Tuesday, 11 October 2011

What is a psychological horror?

Psychological horror is a subgenre of horror fiction that relies on character fears, guilt, beliefs, eerie sound effects, relevant music and emotional instability to build tension and further the plot.[1] Psychological horror is different from the type of horror found in "splatter films"' which derive their effects from gore and violence, and from the sub-genre of horror-of-personality, in which the object of horror does not look like a monstrous other, but rather a normal human being, whose horrific identity is often not revealed until well into the work, or even at the very end.

-Wikipedia

Some examples of psychological horror films (according to wikipedia) are; 
I am going to investigate a few of these films and find out what makes them a psychological horror, what their conventions are and if they work well. I will look at; Rosemary's Baby(1968), Jacob's Ladder(1990), The Shining(1980) and Silent Hill(2006). These films span over quite a large period of time in the film world, and so it will be interesting to see how the genre develops and grows.

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