“the idea of non-monogamy or sex with multiple partners is frequently used as a reminder of their characters’ capacity for evil. It tells the audience that a person’s appetites are dangerously out of control. This person desires too much, we’re instructed. God only knows what they’ll do to be satisfied.” “This equivalence between animalistic passions and the immoral goes back to the very formation of horror as a genre.” “this is just another way in which villains are often queer-coded with unconventional sexual identities.” “Firstly, it violates the idea of monogamy as part of how we tend to moralise intimate and sexual relationships. The second reason is that group sex has often been associated with animality and hedonism. And this hedonistic ideal of pleasure for the sake of pleasure, in a religious world, is seen as sinful, because pleasure should not be an end in itself.” “The horror genre, in search of cheap thrills, is desperate to imply something unhinged or excessive about how group sex works, when the reality is that the language of consent and consideration is integral to how most people participate in it. No one is actually more likely to engage with and consider the ethics and all-important boundaries of sexual expression than people who take pleasure seriously. Perhaps it’s time to give a hero’s welcome to those who know how to express their appetites, rather than stigmatising certain kinds of desire.”—”A brief history of horror’s obsession with group sex. From ‘Infinity Pool’ to ‘The Hunger’, polyamory, partner-swapping and swinging are often used as a stand-in for pure unadulterated evil.”