Psychological Horror

The type of sub genre that i am going to be using for my main task is Psychological Horror, this is based on horror fiction that relies on characters' fears and emotional instability to build tension. 

Psychological Horror films gnerally rely on the characters beliefs, fears and any hidden truths about the character or what they have done. Psychological Horror tends to involve ordinary people who tend to be the person subjecting the horror onto the charecters. The evil work of the character is not shown until the end when the story is fully established. 

An example film: 

An example film of Psychological Horror is Apartment 143 we chose this because it matched with our target audience of young adults and when we did out market research majority of people said they didn't find 'fake blood' and 'predictable scenes' scary in horror movies. This film doesn't include any of this, theres always the unknown in the next scene its not predictable of whats going to happen next and its not typical of the horror genre.

Other Example Films:

§  Eraserhead

§  The Strangers

§  The Thing

§  The Blair Witch Project

§  The Haunting in Connecticut

§  The Sixth Sense

§  Dark Water

§  The Unborn

§  The Exorcist

§  The Omen

§  Gothika

§  The Shining

§  The Others

§  Paranormal Activity

§  The Ring

§  Silent Hill

§  The Village

§  The Uninvited

§  The Haunting

Psychological Horror usually tends to follow a number of conventions:

•       The killer usually appears to be normal; there are not usually any usual physical signs that would identify the person as a killer, this is because they may lead an average normal lifestyle with no other possible reasons to point to the way that they are. 

•       Psychological Horror films will generally rely on the characters beliefs, fears, and any hidden truths about the character or what they have done.

•       Psychological horrors tend to involve ordinary people who tend to be the person subjecting the horror onto the other characters which often makes it difficult to identify who the killer is.  Very often the evil works of this character is not shown until the end or when the story of the horror is fully established.

•       They rely on the audience’s mind to create the horror effect, with less gore noticeable like in Slasher films where the film is heavily dependent on it to create effect.

•       In horror film trailers the audience rarely see the killers face, this helps to create an effect and mystery, but also increases the suspense in the film.