An analysis into the connection between Christianity and horror cinema, Valley of the Shadow: The Spiritual Value of Horror delves into stories of darkness and sin and finds impressive, unexpected throughlines to spirituality and scripture that brings new light to a genre of film entranced in the shadows, yet never hidden from God’s grace.

Director and film critic Tyler Smith previously released Reel Redemption, which expertly dove into the history and impact of the faith-based film. His follow up, Valley of the Shadow, takes on the relationship between horror movies and Christianity, and asks whether any spiritual value can be found in a genre of film that boasts Hellraiser, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and The Exorcist amongst its ranks. The answer, no doubt surprising to some, is a resounding “yes!”

With horror actor and Christian, Bill Oberst Jr., as our guide, we are led through a collage of images from the oldest and most cinematic genre. Oberst Jr. narrates the screenplay written by Smith and Reed Lacky with poise and conviction, presenting not only how horror can represent different facets of the human condition, but how the Bible itself can be horrific especially in its dealings with the supernatural.

Indeed, if we are living in a fallen world, then the sins of man and the evil it begats – greed, murder, corruption – are very much part of the human story, and what is cinema, what is art, then a reflection of the world and mankind’s part in it?

This can also be found in scripture through its various parables. What is the story of Cain and Abel if not a tale of jealousy and, indeed, the first murder? Much of the story of mankind is the eternal struggle between good and evil, light and dark, grace and temptation. As Orbest Jr. states so convincingly: “Shadows are darkest because the light is the brightest.”

The ultimate example of how these elements converge is in the Passion story. Here is Jesus Christ, the son of God made man, unjustly tried, humiliated, tortured, and crucified, a spectacle as gruesome and horrific as they come. Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, very much a horror movie, portrays it as so.

Yet from this horror came the ultimate triumph in the form of the resurrection. In that moment Christ rises above the horror, the fear, the corruption, the evil that drove men to kill what they did not, could not understand. The dark may conceal the monsters of the world, but the light will always be there to shine its loving grace upon the wicked.