces them.
- Freddy is the cycle of violence families tried to bury.
- Candyman is the echo of systemic brutality we tried to erase.
Lesson: Horror reveals what carceral logic hides; punishment without healing creates more pain. Erasure guarantees the ghost will return.
Restorative Justice: Exiting the Nightmare Loop
Restorative justice gives us a way out of the haunted house. Instead of hiding harm in cells, cages, and myths, it asks us to face it directly. Horror reminds us that the only way to defeat the monster is to stop pretending it doesn’t exist; to shine a light in the dark hallway, to listen to the voices in the mirror.
This is why horror matters for reform:
- It creates distance, so we can look at terrifying truths.
- It makes the invisible visible, so we can name what’s been erased.
- It offers metaphors for cycles we must break: trauma, punishment, silence.
Horror as Justice Work
When we leave the theater, Freddy and Candyman stay behind — but the systems they represent do not. This Halloween, the lesson is clear: horror stories end when the credits roll, but justice work only ends when we transform the real monsters — the policies, prisons, and practices that keep harm alive.
If Dream Warriors taught us anything, it’s this: no one survives alone.
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