Psychological horror
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Featured:  Illustration: Portrait fantaisiste du marquis de Sade (1866) by H. Biberstein |
"Psychological horror" is a subgenre of horror fiction that relies on character fears, guilt, beliefs, and emotional instability to build tension and further the plot. 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 the end of the work. Well-known examples of psychological fiction include The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) Psycho (1960), Peeping Tom (1960), Repulsion (1965) and The Tenant (1976) . The Others is a more recent example of a psychological horror film.
