Question 1

What is The Horror Codex?

Accepted Answer

The Horror Codex is a free, searchable database of over 64,000 horror films — from the silent era to today. It allows you to search by title, director, actor, decade, country, streaming service, and more, across a detailed horror genre taxonomy that recognizes the nuance of various horror genres

Question 2

Do I need an account to use the site?

Accepted Answer

No. Search, browse, and all editorial pages are open to everyone. But creating an account will allow you to use many of the site’s more useful features, like keeping a watch list, rating films, dimming seen films in search results and list views, creating public lists, and contributing to film detail pages.

Question 3

How do I sign in?

Accepted Answer

Two options. Sign in with Google, or sign in with a one-time email link — we’ll email you a link that will log you in. Both are available from the top-right menu. No passwords either way. When you log in for the first time, your account is created.

Question 4

How do I search by director, actor, or crew?

Accepted Answer

Use search operators directly in the search bar. Twenty-eight operators are supported — the big ones for cast and crew: actor:"Toni Collette", director:Carpenter, writer:"Stephen King", producer:"Jason Blum", composer:"John Carpenter", cinematographer:"Roger Deakins", editor:"Thelma Schoonmaker", designer:"Patti Podesta" (production designer), fx:"Tom Savini" (practical SFX / makeup FX), vfx:"Industrial Light", costume:"Colleen Atwood", sound:"Colin Stetson", and soundtrack:Goblin (artist on the film’s score album). Plus the film-level filters: studio:Blumhouse, keyword:slasher, collection:"Halloween", list:"Folk Horror", genre:vampire, format:"found-footage", country:Japan, year:1985 (or year:1980-1989), award:fangoria and award-winner:saturn (nominated for or winner of an award — by family like oscar/saturn/fangoria or an exact category), and similar:694 (films related to a specific film by TMDB ID). For runtime: runtime:90 (≥90 min), runtime:>120, runtime:<80, or runtime:80-100 (inclusive range). For critic scores: rt:>80, rt:fresh, rt:rotten (Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer), metacritic:>=75 (Metascore 0–100), and imdb:>8 (IMDb rating 0–10). Wrap multi-word values in quotes. Combine operators with free text for precise results.

Question 5

What is the horror genre taxonomy?

Accepted Answer

The Horror Codex was built out of frustration with the sentiment that "Horror" was a sufficient categorization for all of these films. This site’s intention was to, instead, put each horror film (and a number of adjacent films) in its proper place: slasher, folk horror, cosmic horror, giallo, J-horror, body horror, etc. The heart of the site is the genre page, which details the taxonomy.

Question 6

What’s the difference between a genre and a format?

Accepted Answer

On The Horror Codex, we make a distinction between subject-matter genres (what the film is about — Monsters, Slashers, Folk Horror) and format genres (how the film is made or presented — Found Footage, Anthology, Mockumentary, Documentary, Short Film, TV Movie, Animated, and Kids & Family). Our opinion is that a film like The Blair Witch Project is oftentimes discussed primarily as a Found Footage film, rather than a Witchcraft or Folk Horror film. And that this puts undue emphasis on the technical approach to the filmmaking, rather than the story. Formats live in their own browse section at /format, and there’s a separate Format filter on the Search page.

Question 7

Can I filter by what’s currently streaming?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Use the streaming filter on the search page to limit results to films currently available on Netflix, Shudder, Hulu, Max, Prime, Paramount+, Peacock, AMC+, Criterion Channel, Screambox, Shout Factory, and other major services. Film pages also have a country selector so you can see what’s streaming in your region — it defaults to your country based on IP and you can pin a preferred country in Settings. The streaming availability data is updated weekly for recent films (the last 5 years) and monthly for older films.

Question 8

Why do content ratings and film titles sometimes change?

Accepted Answer

Content ratings (like MPAA in the US or BBFC in the UK) and alternative film titles are localized by country. By default we detect your country from your connection and show the matching rating + title. You can pin a preferred country in Settings if you want to override the default — e.g. always see Japanese release titles regardless of where you are.

Question 9

What is the Taste Map?

Accepted Answer

The Taste Map is a personal relationship graph on your profile page that visualizes your rated films alongside recommended unseen films. Films you’ve rated appear as a heatmap colored by how high you rated them, and unseen films are connected to your rated films via shared cast and crew. Each shared person contributes to the connection based on the creative significance of their role: Voice (the strongest tier — directors, writers, composers, cinematographers), Face (top-billed cast — actors in the first five billing slots), Design (editors, production designers, costume designers), Support (other cast and producers), and Background (everyone else — gaffers, grips, assistants, etc.). The combined weight across all shared people determines how strong the connection is, surfaced as Loose, Moderate, Strong, or Core chips. So a single shared director (a Voice-tier person) is a stronger creative link than five shared gaffers. The more films you rate, the better the map gets at recommending what you might love.

Question 10

How do I create a list?

Accepted Answer

Sign in, then go to the Lists page and create a new list. Give it a title, description, and cover photo, then add films by searching or from any film’s detail page. Lists can be public or kept as drafts while you work on them. Lists can also be created using the "save as list" button next to the search results total.

Question 11

Can I rate films and keep a watchlist?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Signed-in users can rate films on a 5-star scale (half-stars supported), mark what they’ve seen, keep a watchlist, and save favorites. You can also upvote/downvote public lists and bookmark them for later. Your ratings, seen list, watchlist, favorites, and saved lists all live on your profile page.

Question 12

How do the different ratings on the site work?

Accepted Answer

Three rating sources show up across the site, each used for something different. TMDB ratings — the public community rating from TMDB — drive the default "Recommended" sort on search and browse pages. The sort is Bayesian-weighted, which keeps obscure films with a handful of perfect scores from dominating the top of results. The TMDB rating is shown on the film detail page. White star ratings on film cards are the community average rating from Horror Codex users themselves — they only appear once at least one user has rated a film. Gold star ratings on film cards are your own personal rating — they appear on cards for films you’ve rated, on your profile, and in the rating bar on each film detail page.

Question 13

Can I import my ratings from Letterboxd?

Accepted Answer

Yes. On the Settings page, upload your Letterboxd ratings.csv, watched.csv, and/or watchlist.csv exports. The import runs in the background — boxd.it links resolve to TMDB IDs (cached so re-imports are fast), then films are matched against the Codex database. Half-stars are preserved (Letterboxd’s 1–10 half-star scale maps directly to ours). Importing ratings also marks those films as Seen. Conflict policy: anything you’ve already rated, watched, or added on The Horror Codex always wins — existing rows are never overwritten by the import.

Question 14

How do notes work?

Accepted Answer

Every film page has a User Notes section with threaded replies, up/down voting, spoiler tags, editing after posting, and sorting (newest, oldest, top). Wrap text between ||double pipes|| when writing a note to hide spoilery text behind a click-to-reveal. Moderators can pin important notes to the top of a thread.

Question 15

Can I contribute genre tags or fix bad data?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Signed-in users can add or remove genre tags, add keywords, suggest related films, upload film stills (with optional spoiler tags), and suggest editorial reference links. Edits are then sent to a lightweight moderation queue where they may be reverted if found to be inaccurate.

Question 16

A film is missing. Can I request it?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Signed-in users can submit film requests via the request film form. An admin will review and add approved requests.

Question 17

Where does the film data come from?

Accepted Answer

Core film metadata (titles, cast, crew, release dates, posters, streaming availability) comes from TMDB. Genre tags, editorial descriptions, essential film lists, and community contributions are original to The Horror Codex. This product uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB.

Question 18

How often is the database updated?

Accepted Answer

New films are ingested weekly. Streaming availability and TMDB ratings are refreshed on a tiered schedule — recent films weekly, older films monthly.

Question 19

How are films tagged with genres?

Accepted Answer

Genre classification uses a hybrid of AI (Claude) scoring films against our detailed horror taxonomy and human moderation. Community-submitted tags always override automated ones, and you can see and edit a film’s genre tags on its detail page.

Question 20

How do I delete my account?

Accepted Answer

Go to Settings and use the "Delete account" option. There is no undo — confirmation is required. Always removed: your profile, sign-in info, watchlist, seen films, favorites, saved lists, and film requests. By default, kept but anonymized: notes, public lists, uploaded photos, and contributed tags/keywords/related-film suggestions/editorial links. These stay on the site but are shown as "Anonymous." Up/down votes and film ratings stay in aggregate totals since they can’t be disambiguated. Check the "Also delete my contributions" box and all of the above are hard-deleted instead — including ratings and votes.

Question 21

What data do you collect?

Accepted Answer

We store your email, display name, profile photo, and the content you create (ratings, lists, notes, film tags, uploaded photos). We use Fathom for privacy-first analytics — no tracking cookies and no data sold to advertisers.

Question 22

What does “beta” mean?

Accepted Answer

The Horror Codex is in open beta. The core features — search, ratings, lists, notes, and the genre taxonomy — are live and functional, but we’re still building. You may encounter rough edges, missing data, or the occasional bug.

Question 23

How do I report a bug or suggest a feature?

Accepted Answer

Use the feedback button attached to the right side of the screen.

Question 24

Who built this?

Accepted Answer

The Horror Codex is a Living Dead Co. project, built by a horror fan who wanted a better way to search, discover, and catalog horror films. The full origin story is on the About page.

Question 25

I’d like to get in touch about advertising or collaborating.

Accepted Answer

The Horror Codex is currently in beta and isn’t running ads or collaborating, but we’re open to exploring partnerships that align with our values and don’t negatively impact the experience of our users. If interested, please e-mail jon@livingdead.co.

Question 26

What is The Horror Codex’s policy on A.I. usage?

Accepted Answer

Anthropic’s Claude language model and other A.I. tools were used extensively in the creation of this site to write and deploy code, categorize films, distill research, write content drafts, proofread, and even to provide voiceover for the teaser video. However, the Horror Codex is very much my own creative vision and editorial voice. I recognize that this is a controversial subject for many reasons and agree with many of the criticisms of A.I., venture capital, and the state of technology broadly. So in building the Codex, the aim was to employ A.I. to achieve the previously unachievable — indexing 64,000+ films and building a fully featured search app in my spare time — in order to celebrate the human creativity and ingenuity of horror cinema. And the goal is that this site is shaped over time far more by community input than by A.I. The broader policy is to never use A.I. flippantly (as a waste of resources) or exploitatively (as a substitute for human creativity).

Question 27

I’ve noticed The Horror Codex uses Spotify for embedded podcasts and soundtracks. Don’t you know that Spotify is bad?

Accepted Answer

I have many personal criticisms of Spotify. More than most would care to hear. But I find that the most severe criticisms also apply to every other major streaming service. Services like Apple and Tidal also platform A.I. artists and questionable podcasters and exploit the artists who provide their content. Additionally, the payout rates are essentially the same across the board when adjusted for user behavior. I think that the streaming economy can be improved for everyone, and support a legislative solution that would fix problems across all streaming platforms. If you take issue with Spotify Chairman Daniel Ek’s personal investments, I do, too! But applying an ethics test to the shareholders of all integrated services would disqualify YouTube, Gmail, X / Twitter, and a number of other technological platforms that are essential to running a site and a brand. Ultimately, Spotify makes the most sense because their API is fully featured and they have the largest user base.

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