Where did Nu Metal Horror Go?: 4 Films that Defined the Era
If you’ve been a horror fan on X long enough, then you’ve probably already seen the tweet asking, “Remember when horror films used to have industrial/nu metal soundtracks?” Posted by user @Thehorrorkid on December 28, 2025, the tweet features a clip from Queen of the Damned of the vampire Lestat de Lioncourt crawling up the wall and across the ceiling set to “Cold” by Static-X.
As Gabri Brown wrote for The Nu Mental Agenda in 2024, the film is “a love letter to heavy alternative music,” and now that nu metal is experiencing a revival, especially among Gen Z, it’s no surprise that this tweet has gone viral (as of writing this, it has 509.7k views and 9.3k likes).
I didn’t think I’d ever see the day that nu metal, a genre that was despised by soccer moms and metalheads alike, would become such a thing in the 2020s. Pop artists like Rina Sawayama have been with the sound in her music, and if you scroll for a couple minutes on TikTok, you’ll find clips of Deftones performing “Be Quiet And Drive (Far Away)” on Late Night with Conan O’Brien in 1998 with comments from users like, “i’d sell a kidney and a lung if it meant i could see deftones live in the late 90s.” And did you see that one article from 2024 calling Limp Bizkit an “unlikely trans heroes”?
I don’t know if @Thehorrorkid is a young millennial or firmly Gen Z, but I’m not surprised that a young person would revisit late ’90s and early ’00s horror and wonder: Where did all nu metal go? Because if there’s any genre that captures the essence of these films, it’s the one that was childish, sexy, angry, and intense all at once. So, in honor of that specific tweet and that era of horror, here are some of our favorite movies with nu metal soundtracks.
Spoiler: Static-X is in almost every single one of them.
Queen of the Damned
The movie that inspired the tweet that inspired this piece, Queen of the Damned is, for many people, one of the best examples of a film that is a product of its time. The same could be argued of many of the films on this list, but between the costuming, the fact that this is pop star Aaliyah’s final film role, and the concept of the vampire Lestat awakening from his slumber to become the lead singer of a nu metal band, it really doesn’t get more 2000s mall-goth fantasy than this.
Much like the nu metal genre itself, Queen of the Damned wasn’t received well in 2002—both audiences and critics agreed it was “muddled” and “goofy”—but in the years since its release, it’s beloved by younger audiences who have discovered it through social media. As this Letterboxd user wrote, Queen of the Damned is a “sexy movie with the sexiest soundtrack of all time.”
The soundtrack, which was produced by composer Richard Gibbs and Korn frontman Jonathan Davis, features Papa Roach, Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington (who would later go on to star in Saw 3D), Marilyn Manson, and Deftones, among others.
Bride of Chucky
Even though it’s the fourth installment of the Child’s Play franchise, Bride of Chucky is arguably the smartest and most iconic. Writer Don Mancini and director Ronny Yu abandon the Andy storyline of the first three films to instead follow Chucky and his former lover Tiffany (Jennifer Tilly) after she’s also transformed into a doll.
If Queen of the Damned tapped into the sexier side of nu metal, Bride of Chucky embraces the genre’s trashier, more chaotic side. Though the soundtrack isn’t entirely nu metal—Slayer, Judas Priest, and Motörhead are here—it does have Static-X featured alongside a score by composer Graeme Revell, the former frontman of the New Zealand industrial group SPK, who also worked on soundtracks for cult classics like The Crow and The Craft.
So while Bride of Chucky might not have a strictly nu metal soundtrack, it absolutely deserves a spot on this list.
Resident Evil
With all this conversation around Zach Cregger‘s Resident Evil, it seems like audiences keep forgetting that Resident Evil (2002) was kind of a mess. Critics thought it was “incoherent,” while audiences thought it was an “insult” to the games. Of course, this doesn’t mean a film can’t find its audience or gain some level of appreciation later.
We might never agree on whether or not a film based on a video game needs to be a one-to-one adaptation in order for it to be “good” or even valid, but what we can agree on is that the soundtrack for Resident Evil is excellent, especially if you’re a nu metal fan who prefers the more aggressive, high energy side of the genre (I’d also say the costuming is very nu metal as well, but that’s for another time). Slipknot? Check. Static-X? Check. Coal Chamber? Check. Depeche Mode is also here, as a treat.
House of Wax
You can never make me hate House of Wax, the 2005 remake of the 1953 3D film starring Vincent Price. While the original is more of a murder-mystery, the remake is a grimy, glossy slasher whose marketing campaign centered around the fact that audiences would be treated to the gruesome onscreen death of heiress-socialite Paris Hilton.
For some, House of Wax is a guilty pleasure, but for others, it’s “criminally underrated and one of the most entertaining horror movies of the 2000s” with a soundtrack that is “Queen of the Damned levels of insane.” Deftones, Disturbed, and Marilyn Manson are all here, along with Joy Division and My Chemical Romance, two bands that are definitely not nu metal, but are fun additions to the soundtrack nonetheless, especially if you grew up going to Hot Topic as a kid.
Freddy vs. Jason
One thing that’s interesting about revisiting the films on this list is realizing just how camp so many of them are. Freddy vs. Jason has to be one of the campiest entries on this list (how could a movie about two of the biggest slasher icons battling to the death not be considered camp?), but what makes it such a standout is that it’s also just a genuinely fun, bloody, crowd-pleasing horror movie. Even people who aren’t into horror or don’t have nostalgia for the era tend to agree that it’s “top tier.” Like several other films on this list, Freddy vs. Jason also features a very-00s cast, including pop star Kelly Rowland and scream queen Katharine Isabelle (Ginger Snaps, American Mary). The soundtrack is one of the best curated I’ve seen, drawing on the heavier, more confrontational side of nu metal and metalcore, featuring bands like Seether, Slipknot, and Killswitch Engage. It actually got its first-ever vinyl release late last summer, and even though I don’t have a record player at the moment, I’m jealous of anyone who got their hands on it.
Revisiting these films and their soundtracks has also made me feel weirdly nostalgic for this era, even though I was technically too young at the time to fully appreciate the music or the movies. But whether you’re discovering these movies for the first time through TikTok edits or @Thehorrorkid’s tweets or you miss the days of burning CDs and wearing baggy cargo shorts to school, one thing is clear: nu metal is having a moment, and if you’re not ready to embrace the 2020s version of it, you can always watch a horror movie from the early ’00s.
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