Initial Research

Psychological Horror- Research into the genre.

The idea of a psychological horror is often to terrify the audience generally making them scared at what is on screen rather than actually making them jump. The idea is to show emotions and feelings that are often repressed by people and what scares people even more is that psychological horrors often are not based on monsters, they usually depict normal people who have undergone some sort of mental horror and further turning them insane and causing them to become what could be called a “monster”. Psychological horrors also differ from what is known as “splatter films”, another subgenre of horror. While these rely on blood and gore to frighten the audience psychological horror refers to such conventions as fears, guilt, beliefs, emotion, eerie sound effects and emotional instability to create and build tension.

Typical techniques of a psychological horror:

·         Shows the shadowy parts of human psyche of which people repress and deny

·         Exposes normal people has having an evil within

·         Frighten the audience mentally make them think about what is happening and why

·         Create a feeling of unease

·         Explore such things as abnormality

·         Often depicts peoples sufferings and diseases

·         Expose common fears and vulnerabilities

Examples of Psychological horrors are:

·         The Blair Witch Project

·         Come and see

·         Darkwater

·         The Exorcist

·         Gothika

·         The Haunting

·         The house of the Devil

·         The Omen

·         Paranormal Activity

·         Silent Hill

·         Sixth Sense

·         Whatever happened to baby Jane?