The folks at Cineaste magazine sent me a complimentary copy of their latest issue because its main features are on contemporary horror movies. Among the topics are kids in horror (hence Let the Right One In on the cover), vampires, torture porn and infection.
If you’re unfamiliar with Cineaste, it’s an academic style of film magazine that offers features, reviews, interviews and some pretty heady analysis, often focusing on the political aspect of cinema. Like Rue Morgue, it’s an independent publication (based out of New York City), but it has been around since 1967. It’s not the most visually appealing publication, and the Cineaste website is pretty hurtin’, but content-wise it’s very thoughtful and thorough. I read through the horror content in the latest issue and, although I didn’t learn a lot of new things about trends in the genre, I enjoyed seeing some of those major trends laid out and examined in terms of what they mean. For example, The Battle Inside: Infection and the Modern Horror Film, by Richard Harland Smith, traces how the depiction of infection has evolved since Night of the Living Dead to reflect the times, and covers, not just zombies, but vampires, demons (Fallen) and ghosts (e.g. Ringu).
As Smith says:

Because Romero and Russo refused to fix a definitive cause for the epidemic of Night of the Living Dead (radiation from a returning space probe is bandied about as a probable catalyst), one wonders which way this infection is traveling—from the ground up or the other way around? And precisely who is infecting whom? The implication is that the sins of the living, their pettiness, their bitterness, their rejection of spontaneity in favor of habit, have driven the deceased to an eternal, shambling unrest.

So, if you’re really into that type of genre analysis, give it a look and turn yourself into an even bigger horror nerd.