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Psychological horror is a subgenre of horror and psychological fiction with a particular focus on mental, emotional, and psychological states to frighten, disturb, or unsettle its audience. The subgenre frequently overlaps with the related subgenre of psychological thriller, and often uses mystery elements and characters with unstable, unreliable, or disturbed psychological states to enhance the suspense, horror, drama, tension, and paranoia of the setting and plot and to provide an overall creepy, unpleasant, unsettling, or distressing atmosphere.
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Psychological horror usually aims to create discomfort or dread by exposing common or universal psychological and emotional vulnerabilities/fears and revealing the darker parts of the human psyche that most people may repress or deny.[1] This idea is referred to in analytical psychology as the archetypal shadow characteristics: suspicion, distrust, self-doubt, and paranoia of others, themselves, and the world.
The genre sometimes seeks to challenge or confuse the audience's grasp of the narrative or plot by focusing on characters who are themselves unsure of or doubting their own perceptions of reality or questioning their own sanity. Characters' perceptions of their surroundings or situations may indeed be distorted or subject to delusions, outside manipulation or gaslighting by other characters; emotional disturbances or trauma; and even hallucinations or mental disorders. Additionally, restricting the characters' and audience's view of potential danger through strategic lighting and visual obstructions—like in Bird Box (film)—can heighten suspense and engage the imagination, leaving much of the threat unseen.
In many cases, and in a similar way as the overlapping genre of psychological thriller, psychological horror may deploy an unreliable narrator or imply that aspects of the story are being perceived inaccurately by a protagonist, thus confusing or unsettling the audience and setting up an ominous or disturbing overarching tone. In other cases, the narrator or protagonist may be reliable or ostensibly mentally stable but is placed in a situation involving another character or characters who are psychologically, mentally, or emotionally disturbed. Thus, elements of psychological horror focus on mental conflicts. These become important as the characters face perverse situations, sometimes involving the supernatural, immorality, murder, and conspiracies. While other horror media emphasize fantastical situations such as attacks by monsters, psychological horror tends to keep the monsters hidden and to involve situations more grounded on artistic realism.
Plot twists are an often-used device. Characters commonly face internal battles with subconscious desires such as romantic lust and the desire for petty revenge. In contrast, splatter fiction and monster movies often focuses on a bizarre, alien evil to which the average viewer cannot easily relate. However, at times, the psychological horror and splatter subgenres overlap, such as in the French horror film High Tension.[2]
Fascination with horror films lies in the unreasonable, irrational, and impossible. Jung and Nietzsche's theories exemplify humans need to escape the real world and live in a sublime space where anything is possible. Horror allows the watcher to escape mundane conventional life and express the inner workings of their irrational thoughts. H.P. Lovecraft's explanation for the fascination of horror stems more from the lack of understanding of a humans true place and our deep inner instinct we are out of touch with, and the basic insignificance of ones life and the universe at large. Horror forces us to remember. Psychological horror further forces the manifestation of each individuals own personal horror. Our unseen humanity and our most basic human impulses forces us to seek out stimuli to remind us of our true nature and potential.[3]
Psychological horror not only ilicits fear, anxiety, and disgust but it also has the capacity to foster empathy in audiences. The genre allows audiences to navigate the complexities of human experiences that prompt viewers to connect with characters confronting conflict.[4] Modern research reveals the relationship between empathy and fear or the lack thereof with interest in horror. Research shows that the effects of psychological horror affects females more than males.[4] A current hypothesis for this difference between the genders is that it relates to social expectations and the gender roles we are exposed to during childhood.[5] As a result of the lack of cross-cultural research on the psychological effects of horror, one hypothesis is that individual cultures develop their own unique sense of horror, based in their cultural experiences.
Lighting and shadows
Hitchcock's Rear Window used light and deliberate shadows to incite suspense in the viewer. Suspense is a fundamental part of Hitchcockian horror. The use of shadows through light to cover up information results in a subtle escalation of suspense and horror of what can not be seen. Hitchcock's Rear Window places the main character as the primary information source for the viewer; their confusion is pervasive. The viewer lacks an omniscient understanding of events, resulting in an suspenseful and slow then explosive revelation. Shadows hide events or truths yet to be revealed, sometimes foreshadow events, and notify the viewer to hidden truths, resulting in suspense and the self reflection of known truths by the viewer. Light is used as a metaphor for what we know and can be seen, in the light, and what we do not know and are trying to figure out, what is in the shadows. Half illumination can be used to express a duality of emotions and uncertainty. The use of a burning cigarette or cigar, a tiny light in a sea of darkness is enough to inform the viewer that something or someone is there, but reveals nothing else, manipulating the viewers fears of what could be.[6]
Sound and music
Studies by Thayer and Ellison in the 1980 studied the effects of different types of music layered on top of stressful visual stimuli, they used dermal electromagnetic to capture information about physiological stimulation while watching and listening. They found that with stressful music and composition laid over top stressful images the psychological response was greater than when watching the same visual stimuli with non stressful sound.[7] Music with a positive tone results in viewers perceiving simultaneous visual stimuli as positive, and when negative tones are used viewers perceive visual stimuli as negative or more threatening.
They made three hypotheses and were able to prove two with their research:
- The use of equally stressful sounds and music over stressful imagery increased the psychological response in viewers in comparison to the same imagery without sound.
- Where sound and music are placed in relation to a stressful visual stimuli effects the psychological response in viewers. This could not be totally proven, as when sound and music are incongruent with visual stimuli the electromagnetic response was heightened without alleviation in moments of non stress.
- Sound and music placement can manipulate the viewer into believing a stressful moment is about to happen or has ended, when music is used in opposition to human expectation it can increase stress in the viewer when the expectation the music created doesn't happen visually.[7]
When following a character in a movie or show, the music exemplifies the emotion of the character, the viewer feels what the character feels, creating a synergy between character and viewer.[8] The addition of music breathes more depth into emotional response that visual stimuli can not accomplish on its own. Music can subconsciously influence the viewer, further intertwining them emotionally with what they are watching forcing them to feel more deeply whatever emotion they are feeling from watching making it an important piece of psychological horror and its success in inciting emotions in the viewer.
While sound design is deliberately crafted in the horror genre to evoke an emotional response, the absence of sound can be equally effective in evoking an emotional response.[9] In the film A Quiet Place, much of what builds suspense is the sparse, muted sound design. Soundtracks are utilized to build tension or accent a startling event, like a jump scare. But films with minimalistic, limited soundtracks leave audiences unable to predict coming scenes and often lead to more pronounced emotional responses when a sound is added.
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The novels The Golem written by Gustav Meyrink, The Silence of the Lambs written by Thomas Harris, Robert Bloch novels such as Psycho and American Gothic, Stephen King novels such as Carrie, Misery, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, The Shining, and Koji Suzuki's novel Ring are some examples of psychological horror. Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle is often viewed as one of the best examples of psychological horror in fiction.
Bill Gibron of PopMatters declared a mixed definition of the psychological horror film, ranging from definitions of anything that created a sense of disquiet or apprehension to a film where an audience's mind makes up what was not directly displayed visually. Gibron concluded it as a "clouded gray area between all out splatter and a trip through a cinematic dark ride."[10]
Academics and historians have stated different origin periods to the psychological horror film. Historian David J. Skal described The Black Cat (1934) as "being called the first psychological horror movie in America."[11] Academic Susan Hayward described them as a post-World War II phenomenon and giving examples of psychological horror films as Psycho (1960) and Peeping Tom (1960).[12] Hayward continued that the psychological horror films and slasher films are both interchangeable terms with "horror-thrillers".[13]
Hayward said the genre resembled the slasher film with both being "vicious normalizing of misogyny".[12] She wrote that in both film genres, the male had a dependence on the female for a sense of identity derived from his difference from her, and often killed them with items like knives or chainsaws.[14]
Psychological horror video games are a subgenre of horror video games. While such games may be based on any style of gameplay, they are generally more exploratory and "seek to instigate a sense of doubt about what might really be happening" in the player.[15][16] Phantasmagoria (1995),[15] D (1995),[17] Corpse Party (1996)[18][19] and Silent Hill (1999)[20] are considered some of the first psychological horror games. Sometimes, psychological horror games will simulate crashes, file corruptions, and various other errors, such as the 2017 visual novel Doki Doki Literature Club![21]
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