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; 

• The Silence of the Lambs
• The Blair Witch Project
• The Cell
• Marianne
• Rosemary's Baby
• Jacob's Ladder
• Session 9
• The Innocents
• The Others
• The Ring
• The Shining
• Silent Hill
• Dark Floors
• Come and See
• The Haunting

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.

Pie chart results

I will write up the summation of the results after analysing the data recorded.

Facebook Poll

Actors for trailer

I am going to use a Alannah as my main character for my psychological horror teaser trailer. She is not exactly an actor, but I will be using snapshot type sequences so it will be more of a photography shoot, something she is used to. When choosing my actress I wanted to pick someone with quite dark features, someone with an 'earthy' feel, as most of the locations will be wood type areas. I want to connect the character with the setting.

For the child I will use my niece Isobelle, she is used to being a subject for my photography and takes instructions well. She is very professional for such a young child. She will feature as the main characters sister, of whom has mysteriously disappeared. Luckily the pair of 'actors' have quite similiar features, although a teaser probably wouldn't reveal much about their relationship, I still wanted them to look believable as family.

Trailer Research

I've been finding it a bit difficult to find actual teaser trailers on youtube, more full length trailers are featured. Although through studying different trailers I can pick apart things which could work for my teaser.



This trailer for Jacob's Ladder has some of the effects/style that I want to use for my own trailer, the first 20 seconds of flashing imagery and music is something I have been thinking about incorporating. The film itself is of the psychological horror genre, which is the category I would put my own teaser trailer into. Psychological horrors typically show less explicit violence and gore as in traditional horrors, it more affects the mind and it's inner fears. Jacob's ladder is a film which isn't explicitly scary, but I thought it was rather disturbing through it's imagery and lighting. I need to explore more of the characteristics and films which label themselves psychological horrors.

Questionnaire + Polls

After dummy running my first questionnaire I discovered that there were quite a few problems with the questions and ways of answering them. I have found it much easier to use closed ended questions rather than open, as this will make creating a table of results much easier. My first questionnaire appears on googleforms, this tool I did not find very easy to use or link to people, and so I created forms to hand out. My hand outs were quite successful, drawing in a range of results to collect, I still need to gather more results. My poll has been placed on facebook, this is because my target age range is most attracted to the site. The website is also very easily accessible and simple to use, making it a useful way to collect information.

Please answer my poll on facebook!

http://apps.facebook.com/my-polls/ctjx8idi