"It's a very good time for horror. This business certainly has changed, but there's still room for serious horror films. Look at 28 Days Later, that's not a tongue-in-cheek picture"
About this Quote
This business certainly has changed is a weary acknowledgement of the late-90s/early-2000s marketplace: corporate risk-aversion, franchising, and the expectation that even terror should be packaged as a joke, a teen date movie, or a meta-commentary. Carpenter, whose best films treat fear as atmosphere and ideology, is arguing that horror works when it refuses to apologize for its own intensity.
The nod to 28 Days Later is pointed. That film reimagines the zombie outbreak as post-millennial panic: contagion, social collapse, militarized control. Not tongue-in-cheek is less a review than a standard. Carpenter is praising the refusal to undercut dread with punchlines, the confidence to make horror about consequences rather than cleverness. Subtext: the genre can be commercially alive without becoming emotionally trivial. If the world feels unstable, the honest response is not a smirkits a scream delivered straight.
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Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Carpenter, John. (2026, January 16). It's a very good time for horror. This business certainly has changed, but there's still room for serious horror films. Look at 28 Days Later, that's not a tongue-in-cheek picture. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/its-a-very-good-time-for-horror-this-business-106738/
Chicago Style
Carpenter, John. "It's a very good time for horror. This business certainly has changed, but there's still room for serious horror films. Look at 28 Days Later, that's not a tongue-in-cheek picture." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/its-a-very-good-time-for-horror-this-business-106738/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"It's a very good time for horror. This business certainly has changed, but there's still room for serious horror films. Look at 28 Days Later, that's not a tongue-in-cheek picture." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/its-a-very-good-time-for-horror-this-business-106738/. Accessed 9 Feb. 2026.
