Psychological horror can even be hybridized with the classic kind. The best gimmick the genre ever stumbled on (decades ago) was having "otherworldly" affairs purely residing in personal hallucinations, rather than the external environment. The "elder entities" don't invade the world physically or walk upon the Earth directly, but intervene subjectively through a person's consciousness. Using the "crazed" human to perform their deeds "out there".
One "recent" example that might be open to being construed that way is 2019's Saint Maud (trailer below). The viewer has options: the "explanation" is multi-realizable. They can mundanely accept that this nurse was just insane. Or that the darkest of Jungian archetypes was manipulating her. Or that some Lovecraftian space deity was technologically projecting its influence. Or that a literal supernatural agent was doing similar. Or that a "prior-in-rank" provenance of this world (the latter as simulated reality) was passively bypassing the rules to affect only her thoughts, and via such also eventually her actions.
Consider that there is no "science" for qualia or the private manifestations correlated to our thoughts and sensory perceptions (the applicable areas of electrochemical activity in the skull). Epiphenomenalism offers no truly satisfactory answer for how the brain/body would even know about the qualitative experiences arising in parallel association with the neural correlates of consciousness, since they have no reciprocal effect (causation is one-way). Yet we can nevertheless talk about those "shown" events (the brain is aware of them, despite the problem).
Thus, for the horror genre, private manifestation (phenomenal consciousness) accordingly provides a perfect "entrance" to the material cosmos without detection or alarm bells sounding. Whatever the compromised individual relates to others will simply be dismissed as the rogue hallucinations of someone in need of meds. In contrast to the normal "controlled hallucinations" that Anil Seth ascribes to actual sensory perceptions and thoughts not ascribed to mental illness or psychotropic drugs.
Last edited:
