D.B: Psychological Horror Research

Psychological horror is a sub-genre of horror fiction that relies on the characters' fears and emotional instability to build tension. It typically plays on archetypal (images that derive from the collective unconscious and are the psychic counterpart of instinct) shadow characteristics embodied by the threats characters face, for instance having a protagonist followed by a mysterious stalker on a night street. Thus, elements of psychological horror focus on the interplay inside of the characters' minds.

Film examples:

The Shining

Let the Right One In

Donnie Darko

The Sixth Sense

The Silence of the Lambs

Session 9

A psychological horror contains no gore, no weapons and doesn’t aim to make the audience jump out of their seat all the time. A psychological horror plays games on your mind; it messes with your head in such a way that you don’t know who to trust within the film and you feel vulnerable yourself. They expose the evil that hides behind normality, but with splashes of the paranormal which the audience is unable to relate to completely. (This relates to the idea of why people enjoy horror films is because they thrive on the excitement of being scared, yet in a controlled setting).

Shutter Island

Psychological horrors use music and musical effects as a big part of creating an eerie atmosphere. They rely purely on the guilt and the fears of the characters. You are constantly on an emotional rollercoaster with this sub-genre and you never know what to expect next, whereas with a Slasher film for example you can guess who the next victim is going to be.

The setting of 'The Others'

Psychological horrors are usually set in realistic locations for example a big house, woodland, school or possibly a hospital. This is to create a sense of verisimilitude within the audience as they can relate themselves to the situation of the victim. So for example In The Others the location is a big house isolated in the middle of a nowhere, this is an everyday example of location as places like that do exist.

Dark Water is located in a block of flats in the middle of a city. The props that I have seen are general household items, children’s paints and paintings and medical drugs. Session

Session 9

9 is located in an abandoned lunatic asylum. The props that I have seen from watching 15minutes worth of clips includes an abandoned armchair that keeps reappearing, a tape recorder, dust face masks, cleaning uniform and equipment, abandoned wheel chairs, drawings on the wall of dolls and women and pictures of babies. The others include broken puppet kids toys, candles, wedding dress and children’s drawings. As you can see the main theme that appears in each of these is the idea of something that belongs to a child, or something that resembles a child. In these films there are seen to be no physical weapons, this is because the weapon is usually the killers mind.

In many psychological horrors a child and its mother is usually the victim. This is true for: In a Tale of Two Sisters, The Others, Sinister, In Dark Water, Silent Hill, The Shining. A child is very frequently used as the victim, or the disturbed individual.