Toward the end of Ari Aster’s sun-soaked horror film Midsommar, Florence Pugh’s character Dani has had enough. She’s tripped on mushrooms, lost multiple friends, and, most immediately, witnessed her boyfriend performing a cultish sex act with a young girl. Overcome by her emotions, she releases a volley of gasping, heaving sobs as a group of women wails along with her. It’s one of Midsommar’s most memorable and widely discussed moments, and speaks to the film’s fascination with the ways in which a community can function as both a savior and destroyer of lives. That contemplative bent has become Aster’s calling card after Midsommar and his debut feature, Hereditary—vaulting his films into an increasingly discussed category called “elevated horror.” But that scene also captured the main attraction horror has long offered its devoted fan base: a collective release of alienating emotions like dread, anxiety, and rage.

It’s impossible to talk about the ways horror has shifted in the past decade without mentioning Aster, or that bothersome term that often follows his films. The “elevated horror” discussion peaked in the latter half of the 2010s, as titles like The Witch, Get Out, and Hereditary made waves. But horror aficionados and some critics pushed back against the notion that these films are doing something entirely new. For instance: Is Get Out really an elevation of the genre, or part of a conversation that includes films like George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead—which gave horror its first black hero only to reveal that he was ultimately killed by a white police officer? Is The Babadook not a direct spiritual descendent of Rosemary’s Baby? And even the films often perceived as “trashier” horror—from slashers to so-called “torture porn”—have always had more to say than they have gotten credit for.

But what if horror really was elevated in the 2010s—just not in the way the term suggests?

Whatever one might want to say about the past 10 years in horror, there’s really only one place to start: Blumhouse Productions. In 2009 the studio released its first breakout hit, Paranormal Activity, from director Oren Peli. Made on a budget of $15,000, the night-vision-heavy found footage thriller captivated audiences to the tune of more than $193 million worldwide. Two years later, Blumhouse produced James Wan’s Insidious, a $1.5 million project, on which Peli also served as a producer. Both films display masterful command of traditional horror tools like pacing and suspense. And Insidious, in particular, displays impressive restraint, refusing to let loose until the very end—a maneuver that makes its ending, in which Patrick Wilson’s father character, Josh, must venture into a demonic realm called the Further to save his son’s soul, all the more effective.