Best Horror Subgenres: Psychological - Scaring the Mind

Each month the Cinelinx staff will write a handful of articles covering a specified film-related topic. These articles will be notified by the Movielinx banner. Movielinx is an exploration and discussion of our personal connections with film.  This month, with Halloween on the horizon, we're going to be examining the best Horror film genres out there. Be sure to join us in the discussion and share your favorite films in each genre we discuss! 

Of the plethora of horror sub-genres, psychological horror is arguably the best, at least the scariest, and definitely my favorite. What distinguishes it from the others are its origins; it doesn’t start at a monster or a situation (although indeed it often has those things). Instead, it begins at the human brain and plucks away at our fears.

It’s in the name; it’s psychological. It attempts to hit certain notes and waves that’ll make us go awry, and then it’s often cloaked in highly aestheticized allegory. The best horror films are the ones that deal with universal fears. Take, for example, the quintessential psychological horror film(perhaps the best horror film period) The Shining. Sure, the image of a woman with decrepit skin peeling away as if soaked in acid is frightening in itself, but the root of these images is something closer to us, something more human, and something more psychological.

The source of the terror is the possibility of a loved one betraying you and becoming the monster. In this case, it’s the father Jack Torrence (Jack Nicholson). The expected role of the father is the strong protector and provider of the family. He is this first, but in his insanity he becomes the opposite: The mad one who seeks destruction upon his own kin. How scary is that? To have your father, the primary sense of security, then become your primary source of fear?

But the Shining also does something else, it manipulates the viewer. As our characters traverse the now infamous Overlook Hotel, the rooms don’t connect... There are windows to the outside in rooms that can’t possibly have them. There are hallways that lead to one room and later the other, doors are established to be locked from the other side and then mysteriously open. But this manipulation is quiet. It churns inside the unconscious as the discontinuity builds and is set afire when the madness finally strikes.

This is subtlety of unease that only psychological horror can achieve. It doesn’t rely on gratuitous violence or gore. Instead, it can enhance it. It doesn’t rely on designing a frightening demon, it awakens ones already within you and gives it a physical form.

If you look close enough psychological horror is found everywhere, even in other sub genres like horror-comedy. Adam Wingard’s You’re Next dealt with the relatable fears of visiting your boyfriend/girlfriend’s family for the first time. It is this fear first, and then becomes a home invasion comedy/horror/slasher. Ti West’s The Innkeepers follows two employees at the Yankee Pedlar Inn, renown for its haunted past. It deals with the horrors of boredom and what it can lead to with the snail pace of a hotel employee shift. Are the ghosts real, or a hallucination? Or,is it the ethereal personification of what can result from boredom?  Polanski’s Repulsion pried on women's fear of violation by men, both verbal and physical. When the fear materializes as the protagonist’s delusions, they come in the form of hands reaching through walls that violate her. These films take the added dimension of human fears and blow them up into the monsters and jump scares viewers are accustomed to.

This is why psychological horror often chills more than horror with a situational or aesthetic dependency. It begins at the depths of the mind and then works it’s way up to our eyes. All great horror has psychological elements, and perhaps even something new to for us to discover. And isn’t that the strongest form of catharsis, to discover enlightenment through your own fears?