Green Terror. Veganism and ecology in contemporary Argentinean horror cinema

Abstract

In recent decades, a sub-genre of terror has emerged in Argentina that I choose to call green terror, which has its roots in eco-horror but, unlike the latter, which monstrosifies the animal by giving it great size, cunning or speed of reproduction, the Argentinean green terror keeps it in the position of a victim, equating it with the human being. In the green terror, the terrifying other is a fellow human being. Horror is expressed in the consequences of human action on the environment it inhabits. In this subgenre, two currents can be observed that are different from each other but, at the same time, intimately linked. The anti-speciesist one, with the emphasis on the animal issue, and the environmentalist one, where the stories revolve around climate change, where the animal is usually one of the big absentees and the human being struggles to survive on a devastated earth.