My hot take has been for a while that the term "psychological horror" as people use it doesn't actually mean anything and people just use it to say "Horror I like/Horror I think is well done". If you look on Steam, pretty much every horror title also has the "psychological horror" tag so while a clear definition might exist somewhere, the term is muddied to no end.

So I wanna ask what you think the term includes and what it doesn't, maybe we can crowdsource it.

Out of this list of horror or horror-adjacent games/franchises/movies, which would you classify as "Psychological horror" and why? And just as importantly, which would you say aren't psychological horror? If you can't come up with good reasons, answering purely based on vibes is also valid. You don't have to categorize all of them, only those you have an opinion about.

Games:

  • Ao Oni
  • Doki Doki Literature Club
  • Outlast
  • Lisa
  • Omori
  • Resident Evil
  • Five Nights At Freddy's
  • Outer Wilds
  • Pathologic
  • BioShock
  • The Coffin of Andy and Leyley
  • Limbo
  • Sally Face
  • SOMA
  • The Binding of Isaac
  • Needy Streamer Overload
  • Ib
  • Silent Hill

Movies:

  • Saw
  • The Cabin in the Woods
  • It Follows
  • Martyrs
  • Coraline
  • Get Out
  • Midsommar
  • Blair Witch Project
  • All Quiet On The Western Front
  • It
  • Silence of the Lambs
  • A Quiet Place
  • The Shining

The list is very broad on purpose. If you have anything else you would confidently call psychological horror, feel free to mention it.

  • ChaosMaterialist [he/him]
    ·
    14 days ago

    Subnautica exploits your fear of open ocean. Almost all the "horror" is basic survival instincts (don't drown, don't get eaten), limited view, and a deliberate design choice by the devs to not put weapons in the game. Various "monster" games, like Alien: Isolation and Amnesia follow this formula.

    Silent Hill games like to mess with your sense of space by constantly changing the interiors, messing with your unconscious gamer modes (mapping, treasure hunting, etc). Alan Wake follows lightly in this space. My House mod for DooM is designed to specifically to subvert the Doom experience.

    EDIT: Subnautica also did something subtle: the game mechanics are easy and forgiving on purpose. Fauna clearly indicate when attacking, the big fauna shake you around for a moment the first time, you don't drown until well after the timer hits zero, damage isn't all that bad, etc. The game is littered with these kinds of "threats" that, from an objective standpoint, aren't that threatening. But how these design choices are presented gives the player the impression that they "just squeaked by" a deadly encounter throughout the game.