Psychological Horror

1. The eerie setting of a Forest or a haunted Wood is used in The Blair Witch Project. The quietness combined with the lack of surrounding security make this a spooky setting. In fact, any abandoned area, like a abandoned warehouse the same horror environment. Big houses are often used. The familiarity of a your home being somewhere you should be safe makes the audience relate more to the film, thus making it scarier for the audience. An example of this is the house in Insidious. Flickering light bulbs, creaky doors and floorboards are a feature of most psychological horrors. Flickering light bulbs give a sense of a ghostly disturbance, whilst creaky doors and floor boards intensify the movement of the unknown. Setting In Psychological horrors in particular, psychiatric hospitals tend to be used. The idea of death being close can be a creepy factor, as well as a believable setting for the mentally ill to be. This can be seen in Grave Encounters and Session 9. Psychological Horror Mise-en-scene The main characters account of the story is usually unreliable, for example, in Shutter Island, it is not until the end that we realise that he is not who he thinks he is. Contrapuntal sound is often used to give the film a sinister edge, and shows that things aren’t as they seem. The ending of the film Happy Birthday to me uses a folk version of ‘Happy Birthday’ at the end of the film, contrasting its depressing ending. Sound The characters in a psychological horror are not usually stereotypically ‘scary’ (e.g. Monsters and Zombies). They often carry creepy characteristics, and have odd habits to hint towards the psychological disarray. Characters Music with a rhythm reflecting the action is often used to add tension, such as the stabbing rhythm in the film Psycho. Children are often used as the sinister character in the film, for example in Orphan.