Is there anyone left who still flinches when a zombie is dispatched with the violent application of a knife, sword, bullet, stick, boulder, crossbow or other brain-piercing instrument to a blood-spurting head? The Walking Dead, the stylish drama that’s wrapping up its fourth season on US TV on 30 March, has inspired endless speculation about exactly what caused the majority of the citizenry to become flesh-eating zombies. There is, no doubt, some great allegorical significance to it all for those who want to look for it, something to fit our times. And for those not seeking symbolism, there is always the entertainment of being pleasurably spooked, not least by all that gore. Yet, four seasons into The Walking Dead, we watch as those still living kill the zombified deceased and accept the skewering of skulls as a matter-of-fact activity akin to the brushing of teeth.

Has the zombie genre become routine? And if so, are we now in need of the Next Great Scare? What is out there to frighten us silly? Because whatever scares us as a form of entertainment is never just the thing itself – the vampire, the axe murderer, the mutant lizard, extraterrestrial or stalker in the house with the unsuspecting nubile nanny – but also a manifestation of zeitgeist anxiety, a clue inside our society’s deepest fears at a particular moment. The original 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers is not merely about extraterrestrial ‘pods’ that turn humans into emotionless replicants, but also a critique of suburban conformity – as well as a McCarthy-era parable about creeping communism. Rosemary’s Baby is not simply about a pregnant woman and the devil, but also a pre-Roe v Wade allegory about women being denied reproductive freedom.

So, what can possibly scare us next?

What’s old is new

These days our zeitgeist anxiety is focused, with good reason, on technology in general and on the internet in particular. Secrets spilled by Edward Snowden about the extent to which the US National Security Agency covertly monitors the world have drawn refocused attention on the terrifying power of computerised intelligence – an old fear become new again. We’re suddenly back to the Orwellian attitudes of the 1940s ‘50s and ‘60s that had a massive influence on popular culture, so to make a prediction about what to expect for the future of horror, it helps to look back.