Psychological horror is a sub-genre of horror and psychological fiction with a particular focus on mental, emotional, and psychological states to frighten, disturb, or unsettle its audience. They’re better than regular horror movies because they mess with the viewer, instead of purely scaring them.
If we compare a classic horror to a psychological horror, the psychological horror is rated better. Friday the 13th is a classic horror film and one of the first scary movies that comes to mind. In the movie a group of teenagers are counselors at Crystal Lake. They’re stalked by a brutal killer, they’re shot, stabbed, and slashed, as they struggle to stay alive against the merciless killer Jason. It has a 6.5 out of 10 from IMDb (Internet Movie Database).
Saw, one of the most notorious psychological thrillers, tells the story of a couple of men who wake up in a room chained to a pole and have to go through a series of tests in order to live. They must either kill each other or die themselves and the people they love. It is rated 7.6 out of 10 from IMDb.
Psychological thrillers capture an audience better because they get into your head and mess with your deepest fears. Psychological thrillers put you in the spot of the main character and cause you to put yourself through the same situation as the main character. Regular scary movies scare you with jump scares and gore.
Psychological thrillers don’t just bring out your fears; they bring out your deep seeded fears and magnify it. For example, if you have a fear of the ocean, there’s many reasons that someone would have a fear of the ocean but psychological thrillers bring that specific fear out in a subtle way to make you feel uneasy. I have claustrophobia and the movie As Above, So Below brings that out without just showing it. It puts the characters in tight spaces and subtly makes the spaces seem smaller with the way they edit and/or use camera angles.
Regular horror movies use shock value and gore to scare you. They are effective, but they don’t leave a lasting impression. Gerald’s Game is a psychological thriller but also shows horror movie-esque gore. In one scene the main character gets so desperate that she breaks a glass cup and wedges it into a shelf and starts cutting up her hand trying to get her hand out of handcuffs. As she’s pulling, her skin starts to come off and her muscles, and tendons are exposed. It makes you cringe as you almost feel the pain and get disturbed by the scene being presented. It used shock value and the fear of physical vulnerability to really disturb the viewers.
Both types of movies are good in their own way, but the psychological ones leave a more lasting impression and the gore in regular horror movies disturb you in a way psychological thrillers don’t.