If art is a reflection of life, the horror genre is an appropriate tool to canalize the fears and anxieties of the historical moment in which it was produced (Carroll, 1990, p. 207). However, the horror genre has had, throughout the history of cinema, the reputation of being formulaic and telling the same stories over and over again with little to no innovation. For this reason, the genre has been regarded as a lesser form of art: as if its distinctive traits were its shock value and ability to entertain instead of what it has to say. The scope of this work is two contemporary American horror films that I chose, The Invisible Man (Whannell, 2020) and Get Out (Peele, 2016), with the purpose of analyzing how they work with the clichés of the horror genre in order to address issues of social relevance.