Psychological Horror
Psychological horror is a subgenre of horror fiction that reflects a character's fears, guilt, beliefs eerie sound effects, relevant music and emotional instability to build tension and further the plot. Rather than Slasher horror , which is what we did last year, we decided to challenge ourselves with using a genre to convey the same amount of tension and fear, but through the mind, not just by sight. When watching a Psychological horror film, the weapons you tend to see are not actual physical weapons, but tend to be more supernatural and psychological. For example, the killer’s twisted minds act a weapon of fear against the victims in the film. Also, in Supernatural horror films things such as visions, jumpy moments and so on are used as weapons of fear, supernaturally, rather than actually possessing a knife, or axe for example. A disturbed, or tormented individual is the main antagonist, usually comes back to get revenge on their victims. The victims can differ but like any horror film, a high percentage of the victims are female. The uses of children as the killers are also very popular. E.g. the Orphan, the Omen
When psychological horror films use children as the killer, again, the victims tend to be female. This could have something to do with the fact that mothers are maternal and the female audiences watching will be able to relate to the character in some way.
Psychological Thriller
A psychological thriller is a specific sub genre of the thriller/ horror genre,which often incorporates elements of mystery. Generally there is a deep focus on the main characters mental state (usually not good and rapidly deteriorating) and more emphasis is put on the characters than on the actual plot. The protagonists generally, unlike usual horror films, rely on their mental resources more than their physical strength by battling for equilibrium within their mind. Often in psychological thriller films the character is dealing with issues with elements such as reality, existence, perception, mind, death, dreams, purpose, identity. Commonly the the protagonist is dealing with mental health issues such as schizophrenia, and have issues such as night terrors.
Flashbacks are a typical convention of psychological thrillers. It can help with portraying the distortion of time which can confuse and mystify the audience. They are used to allow the audience to see what has happened to a character in the past to help the understand why this character is the way they are. They also can be used to eliminate hermeneutic codes create during the duration of the film.
Reality: the idea of actually being real. Characters often try to determine what is true and what is not within the narrative.
Perception: a persons own interpretation of the world around them.
The Mind: the human consciousness; the location for personality, though, reason, memory, intelligence and emotion. The mind is often used as a location for narrative conflict, where characters often battle there own minds to reach a new level of understanding and perception.
Existence and purpose: the object for which something exists; and aim humans have is to understand their reason for existence.
Identity: the definition of one's self. Characters are often confused about or doubt who they are and try to discover their true identity.
Death: the cessation of life. Characters often either fear or have a fascination with death.
Credits
Psychological thrillers often have simple font. Its simplicity can often create tension for the audience as they know that there is obviously much more to what is going on and are unaware of what is to come. However credits also sometimes have other styles, for example in Se7en the credits are in a style that looks hand written.
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