“It’s true what they say,” Adam Brody’s wealthy lush tells his horrified new sister-in-law partway through the masterful horror-comedy Ready or Not. “The rich really are different.”

Ready or Not—from directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett and screenwriters Guy Busick and Ryan Murphy—is easily one of the year’s best horror films. The story follows Samara Weaving’s bride turned final girl, Grace, as she marries into the family from hell: the ultraloaded Le Domas clan. Grace, whom one family member coolly describes as “cute, in a ‘last call at the bar’ sort of way,” is a stranger to their traditions—which, she soon finds out, include a nefarious game that’s played on every family wedding night. The film culminates with Grace screaming something that speaks to a national theme, one that’s increasingly provided fodder for movies like this one: “Fucking rich people!”

Horror has long loved rich bad guys; Ready or Not’s general conceit—the wealthy hunting other humans for sport—has its roots in 1932’s The Most Dangerous Game, a film adapted from a 1924 short story. But it’s the latest in a wave of recent screw-the-rich horror movies that have a distinctly modern twist. The Purge series, which launched in 2013 and released its latest installment in the summer of 2018, centers on an alternate America that makes all crime legal for just one night each year—even though (or, if we’re being honest, because) the damage done each Purge primarily hurts the working class. The Hunt—which would have premiered this fall, were it not for a political firestorm that killed its release—was advertised as a film in which wealthy elites (allegedly liberals) hunt down less wealthy human beings (allegedly conservatives). And now, there’s Ready or Not—a film that dramatizes class tensions, ultimately indicting the deranged Le Domases as not only evil, but incompetent.

Ready or Not’s directors and executive producer Chad Villella knew exactly what they were doing with this film. “We’re honored to be in the lineage of what we consider to be a bit of a subgenre that skewers the 1 percent,” Gillet told V.F. in an interview. “I think one of the reasons why we’re seeing this theme specifically continue to pop up in recent genre movies is that there’s a lot at work right now culturally. There are a lot of people who should have voices that don’t have voices. There are a lot of people who feel like they’re helpless, and that they want change, but they don’t know how to be a part of it. There are a lot of people that just want to fucking scream right now. There’s a lot of rage, and a lot of anger, and a lot of fear.”

Horror has an ability to address social issues by creating a heightened reality, he continued—making space for conversations that otherwise can be difficult to broach, and offering the cathartic, communal release audiences have longed for. “It’s obviously something that people are craving right now,” Gillett said. Look around, and you can see what he means: in recent years, America’s wealth gap has been bigger than ever; collectively, Congress members’ net worth is five times the U.S. median; and increasingly, it seems that those in power know they can do whatever they want, with no fear of facing actual consequences. It’s no wonder, then, that the rich are once again cropping up as a popular horror subject.