Bella Thorne’s journey through Hollywood reads like a well-thumbed novel – complete with shimmering high school halls, midnight movie massacres, and a heroine determined to write her own story. Once a Disney Channel darling awash in neon lights and canned laughter, Thorne has since wandered down darker corridors, finding a home amid the screams and shadows of the horror genre. Thorne’s path has been anything but conventional – a metamorphosis from sunshine to shadow that shows how an actress can be both shaped by a genre and, in turn, leave her mark on it.
Early Roles and Horror Beginnings (2003–2009)
Bella Thorne stepped onto the Hollywood scene as a child with big-eyed innocence and a fearless drive born partly of necessity. At just six years old, she had her first film appearance as a sidelines fan in the comedy Stuck on You(2003) It was a blink-and-you-miss-it part – the kind of uncredited role where a kid learns to hit their mark amid a sea of giants. In the years that followed, Thorne picked up a string of small roles on television, proving early that she had the tenacity for showbiz. She popped up on HBO’s Entourage and Fox’s teen drama The O.C. (playing a younger version of Taylor Townsend), soaking in the atmosphere of glitzy sets and getting a taste of Hollywood’s fast lane before she’d even lost all her baby teeth.
By 2007, Bella landed her first major TV role in the second season of Dirty Sexy Money, playing Margaux Darling. This recurring part – as a sassy kid in a rich and scandalous family – hinted at Thorne’s comfort with dramatic scenarios, even when surrounded by soap-opera levels of intrigue. But it was in 2008 that her breakthrough started glimmering: she co-starred alongside Christian Slater and Taylor Lautner in NBC’s short-lived drama My Own Worst Enemy, portraying Ruthy Spivey. At just 10 years old, Thorne’s performance as a worried daughter in a spy thriller earned her a Young Artist Award, a sign that behind her freckled smile lay real acting chops. She would later recall that My Own Worst Enemy was a turning point – her “first recurring role” and proof that she could hold her own on a serious show.
Fate, however, had more than just family dramas in store. In 2009, Bella Thorne took a step into the genre that would later become her signature haunt: she played the vengeful antagonist in the supernatural horror film Forget Me Not(2009). It was a supporting role – as a ghostly young Angela, haunting a group of teens – but the part is notable in hindsight for sowing the seeds of Thorne’s future scream queen status. At an age when most kids fear monsters under the bed, young Bella was playing the monster, exacting on-screen revenge with an eerie calm. If life were a horror script, this would be the foreshadowing: the former child model and Disney commercial cutie (she appeared in over 30 ads as a kid) was already flirting with the dark side. In interviews, Thorne has mentioned she’s been a horror fan for as long as she can remember – reportedly, seeing The Grudge as a child turned her into a lifelong devotee of spooky films. Whether or not she knew it then, Forget Me Not marked the first drop of fake blood on a career that would one day be drenched in it.
Outside of horror, Thorne’s pre-teen years were filled with eclectic gigs that show she was game for anything. In 2009 she starred in the family-friendly web series Little Monk, a spin-off of the detective show Monk, and even had a one-episode part on the drama October Road. She also appeared in an indie family film, Raspberry Magic (2010), demonstrating that even before hitting her teens she could oscillate between genres – from heartwarming festival fare to chilling ghost stories. This ability to jump between moods would serve her well in later years when balancing teen comedies with horror flicks. By the end of 2009, Bella Thorne was not yet a household name, but she had laid a curious foundation: equal parts sugar and spice, innocence and something a little… twisted. The stage was set for a major breakthrough, one bathed in the bright lights of teen sitcom fame.
Disney Stardom and Teenage Fame (2010–2013)
Every Hollywood story has a chapter where the spotlight intensifies, and for Bella Thorne, that moment arrived with the force of a confetti cannon on the Disney Channel. In 2010, at age 13, Thorne won the role of CeCe Jones on Shake It Up! (2010–2013), a hit Disney Channel sitcom about two teens who land gigs as dancers on a local TV show. If her earlier career was a slow burn, Shake It Up! was a supernova explosion. Suddenly, Thorne was thrust into the glossy universe of tween superstardom alongside co-star Zendaya, complete with choreographed dance numbers, comedic mishaps, and the Mouse House’s seal of approval. The show was a buddy comedy at heart – picture two best friends with big dreams, navigating adolescence under a disco ball’s glow – and Thorne’s character CeCe was the confident, impulsive foil to Zendaya’s brainy Rocky. Off-camera, the two actresses formed a genuine friendship, but Bella later admitted that living under Disney’s rules wasn’t always rainbows and sunshine. “I felt restricted,” she reflected about her Disney years, wishing she could have been more true to herself. That tension – between the real Bella and the Disneyfied Bella – simmered beneath the surface, even as she smiled for the tween magazine covers.
For the time being, though, Thorne made the most of the Disney platform. She had no professional dance experience prior to Shake It Up! and had to train rigorously, taking three dance classes every night to keep up. The hard work paid off: Shake It Up! became one of the channel’s most popular shows, and Bella snagged several awards, including an Imagen Award for Best Young Actress in Television. The series ran for three seasons, during which Thorne also dipped her toe into music – a rite of passage for Disney multi-hyphenates. She released peppy pop singles like “Watch Me” (which charted on the Billboard Hot 100), embracing the bubblegum persona even as she privately yearned for something edgier. Imagine a teenage girl standing on a sparkly stage, smiling and hitting her marks, all the while with a punk rock heart beating beneath the sequins.
Thorne’s Disney era also saw her take on original TV movies like Frenemies (2012), where she again paired with Zendaya in a tween-friendly tale of BFF rivalries. By now, Bella was a fixture in teen media – she guest-starred on shows (Wizards of Waverly Place, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation) and appeared on countless magazine covers, cementing her image as the spunky, stylish teen idol. But behind the scenes, she was also dealing with personal challenges: Bella has been open about her dyslexia, which made script reading tough, and about the financial hardships her family faced that motivated her to work from such a young age. These struggles imbued her bubbly characters with an underdog resilience that fans sensed, even if they couldn’t pinpoint why.
By the time Shake It Up! aired its final episode in 2013, Bella Thorne was nearly 16 – an age where real life feels like a rollercoaster, let alone life under the glare of fame. The end of the Disney show marked the end of an era: Thorne was ready to step off the brightly-colored soundstage and into uncharted territory. She later said, “After Disney, I had the opportunity to find my true self… I have more artistic freedom to express myself”. It was both a liberating and scary place to be. In a way, Bella was at a crossroads similar to many a horror movie heroine: standing on the threshold of a dark forest (in her case, the unpredictable world of adult roles) deciding whether to venture in. And venture she did. What came next was a deliberate shedding of old skin – a series of roles that would shatter the mold of “Disney sweetheart” and reveal a young woman unafraid to court controversy, complexity, and a bit of chaos. The first step of that transformation? Playing characters that were nothing like CeCe Jones, often in projects far removed from the laugh-track-laden safety of children’s sitcoms.
Breaking Away: Mainstream Movies and Thrills (2014–2016)
Newly unshackled from Disney’s wholesome image, Bella Thorne wasted no time in complicating her onscreen persona. The mid-2010s saw Thorne consciously take on roles that pushed her beyond the comfort zone of kiddie comedy – including her first true encounters with on-screen horror and more mature teen fare. The shift was like seeing a figure once bathed in neon step under the flicker of a broken streetlamp: not entirely dark, but worlds away from the consistent glow of her past life.
In 2014, Thorne made her big-screen breakthrough in a pair of mainstream movies that firmly announced her arrival into Hollywood proper. First up was Adam Sandler’s family comedy Blended (2014), in which Thorne played Sandler’s character’s daughter, a tomboyish teen who eventually blossoms during an African safari vacation. Starring in a Sandler flick was a rite of passage for many rising actors, and Thorne held her own, delivering laughs and even enduring an 80s makeover gag. That same year, she appeared as the school bully in Disney’s feature film Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day – a comically mean role that allowed Bella to satirize the very type of Queen Bee character she might have once been victim to in real life. But perhaps the most telling 2014 project was Mostly Ghostly: Have You Met My Ghoulfriend?, a light-hearted kids’ horror movie where Thorne played Cammy, a teen wrapped up in a ghostly adventure. It was spooky in a Nickelodeon-safe way, but still a hint that Bella wasn’t abandoning the supernatural – she was just waiting for the right moment to go all-in.
That moment would come soon. First, however, Thorne cemented her teen idol credentials with a villainous turn in the witty high-school comedy The DUFF (2015). Playing Madison, the resident mean girl who torments Mae Whitman’s protagonist, Thorne was gleefully vicious – all venom delivered with a glossy smile. The role won her a Teen Choice Award for Choice Movie Villain, and critics noted her comedic timing. It was as if she took all the pent-up sass Disney wouldn’t let her show and channeled it into Madison’s designer-clad cruelty. Importantly, The DUFF also tapped into a broader teen movie trend of the mid-2010s: updating John Hughes-esque high school archetypes for the social media age. Thorne’s character was a bully fluent in Instagram burns and viral humiliation, reflecting how teen cinema was adapting to new realities. In this landscape, Bella Thorne – who herself boasted a massive social following – embodied the collision of classic teen tropes with Gen-Z digital culture.
Amid these comedies, Thorne was also dipping her toe into darker waters. In 2015, she took a part in MTV’s television adaptation of Scream – a meta-horror franchise legendary for its iconic opening kill. In a masterstroke of both marketing and homage, Thorne appeared in the very first scene of the Scream TV series as Nina, a character deliberately modeled on Drew Barrymore’s famous victim from the original 1996 film. True to tradition, Nina meets a grisly end within minutes, stabbed to death by a masked killer after a tense smartphone-era cat-and-mouse sequence. Thorne had actually been offered the lead role in the series but turned it down; scheduling and the unwillingness to relocate at 17 were factors, but she also knew that the opening kill cameo would be the juicier, more “iconic” part. “I loved Scream so much and still wanted to be a part of it,” she told ET Online, relishing the chance to recreate Barrymore’s scene with a modern twist. For a lifelong horror fan like Bella, this was akin to stepping into a hall of fame – joining a short list of actors (Barrymore, Jada Pinkett Smith, etc.) who have famously died before the title card. In that single episode, drenched in blood and teenage terror, Thorne signaled loud and clear that her future might just lie in the slasher and not the schoolyard. “Such is the life of a scream queen,” she joked when recounting how fake blood tangled painfully in her hair during filming. The fact that a major network promoted Scream with Thorne’s face – only to shock audiences with her early demise – showed her savvy understanding of horror’s love for surprise and subversion.
During this period, Thorne also explored thriller territory. She headlined the suspense film Big Sky (2015) as Hazel, a teenager struggling with severe agoraphobia who must fight for survival during a violent incident. The film flew under the radar, but it gave Thorne a chance to play a more nuanced dramatic role in a tense setting (trapped in a truck with killers outside). Meanwhile, she lent her voice to an animated sci-fi (Ratchet & Clank) and showed up as a pop star in the goofy Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip (both 2015) – proving she hadn’t abandoned family-friendly fare entirely. But increasingly, Bella’s choices were skewing towards the edgy. Case in point: the 2016 horror-thriller Keep Watching, where Thorne starred as Jamie, a teenager whose family home is invaded by sadistic killers playing a twisted game. Filmed a few years earlier (under the working title “Home Invasion”), Keep Watchingfinally got a release in late 2017, further cementing Thorne’s presence in the horror genre. The movie’s premise – strangers breaking in and forcing a family to play along on camera – tapped into the era’s found-footage and voyeur trend, something The Purge and others were popularizing. With Thorne as the embattled heroine fighting back, it positioned her as a potential final girl – resourceful, scared but not helpless – in the eyes of horror fans.
By 2016, Bella Thorne had accomplished a tricky Hollywood feat: she’d kept her existing fanbase (many of whom were growing up alongside her) while pivoting to projects that introduced her to new audiences. She even appeared in Tyler Perry’s comedy-horror Boo! A Madea Halloween (2016), playing a bratty college girl who becomes one of Madea’s targets for comedic comeuppance. Though that film was more laughs than screams, it still involved ghosts and gags in a graveyard – further blurring the line between the light and dark elements of her filmography. Watching Bella in those years, you could see an actress determined to break the mold – one moment slaying with a quip in a teen comedy, the next moment literally getting slain (on-screen) in a horror project. If her Disney stint had been the caterpillar stage, by 2016 Thorne was partway through the chrysalis, wings of a very different color starting to show. The full emergence, however, was just around the corner – when she’d fully embrace the horror genre and her own inner wild child in tandem.
Blood and Rebirth: Horror as a New Identity (2017–2018)
If Hollywood was high school, 2017 was the year Bella Thorne went from prom queen candidate to the girl sneaking out to midnight horror screenings. This period marked Thorne’s full-fledged metamorphosis into a scream queen and risk-taker, as she headlined a string of horror, thriller, and darkly comic projects. It’s as if she tore off the Disney tiara and traded it for a bucket of fake blood – and she wore it with pride.
Consider the lineup of 2017 alone: Thorne starred in or featured in no fewer than five films that ranged from spooky to sinister. The most high-profile was Amityville: The Awakening, a revival of the classic haunted-house franchise in which Bella took the lead role as Belle Walker. Here she was, front and center as a beleaguered teen moving into the infamous 112 Ocean Avenue house, dealing with demonic forces and family drama. Amityville: The Awakeninghad a rocky road (shelved for years before a quiet release), but Thorne’s involvement was significant: casting a former Disney star in a hard-PG-13 horror film signaled a strategy of leveraging her fanbase to rejuvenate a tired series. She earned a Teen Choice Award nomination for the role – proof that fans were ready to follow Bella into darker territory. Though the film itself got mixed reviews, seeing Thorne cradle a shotgun while facing down a possessed sibling on screen was a world away from her Shake It Up! days.
That same autumn, Netflix viewers were treated to The Babysitter, a horror-comedy that has since achieved a cult following. Directed by McG, The Babysitter is a candy-colored gorefest about a nerdy kid whose beloved babysitter turns out to lead a satanic cult of teen killers. Thorne played Allison, a cheerleader with a mean streak and a memorable death scene (involving a mishandled shotgun – darkly hilarious in its over-the-top splatter). With her tongue-in-cheek line deliveries and willingness to be the butt of a gruesome joke, Thorne proved she could handle horror and humor simultaneously. The film’s campy throwback vibe, complete with genre-savvy gags, fit right into a trend of the late 2010s: horror that winked at the audience (Cabin in the Woods, Happy Death Day, etc.). Bella’s presence in The Babysitter lent the film teen-movie bona fides, given her background, and she clearly had a blast satirizing the hot-girl trope. Audiences responded; the movie became a streaming hit and eventually spawned a sequel. Thorne would return (despite Allison’s apparent demise) in 2020’s The Babysitter: Killer Queen, with Netflix proudly noting the sequel hit #1 on its trending charts upon release. It turns out being blown away on-screen doesn’t preclude a comeback in a supernatural comedy universe – and Bella rode that wave with a sly grin, even thanking fans for making the bloody romp such a success.
Another 2017 entry in Thorne’s horror catalog was Keep Watching (though filmed earlier, it released in ’17, as mentioned). Playing the lead under siege in her own home, Thorne anchored the film’s tension. Meanwhile, she also starred in You Get Me, a steamy teenage thriller released on Netflix in 2017. In a role that was part seductive drama, part psychotic breakdown, Thorne played Holly, a girl who becomes dangerously obsessed after a one-night fling. Essentially, it was Fatal Attraction for the Snapchat generation, and Bella sank her teeth into playing the unstable femme fatale, flipping the script on her earlier victim roles. The film didn’t make huge waves critically, but it further cemented her transition into more adult, R-rated content and showed she wasn’t afraid to play unsympathetic characters.
Parallel to her film exploits, Thorne also returned to series television in 2017 – but on her own terms. She headlined Freeform’s drama Famous in Love as Paige Townsen, a college student turned overnight movie star. Though not horror, the show dealt with the dark side of fame and allowed Bella to channel some of her real-life experiences with celebrity. It ran for two seasons (2017–2018) and gave Thorne a production role as well. More importantly, it demonstrated that even as she ventured into grindhouse and slasher fare, she could still command a mainstream TV audience. Bella Thorne was effectively straddling two worlds: by day, the lead of a glossy teen soap, by night, a queen of screams and streaming shockers. It’s a balancing act few could manage, but Thorne pulled it off with an almost punk-rock nonchalance.
In 2018, she continued expanding her repertoire. One notable project was Assassination Nation (2018), an ultra-violent black comedy and social satire directed by Sam Levinson. Thorne had a supporting role as Reagan, one of four teen girls at the center of a town’s hysteria when a hacker exposes everyone’s secrets. Though her screen time was limited, being part of this provocative, feminist-tinged take on modern chaos placed her among a hip young ensemble. The film commented on the toxicity of internet culture, mob mentality, and the commodification of teen lives – issues Bella herself was intimately familiar with, given her very public personal life and social media presence. Assassination Nationpolarized viewers with its mix of stylized mayhem and message, but it reinforced the idea that Thorne gravitated toward projects with an edge. In the broader trend, it fit the late-2010s wave of horror/thriller movies that double as social commentary (following Get Out’s success, for example), merging teen genre flick with topical issues. Thorne aligning with that trend showed a maturation in her choices.
The same year, she took a softer turn with Midnight Sun, a romantic drama in which she played a girl with a life-threatening sensitivity to sunlight. Starring opposite Patrick Schwarzenegger, Thorne delivered a performance that was vulnerable and earnest – a reminder that behind the horror roles lay an actress capable of heartfelt gravitas too. The film wasn’t a horror by any stretch (it’s more of a tearjerker), but it did well with young audiences and added another facet to Thorne’s career: the ability to carry a traditional romantic lead. It’s almost poetic: after dwelling in so much on-screen darkness, she portrayed a character who literally couldn’t be in the sun. As if the universe of roles she chose kept reflecting and refracting her own journey.
Before 2018 was over, Bella also revisited supernatural thriller territory with I Still See You (2018), where she played a survivor in a world populated by ghostly apparitions after an apocalypse. This YA thriller mixed mystery with paranormal elements, and Thorne’s lead performance anchored the eerie atmosphere. Though not a box-office smash, it catered to the same teen demographic evolving with her – those who might have grown up watching her on Disney now looking for a scare with her as the guide. And guiding them she was: by this point, Bella Thorne had become a familiar face on Netflix queues and horror fan forums alike, often mentioned in the same breath as “scream queen” – a title she earned not through one iconic role but through sheer accumulation of genre work and a clear love for the craft of fear.
Through 2017 and 2018, Bella’s public image also morphed dramatically. She famously embraced a more punk aesthetic in real life – flaming red hair, multiple tattoos, an unabashedly candid social media presence – as if mirroring the bold characters she portrayed. She was no longer just acting in horror and provocative thrillers; she was living her life with a fearless ethos that matched them. In interviews, she voiced pride in her horror résumé and even expressed interest in directing one day. The “good girl” constraints of her early career were long gone, replaced by an almost Bukowski-like candor about the darker or weirder sides of life. In a way, Bella Thorne had been shaped by the horror genre: through it, she found a vehicle to reinvent herself and reclaim her narrative. And in turn, she lent the genre a dose of Gen-Z star power and authenticity – making horror a bit more colorful (and Instagrammable) in the process.
Fearless Ventures: From Indie Horror to Director (2019–2021)
Having firmly established her reputation as a bold performer unafraid of the unconventional, Bella Thorne spent the tail end of the 2010s and the start of the 2020s branching out even further. This era was marked by ventures into indie film, an eyebrow-raising directorial debut, and creative risks that solidified her evolution from child star to Renaissance provocateur. If her career were a horror saga, this chapter would be the unpredictable third act – where the heroine, battle-scarred but unbowed, turns the tables and takes charge of her destiny.
In 2019, Thorne made headlines in a way no one quite saw coming: she directed an adult film titled Her & Him. Yes, you read that right – Bella Thorne, former Disney Channel alum, stepped behind the camera for a short film released through Pornhub. It was an experimental, erotic piece that Thorne described as a modern Bonnie-and-Clyde-meets-Fifty-Shades fantasy. While Her & Him is far from the horror genre, it’s very much in line with Bella’s penchant for exploring taboos and darker themes of sexuality and obsession (themes not alien to many horror films). The short earned her a Vision Award at the Pornhub Awards – an unconventional accolade, but one that recognized her willingness to challenge norms. In true Bella fashion, her acceptance speech turned into a platform for advocating changes in how adult content sites operate. The whole episode was polarizing: some were shocked, others applauded her fearless jump into a male-dominated industry to tell a story on her terms. For our narrative, it underscores how Thorne continually sought new frontiers beyond acting – and how her life often mirrored the provocative arcs of the characters she played. Like a true horror heroine, when faced with a world that often tried to victimize or pigeonhole her, Bella took control of the story (literally calling the shots from the director’s chair).
On the acting front, 2020 was a particularly busy year. Thorne headlined multiple independent films across genres, further blurring the lines between horror, thriller, and crime drama. The first to drop was Infamous (2020), a social-media-infused crime thriller. Bella played Arielle, a small-town girl who, along with her boyfriend, goes on a crime spree and live-streams their Bonnie and Clyde antics for fame. It was a violent, zeitgeisty commentary on the thirst for viral fame, and Thorne’s performance earned some of the strongest reviews of her career. One critic noted that she had “the classically great presence of someone like Sandra Bullock, but with her own scraggly edge,” dominating the screen as her character morphed from clout-chasing nobody to gun-wielding outlaw. That “scraggly edge” mentioned is pure Thorne – a rawness and unpredictability she brings that make her characters believable in their extremes. Infamouswasn’t a huge commercial hit, but it found an audience in the VOD/streaming space and added credibility to Bella’s acting chops. If the horror genre taught her how to scream, a film like Infamous taught her how to simmer, how to let anger and desperation brew just beneath the surface until they explode.
Next up, Thorne starred in Girl (2020), a gritty revenge thriller. She played a young woman (known simply as “Girl”) who returns to her hometown to kill her abusive father, only to find someone else has gotten to him first – leading her down a rabbit hole of small-town secrets and violence. It’s a spare, intense film, and Bella’s work in it was widely regarded as perhaps her best performance to date. Stripped of any glamorous trappings, she carries the movie with a steely, haunted resolve, sharing the screen with veteran actor Mickey Rourke. An iHorror reviewer gushed that after watching Girl, they became “a big time Bella Thorne fan” because she was “amazing in it”. High praise from the horror community, signaling that Bella had earned respect beyond just name recognition – she could really act, given the right material. Girl aligns with a broader trend of late: female-led revenge tales (think Revenge (2017), Promising Young Woman (2020)), stories that flip the script on victimhood. In taking on the role, Thorne was in sync with the zeitgeist of empowered, angry women in genre cinema, channeling real fury and pain into her character. It’s not hard to see a parallel to her own life – channeling past traumas (she has spoken about surviving abuse in her childhood) into art. In a life-imitates-art feedback loop, Thorne’s fearless personal transparency fed into fearless roles on screen.
Of course, Bella still kept a foot in lighter fare around this time. In late 2020, she co-starred in Chick Fight, an action-comedy about an underground women’s fight club, alongside Malin Åkerman and Alec Baldwin. As a bratty young fighter with neon-colored hair and a bad attitude, Thorne brought zany humor and physicality to the role, proving she hadn’t lost her comedic touch amid all the carnage and chaos of her other projects. Chick Fight wasn’t a critical darling, but it added to Thorne’s mosaic of roles: she wasn’t about to be confined to any single genre box.
Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic was reshuffling Hollywood’s deck, and like many, Bella leaned into streaming and online platforms. In August 2020, she created a media frenzy by joining the content subscription service OnlyFans – reportedly becoming the first person to earn $1 million in just 24 hours on the platform. The move sparked controversy (with criticisms that her presence might hurt content creators who rely on the platform) and OnlyFans even altered some policies in the fallout. Though not directly related to her film career, the episode epitomized Thorne’s knack for staying in the cultural conversation and her unorthodox approach to her public image. It was as if her life itself had elements of horror and drama – sudden twists, public trials – and she navigated them with the same devil-may-care attitude her characters often displayed. The controversy didn’t slow her down; if anything, it reinforced her persona as Hollywood’s rebel princess, unafraid of backlash.
By 2021, Bella Thorne continued to mix media and genres. She executive-produced and starred in Habit (2021), an indie flick where she played a party girl who disguises herself as a nun to escape trouble. The film courted outrage from some religious groups for its irreverent take (nothing like a little blasphemy to keep the rebel image alive). She also had roles in Masquerade (2021) – a home-invasion thriller where, in a twist, Bella plays the villain leading a robbery against a young girl’s family – and Time Is Up (2021), a romantic drama filmed in Italy that paired her with then-fiancé Benjamin Mascolo. Each of these was a smaller-scale project, but collectively they underscore Thorne’s hustle and her continued gravitation towards thrillers. In Masquerade, for example, she got to chew the scenery as a cold-blooded criminal, prompting the horror site iHorror to comment how fitting it was to see her “as the villain and rightfully so”. It’s almost a symbolic inversion: once the victim, now the victimizer – reflecting a confidence in her range and a willingness to play characters an audience can love to hate.
Bella’s TV presence in this period wasn’t dormant either. In 2021, she joined the cast of Paradise City, an Amazon Prime series about rock musicians (a spin-off of the film American Satan). And in a fun full-circle moment, she popped up in “American Horror Stories” (the anthology spin-off of American Horror Story) in 2022, playing a femme fatale named Marci in a twisted club-set tale. It felt appropriate – as if the horror universe was officially welcoming her into its hall of fame by giving her a marquee guest role in one of TV’s flagship horror franchises. Seeing Bella Thorne in American Horror Stories – confident, in control, and deadly – highlighted just how far she’d journeyed from the frightened young girls she used to play. Now, she could be the fearsome presence if she wanted.
Critics and commentators have taken note of Thorne’s unusual trajectory. She’s been both lauded and lambasted, but there’s a consensus that she’s carved out a unique space in the industry. Not many can claim to have been a Disney star, a scream queen, a pop singer, an indie film lead, and a published author (oh yes, she also released a collection of poetry in 2019) by the age of 23. There’s a metaphor lurking here: Bella Thorne’s career is like a collage of magazine clippings – glossy, gory, glamorous, and gritty all at once. She’s embraced the chaos of it, much like a horror protagonist learns to embrace the chaos of battling monsters. In doing so, she’s also influenced the teen horror scene. Producers know attaching Bella to a project will drum up interest, especially from younger viewers; her social media prowess virtually guarantees free publicity. Films like The Babysitter likely found a wider audience thanks to her involvement, and she’s helped bridge the gap between the TikTok generation and the traditionally millennial slasher-fan crowd. If the 1980s had Jamie Lee Curtis as the queen of screams, the late 2010s and early 2020s have seen Bella Thorne rise as a sort of princess of the macabre – maybe not ruling the genre outright, but definitely throwing a killer party in its castle.
Legacy of a New Scream Queen (2022–Present and Beyond)
As of 2025, Bella Thorne stands as a young woman who has effectively lived multiple Hollywood lifetimes in a short span – and her story is still unfolding with the promise (or threat, in horror terms) of a few jump scares yet to come. With two decades in the industry under her belt before age 30, Thorne has transitioned from ingénue to instigator, from someone molded by a system to someone happily smashing molds. The legacy she’s building is intriguing: part cautionary tale, part empowerment saga, much like a horror movie that leaves you wondering whether to be afraid or inspired.
In recent years, Bella has continued to gravitate toward roles that combine youthful energy with dark themes. In 2022 and 2023, she filmed Measure of Revenge (2022) – a thriller where she acted opposite the formidable Melissa Leo – and Rumble Through the Dark (2023), an action-noir alongside Aaron Eckhart. These projects suggest Thorne’s commitment to working with seasoned actors and trying her hand at more nuanced dramatic fare, albeit still within crime or thriller genres. It’s a pattern we’ve seen: taking a step into each new phase by learning from an older generation (like working with Rourke in Girl, now Leo and Eckhart). She’s sharpening her craft even as she maintains her signature edge.
Not one to abandon her horror homestead, Thorne also has a juicy new project on the horizon: Saint Clare (2024), a thriller-horror film in which she stars as a quiet Catholic schoolgirl who happens to be a vigilante serial killer. The premise has drawn early comparisons to Dexter – except with a female lead and a religious twist. From previews, it looks like Saint Clare will let Bella blend her sweet and sinister sides in one role, perhaps the culmination of all the genre work she’s done. Early reviews note that while the film around her might be uneven, Thorne herself plays the murderous Clare with a stoic, monotone cool that is distinctly her own. It’s a part that seems almost tailor-made: a character leading a double life, outwardly angelic, inwardly homicidal – not unlike Bella’s career dichotomy of Disney brightness and horror darkness. The very fact that Thorne’s name alone is being used to promote Saint Clare(she’s top-billed, with veteran actress Rebecca De Mornay supporting her) shows how far she’s come. She’s not just participating in the horror genre; she’s headlining and, in a sense, ushering it into its next iteration. If the film succeeds, it could become a cult classic – another step toward solidifying Bella as a horror icon of her generation.
Contextualizing Bella Thorne’s work within broader trends of horror and teen cinema, one sees a reflection of society’s evolving tastes. Horror in the 2010s and 2020s became a playground for social commentary and genre-blending, and Thorne was there, often right at the cutting edge. The teen scream queens of previous eras were usually confined to being final girls or slasher bait in straightforward scares. Thorne’s horror roles, however, often carry a meta quality or a subversive twist: from the comedic self-awareness of The Babysitter, to the tech-age paranoia of Keep Watching, to the glitz-gore mashup of Assassination Nation. This mirrors how modern horror has itself become self-aware and intertextual. Meanwhile, teen cinema has grown up – the lines between a “teen movie” and “horror movie” have blurred, with many horror films now centering on adolescent protagonists and their very real fears (be it bullying, sexuality, or social media infamy). Bella Thorne’s career sits at that crossroads. She’s the poster child for the synergy between teen pop culture and horror culture in the 21st century. Her projects often speak to teen issues through genre metaphors: The DUFF dealt with self-image, Assassination Nation with privacy and mob hysteria, Infamous with viral fame, Girl with familial abuse and empowerment. In horror’s bloody mirror, Thorne has found a way to talk about growing pains and societal ills – even if it’s just by choosing scripts that aren’t afraid to go there.
Collaboratively, Bella has worked with an eclectic crew: from famed directors (McG, Tyler Perry) to indie auteurs (Chad Faust, Mitzi Peirone), and shared scenes with everyone from Ice Cube and Drew Barrymore (in Blended) to Hollywood legends like Bruce Dern (who cameoed in Big Sky) and the aforementioned Mickey Rourke. Each collaboration added a new brushstroke to her palette. And notably, she’s not done crossing paths with icons – Saint Clare pairs her with 90s star Rebecca De Mornay and 2000s heartthrob Ryan Phillippe, indicating Bella’s continued movement in bigger industry circles while retaining her independent streak. It’s as if she’s both Hollywood insider and outsider at once, much like Bukowski chronicled city life from the barstool – in it but not of it.
Bella Thorne’s impact and reception have been, fittingly, mixed – she wouldn’t be such a fascinating figure if they weren’t. Critics have sometimes snubbed the B-movies she’s been in, yet often praise her presence within them. Fans, particularly young women, often mention how they’ve grown up alongside her, finding it empowering to see Bella unabashedly take control of her image and career, making even her missteps part of her narrative. Her candor about personal issues (like discussing her mental health, sexuality, or the industry’s darker side) has endeared her in an era that values authenticity. At the same time, her unfiltered style has drawn its share of trolls and detractors. But through every controversy – whether it was leaked photos she defiantly published herself to rob hackers of power, or the OnlyFans saga – Bella has shown a resiliency not unlike a horror movie final girl who keeps getting back up. It’s dramatic, sure, but that’s her style: life as performance art.
As we conclude this chronicle of Bella Thorne’s film career (so far), it’s clear that her story is also the story of a young actress refusing to be just one thing. Casual observers might see the tabloid headlines or the racy Instagram posts and underestimate her, but her filmography tells a richer tale. It’s the tale of a former child star who used horror as a means of rebellion and reinvention. Like a phoenix rising from ashes – or perhaps a vampire emerging from the dark – Bella shed an old identity and found power in the very places she was told to avoid. Horror, with all its metaphorical catharsis, became both her refuge and her weapon. In shaping her career through this genre, she also subtly shaped the genre itself, bringing it a dose of modern candor and crossover appeal.
So what’s next for Bella Thorne? If her Twitter musings are any indication, she’ll keep surprising us. Perhaps more directing (she did mention wanting to direct an episode of American Horror Story one day). Possibly music – she’s teased returning to her recording artist side. One thing’s for sure: she’ll continue walking that fine line between the light and dark, the mainstream and the underground. In one hand, a phone streaming to millions of fans; in the other, a bloody knife gleaming under moonlight (prop knife, we hope). Bella Thorne has become a modern scream queen not by mimicking the past, but by slashing a path uniquely her own. And as horror aficionados know, the most memorable journeys are those where the heroine confronts her demons and comes out the other side transformed. Bella Thorne has done exactly that – and she’s done it her way, with a mischievous smile and maybe a little blood on her boots, leaving an indelible footprint on both Hollywood Boulevard and the haunted halls of horror cinema.
