Dark fantasy

[2] Both Charles L. Grant[3] and Karl Edward Wagner[4] are credited with having coined the term "dark fantasy"—although both authors were describing different styles of fiction.

Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's Saint-Germain,[6] and Neil Gaiman's The Sandman are early examples of this style of dark fantasy.

[7] Stableford suggests that the type of horror conveyed by fantasy stories such as William Beckford's Vathek and Edgar Allan Poe's The Masque of the Red Death "is more aesthetic than visceral or existential", and that such stories should be considered "dark fantasies" rather than the "supernaturalized thrillers" of conventional horror fiction.

Examples of these are Stephen King's The Dark Tower series,[6] Peter Straub's Shadowland[8] and Clive Barker's Weaveworld.

[10] Dahl's poetic reworking of "Cinderella" (which features in his poetry collection Revolting Rhymes) sees him upend the happy tale.

Berserk, a manga and anime franchise by Kentaro Miura that debuted in 1989, is frequently noted as an example of the genre due to its depictions of extreme violence, moral ambiguity, apocalyptic storylines and anti-hero protagonists.

[14] Guillermo del Toro's fantasy film Pan's Labyrinth (2006) has been described as a "sort of a dark spin on Alice in Wonderland".