Horror film researcher Dr. Kelly Doyle regularly watches a slew of scary cinema, but lately her focus has been a unique subgenre — Turkish horror.
In the midst of exploratory research in Turkiye, the Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU) English instructor has observed one particular hair-raising difference to scary Hollywood films. The vast majority of Turkish horror films involve jinns, not ghosts.
“It’s no less formulaic than some of the tropes that we see in the West, but is underwritten by different anxieties with an arguably heavier weight in people’s lived experience,” says Doyle. “When many people watch films based on jinns, the horror is palpable and not always just a foray into the fictional.”
Turkish horror film often draws on the figure of the jinn from the Quran: made from smokeless fire, invisible, capable of free will for good or ill, and can sometimes take on other forms like animals, as in the Turkish film El Cin (2013).
A jinn is invoked by way of a curse or spell, usually involving the victim's blood, hair or nails, and often a spiritual leader is asked to try and remove the curse. And evil intentions tend to win out.
“In Western horror, hauntings sometimes feature an entity that follows a family, but is often more random, such as in the film Paranormal Activity, or rooted in general sin. In Turkish horror, the torment is intimate and intentional, never an accident. A jealous friend or lover, a greedy uncle, a housemaid who covets their employer’s life or success — all of these are motivators for the destruction of someone close. The real horror is in the betrayal of trust.”
Doyle, a visiting scholar at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkiye, teaches horror fiction and film courses at KPU, including a course on the evolution of the zombie in horror film.
“I’ve always been drawn to this genre and to the reasons why so many other people are as well, and I continue to research how horror serves as a cultural barometer for a society’s fears and anxieties around race, class, gender, species, religion and identity.”
In her current research, Doyle has also observed Turkish and Western horror mediate similar political and cultural fears, despite the difference in cultural context.
“On the one hand, Turkish horror films reflect the very real tension between secular values and religious ones since Ataturk founded the secular republic of Turkiye in 1923. Jinn films often feature a secular character who is forced to confront the reality of things science cannot explain and thus the necessity of keeping one's faith. On the other hand, there is a boom of such films in the early 2000s, which I argue dovetail significantly with the rise of the ruling Justice and Development Party, which is leaning back towards religious conservatism in Turkish public and private life,” says Doyle.
“It would be fair to say that some of these jinn films reflect a fear of religion (jinns) taking over the lives, bodies and minds of Turkish people.”
The central thesis of the jinn subgenre of Turkish horror film, says Doyle, is mess with the unseen world at your own peril.
“In Islam, engaging in any kind of magic or divination is frowned upon, and these films always stress the consequences of that. Nevertheless, some contemporary Turkish horror films are doing something arguably a bit more dangerous given the polarized political landscape here, doing what I’ve always argued horror does best: critique government, social structures and the status quo in general.”
An article based on Doyle’s current research will be published in an upcoming special issue of KPU’s Mise en scene: The Journal of Film and Visual Narration. The journal, which Doyle co-edits, is also accepting papers on Turkish cinema until Jan. 2, 2026.