User:Jneezy504/Psychological horror

Psychological Fascination of Psychological Horror
The fascination with horror films lies in the unreasonable, irrational, and impossible. Jung and Nietzche's theories exemplify humans need to escape the real world and live in a sublime space where anything is possible. Horror allows the watcher to escape mundane conventional life and express the inner workings of their irrational thoughts. H.P. Lovecraft explanation for the fascination of horror stems more from the lack of understanding of a humans true place and our deep inner instinct we are out of touch with, and the basic insignificance of ones life and the universe at large. Horror forces us to remember. Psychological horror further forces the manifestation of each individuals own personal horror. Our unseen humanity and our most basic human impulses forces us to seek out stimuli to remind us of our true nature and potential. Psychological horror are designed to insight suspense in the viewer not through the explicit showing of gore, supernatural, guts, and blood, but pray in the mind of the individual viewer.

Modern research reveals the relationship between empathy and fear or the lack thereof with interest in horror. Boys and men tend to be more attracted to horror than girls and women, who tend to have less of an appetite for anxiety and disgust. These findings aren’t always one hundred percent accurate through all cultures, ages, and sexes. Boys and men can find pleasure and delight in witnessing distress or boredom from psychological horror alongside emotional apathy. Women and girls do not feel positive emotions of pleasure as a result of distress and the negative effects of horror more deeply felt for longer time. The response along the gender lines is attributed to the social expectations and embodiment of gender roles during we are exposed to as children. in As a result of the lack of cross cultural research on the psychological effects of horror, one hypothesis is that individual cultures develop their own unique sense of horror, based in their cultural experiences. One could argue that all horror is psychological horror, because without it horror does not exist. Examples of children who are exposed to scary objects before viewing them in a scary way are less afraid when exposed to them later in a scary way. The specific reason for attraction to psychological horrors is not simple, some enjoy and think the incitement of intense emotion and psychological confusion is funny and enjoyable, others experience a positive sense of powerlessness in viewing the manipulation of fear and the ability to incite emotion, while others experience loneliness, sorrow, and melancholy.

Lighting and shadows
Hitchcock's Rear window used light and deliberate shadows to incite suspense in the viewer. Suspense is a fundamental part of Hitchcockian horror. The use of shadows through light to cover up information results in a subtle escalation of suspense and horror of what can not be seen. Hitchcock's Rear Window, places the main character as the primary information source for the viewer, their confusion in pervasive. The viewer lacks an omniscient understanding of events, resulting in an suspenseful and slow then explosive revelation. Shadows hide events or truths yet to be revealed, sometimes foreshadow events, and notify the viewer to hidden truths, resulting in suspense and the self reflection of known truths by the viewer. Light is used as a metaphor for what we know and can be seen, in the light, and what we don't know and are trying to figure out, what is in the shadows. Half illumination can be used to express a duality of emotions and uncertainty. The use of a burning cigarette or cigar, a tiny light in a sea of darkness is enough to inform the viewer that something or someone is there, but reveals nothing else, manipulating the viewers fears of what could be.

Sound and music
Studies by Thayer and Ellison in the 1980 studied the effects of different types of music layered on top of stressful visual stimuli, they used dermal electromagnetic to capture information about physiological stimulation while watching and listening. They found that with stressful music and composition laid over top stressful images the psychological response was greater than when watching the same visual stimuli with non stressful sound. Music with a positive tones results in viewers perceiving simultaneous visual stimuli as positive, and when negative tones are used viewers perceive visual stimuli as negative or more threatening. They made three hypothesis and were able to prove two with their research: 1. The use of equally stressful sounds and music over stressful imagery increased the psychological response in viewers in comparison to the same imagery without sound. 2. Where sound and music are placed in relation to a stressful visual stimuli effects the psychological response in viewers. This could not be totally proven, as when sound and music are incongruent with visual stimuli the electromagnetic response was heightened without alleviation in moments of non stress. 3. Sound and music placement can manipulate the viewer into believing a stressful moment is about to happen or has ended, when music is used in opposition to human expectation it can increase stress in the viewer when the expectation the music created doesn't happen visual. When following a character in a movie or show, the music exemplifies the emotion of the character, the viewer feels what the character feels, creating a synergy between character and viewer. The addition of music breaths more depth into emotional response that visual stimuli can not accomplish on its own. Music can subconsciously influence the viewer, further intertwining them emotionally with what they are watching forcing them to feel more deeply whatever emotion they are feeling from watching making it an important piece of psychological horror and it's success in in-sighting emotions in the viewer. While the use of full orchestras is a common use in the entire horror genre, when music isn't playing sounds from actions in film, as well as the lack of all sound and score are also used as tools to incite psychological horror and emphasize emotion.