Horror cinema: art which involves certain extremes of negative emotion and experience, and which aims to evoke certain extremes of discomfort in the audience.

Conspiracy cinema: art depicting secret structures of violence, which are hidden from the general public through means of political and social espionage which mirror real world corruption and conspiracy.

I believe there is a subset of cinema in which these two genres or concepts intertwine: the societal violence of the conspiracy thriller becomes more visceral to the extent expected of horror, and the horror film’s monsters are hidden in a social, metaphorical darkness instead of (or as well as) actual screen darkness. These films may even be their own hybrid genre. Having noticed this, I’ve decided to keep a list of such films.

General rule of thumb: if there’s a cover-up for a spooky thing, it’s probably conspiracy horror.