A clear candidate for movie of the year, The Odyssey evokes many feelings in viewers — including, perhaps most surprisingly, fear. Throughout his journey, Odysseus (Matt Damon) faces many otherworldly and supernatural challenges, the likes of which would make the most faithful of Zeus’ servants cower. As the movie continues to tear up the box office, the film’s deft way with terror has gotten people wondering why Christopher Nolan hasn’t made a horror movie yet. In fact, Nolan himself joked about it in a recent Hollywood Reporter interview, saying, “[Fans] don’t need to beg me to tell a horror story anymore. Just buy a ticket.” His work with The Odyssey is the closest to the genre he has ever gotten, and gives a glimpse of what a Nolan horror movie could look like. He has also praised some of the latest horror hits, like Obsession, as examples of outstanding filmmaking. So what’s keeping him?
Christopher Nolan Dips His Toes into Horror Multiple Times in ‘The Odyssey’
Horror really isn’t something people consider when thinking about The Odyssey in its original form, with most retellings often leaning into its adventure and dramatic aspects. Considering the nature and structure of Odysseus’ journey from Troy back to his home in Ithaca, that’s also what most people usually remember from this story and what they have come to expect, but Nolan’s vision is a little different. Instead, he draws from many horror subgenres to build a more realistic — and unsettling — version of The Odyssey.
The scene that has been talked about the most in this sense is when the sorceress Circe (Samantha Morton) turns Odysseus’ men into pigs. Their insatiable hunger upon eating her food is already shocking, as they seem clearly aware of what is happening and are desperate to stop, but can’t. Then, Circe’s “molding” them into pigs, as if they were made of clay, is clearly reminiscent of body horror classics like An American Werewolf in London. Her telling Odysseus that his men are really pigs in disguise after giving him pig meat to eat also feels almost Hannibal-esque.
But there are other instances of horror rising through The Odyssey, too. The sequence in Polyphemus’ (Bill Irwin) cave feels almost like survival horror, as more and more of Odysseus’ men are eaten until he finally figures out how to escape. Polyphemus’ own screams are also enough to make anyone’s skin crawl, apparently made using Irwin’s real screams processed through metal instruments for echo and amplification. Not many have walked out unshaken after hearing that.
Finally, some have been interpreting Nolan’s The Odyssey as Odysseus dealing with his guilt for what he did in Troy in a purely visceral way, which would place the movie even closer to psychological horror than drama. His seeing a grown, armored child among the Laestrygonians, the moving trees preventing him from fleeing, and even the dead running after him in Hades — all of those work better as manifestations of his guilt thanactual fantastical elements.
Nolan Has Experience in Creating and Interpreting Genre-Based Concepts
Considering the comfort Nolan has been shown to have around horror and its subgenres in The Odyssey, what is really stopping him from making an actual horror film? As it turns out, not much. In a recent interview with THR, he acknowledged that his most recent work is indeed pretty much a horror movie already and that it “whets his appetite” for more, so it might come sooner than we think.
There is one important issue, though. When praising Obsession, Nolan highlighted that it’s “an amazing idea,” then followed up by confessing that what’s really keeping him from making a similar project isn’t the technical aspects — rather, it’s the story. For a horror film to work, it needs a great concept. This is important, because, as he also told Empire, “innovation is not just respected — it’s really demanded” when it comes to horror. You can’t get the audience to respond so viscerally to something that doesn’t work or that they have seen countless times before, so it has to be something fresh.
So, Nolan has as much of an appetite for making a horror film as we’d have for watching it, but finding an idea that’s worth the risk is still what keeps him from doing it. Considering his previous works, he has always been great at conceiving fascinating original concepts, as he’s done in Inception and Tenet, and reinterpreting older stories into something modern and unexpected, like The Dark Knight trilogy and even The Odyssey itself.
Coming up with something as thrilling as Obsession (which even got a rare curse word out of him, mind you), for example, is a challenge in itself, but anyone would be willing to wait as long as it takes for a Christopher Nolan horror movie. He has already teased that it may be at least another three years until his next movie, so we are in for a long wait anyway. At least now he knows that his wish to tackle horror is something he shares with his fans and audience.
The Odyssey is currently in theaters.
The Odyssey
- Release Date
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July 15, 2026
- Runtime
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173 minutes
