Despite the fact that most of us find comfort in the warm, overly buttery cooking of our grandmothers, old women in horror are the creepiest. You know granny means trouble in a horror movie when she walks into a room dressed in that classic granny cardigan, compassionately offering tasty snacks for lost, cold, and hungry travellers.

I recently watched two really excellent horror films, Mercy (2014) and The Talking of Deborah Logan (2014), which both have terrifying old women as the antagonists. Both movies sufficiently scared and intrigued me. It got me thinking: what is our perception of the elderly, and what makes them so frightening in horror?

It’s no surprise that our society is uncomfortable with aging. We have an obsession with youth and it’s painfully obvious in the beauty aisle of any store. Rows and rows of creams are stacked next to each other promising youthful rejuvenation, improved skin elasticity, and the destruction of wrinkles. Crows feet are our enemies. Laugh lines scare us. The battle against aging is a multi-million dollar industry. We are a society in denial of the reality of growing old.

Old-age-related illnesses like Alzheimer’s and dementia feel like inevitable epidemics waiting to ensnare us as we grow old. It can devastate entire families to watch our loved ones become someone who they’re not. It’s the bogeyman of aging. In both Mercy and The Talking of Deborah Logan, the old women have age-related illnesses. Deborah has Alzheimer’s, and Mercy’s sickness is unspecified but leaves her as a shell of her former self. In each film these illnesses make the women vulnerable to evil influences, suggesting that a demon is really to blame.

It poses a strange question. Are old-age related diseases the demons of aging? Are we afraid of old people because we are afraid of what we might become when we age?

On one hand, I love the creepy old lady movies. They always get to me. There’s a scary possessed old woman in The Exorcist III and I screamed during a close-up scene of her face as she began lunging with a kitchen knife.

But on the other hand, while diseases and deteriorating minds is a frightening thought, I’m comfortable with the idea of aging. I’m actually stoked to be a gentle kind grandma, rocking on the front porch with my ice tea and pet goats (don’t ask). But our deep discomfort with old age and the unpredictability of mental illness in seniors is clear from the scary old lady trope of mainstream horror.

From the films mentioned above to others such as Drag Me To Hell (2009)  and Dead Silence (2007) to the notoriously evil old couple in Rosemary’s Baby (1968), there’s no doubt we all have a secret fear of grannies gone bad. In horror movies grandma’s not there to rock you to sleep and give you extra cash when your parents aren’t looking; she’s the Nana of your nightmares. Perhaps we also get a thrill out of the strange juxtaposition of an old lady wearing knitted sweaters and bedroom slippers suddenly becoming a hell-bent minion of Satan. It reminds me of that diner scene in Legion where the granny with the kind smile and pink cardigan suddenly leaps onto the ceiling with jaw outstretched and a thirst for blood in her eyes.

Next week I examine the opposite of the frightening old women: the creepy little kid, e one of the greatest tropes of horror.

I was absolutely thrilled when I watched The Possession (2012), simply because it’s the only horror movie I’ve seen with a Jewish exorcism. I felt like an overeager high school student, ready to take notes about how the Rabbi prepared for the exorcism. It’s really that rare—I’d been so used to seeing priests do the job.

Religious themes are an intrinsic part of most horror films. Ideas of pure evil, seeing the light, and lost souls are immediately tied to religious ideas. Whether it’s ghosts or demons, it’s connected to the underlying idea of an afterworld, a heaven and hell. Horror generally relies on Abrahamic religious ideas, but even then it’s really only Christianity. From overtly Christian horror films such as Bless The Child (2000) and The Prophecy (1995)—where Viggo Mortensen portrays a weirdly sexy Satan—to more subtle ones like the slasher classic Friday the 13th franchise (which hint in later sequels that Jason Voorhees has consorted with the devil), Christian religious themes are everywhere in horror. The problem is that there is little to no diversity in religious themes. Ideas of “foreign” religious practices are usually simplified down to African voodoo practiced in New Orleans, which is, more often than not, portrayed incorrectly and is rife with racism.

One of the major flaws with over-using Christian themes is that it makes horror movies predictable. We start to catch on to exactly how a demon can be defeated, and exactly how to rid your home of a ghostly presence. We learn that you slap a flew Crucifixes on the wall, read your Hail Mary’s, avoid locust swarms, and you’re pretty much good to go. Not only is including different religions in horror more progressive and diverse, but it’s also more interesting for the genre. The only thing is that if horror does choose to expand to, let’s say, Eastern religions, writers and directors need to make sure they’re not tokenizing it, exotifying it, or using it to essentially scare white people from the scary rituals of foreigners.

Adding different religious themes to horror is also very timely and would reflect the diversifying demographic of audiences. As the Western world becomes more racially and religiously diverse, our media needs to reflect that, and storytelling needs to pay attention to it or else plots will read as socially irrelevant. We are a diverse society, but if horror would have us believe we’re entirely homogeneous.

Instead of the same old “the power of Christ compels you!” let’s look at Hindu traditions, let’s look at jinns in Islam, churels from South Asian folklore, or Japanese Oni. Enough with sprinkling holy water; I want to see how lime or lemon is used in Hindu pooja to protect from evil spirits. And I want to see these traditions treated with respect, rather than portrayed like the backwards customs of the mystifying “Orient.”

Next week, I look at the elderly in horror, tropes of the creepy old lady, and how frightened we are of aging.