Our minds are powerful tools. We can use them for everything: creating ideas, communication, and knowing how to operate our bodies. True, our minds are our power centre.
So, imagine what happens when your mind starts to lose control. How scary would it be to not know what is real and what is not? To be at war with your brain every day? To doubt your own mind?
Psychological horror does just that. It is terrifying, not only because it uses gore, jumpscares, or extreme violence, but mostly because it unlocks something in our psyche that leaves us very perturbed in a way that other forms of horror simply cannot do.
Why is it so scary?
Psychological horror is a medium of storytelling that requires creativity, which makes even the most skeptical critics really analyze the tropes within the film. In psychological horror movies, the story typically starts off as a mystery, then becomes scarier with the added horror components, and to top it off, it gradually includes disconcerting psychological elements, usually taken from real-life events.
How does Psychological Horror Work?
A good psychological story first starts off with tension and indistinct storytelling. This captivates the audience into paying attention and waiting to discover how the plot unfolds. Psychological horror depends on the “mental state of its characters to convey terror to the audience.” While other horror sub-genres usually feast on fear, disgust, monsters, and killers, psychological horror exploits the worries and fears of humans. It makes one challenge their own instincts and impulses.
The Shining
Besides, psychological horrors usually interfere with one’s sense of awareness. For example, Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 thriller The Shining betrays the audience’s trust in many (good) ways. Jack Torrance may have been really losing his mind from the isolation and his failure to provide for his family. But then, how was he able to get out of the locked kitchen while he was supposedly talking to Delbert Grady, the ghost? Of course, at the end, with Jack in the photo, we are left to question if the Overlook Hotel is truly haunted. Or maybe it was a mix of Jack’s declining mental state and the ghosts merely exploiting it…
The Lighthouse
Let’s take a look at another movie: Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse. We assume Willem Dafoe’s character is the old crazy one, and in some scenes, it proves that point. However, in the middle of the film, we see Howard reveal his true nature about killing someone and taking his identity. Now, we have two unstable people – or do we? Maybe Dafoe’s character is the sane one and Howard is plotting to kill him too. Either way, we cannot trust either one of them as a reliable narrator. Such magnificent films generate many theories and praise for their intricate mix of storytelling, isolation, mental unwellness, and desperation.
Edgar Allen Poe
One of the earliest (and most iconic) forerunners of psychological horror would be Edgar Allen Poe. His works were responsible for many modern horror movements, despite him not being very well known during his time.
His famous works The Tell-Tale Heart and The Masque of the Red Death both tie in on psychological horror. The Tell-Tale Heart deals with an unreliable narrator who murders someone, and we see from a first person perspective that they are ridden by guilt and paranoia. The murderer is eventually driven mad by hallucinations of the beating heart under the floorboards and confesses. Masque of the Red Death deals with affluent people in an isolated castle, where they party and celebrate, not caring for those dying of the plague just outside their doors. It is not until the Red Death itself appears and kills the partygoers. The symbolism of the colored rooms depict life and the stages we go through, and the overall message is that no one can escape death.
Poe often used moral disintegration and people cracking under pressure. He didn’t write about seeking vengeance, but rather wrote about how one’s conscience would simply turn on them or how nature can be cruel to those who are cruel themselves.
Simply put…
Psychological horror is the best and scariest because it does not deal with your typical monsters and crazed killers. The whole underlying fear of horror movies is the fear of not being safe. That’s why many slasher films are critiqued – viewers often discuss how they would never put themselves in such a situation, or would use their wits to escape, fight back, and win.
But what can you do if the monster is your own mind? How safe are you? What is real and what is not? It gives off a deep feeling of dread and discomfort that can affect anyone and everyone: who can I trust if I can’t trust my own brain?