Psych Hour with Jo(sephine)!
- Jul 6
- 7 min read
Hey, world! This is your second host from your new favorite podcast coming to you with a take about the psychology behind film.
I’m no psychologist, but for as long as I can remember psychology has always interested me. Don’t get me wrong, though. Although I am one of those people who likes watching way too much true crime to “see” into the mind of the psycho killers, my interest in the subject is far simpler: why do people do what they do? That boils down to more normal behaviors too: why people choose their hobbies, their favorite things, and how a person's mentality affects their behavior. Mix that interest up with my love for stories and I find myself focusing on why films do certain things in order to generate the perfect mood in the audience.
There are many ways that directors can achieve their desired effect, but today we will be focusing on…
Cinematography!
The perfect place to start is the heart of filmmaking. Cinematography isn’t just camera work either. It’s lighting, color, composition and special effects. Each visual effect works with the other to create the perfect picture to represent the story. It captures how the characters feel, sometimes what the characters are thinking, and subconsciously tells you how you should feel.
Today, we’re going to look at three different, iconic, horror films to discuss how the cinematography showcases the more hidden aspects of the experience. From lighting to carefully planned frames, each decision that directors and their teams make sets up the aura of the story.
We absolutely cannot talk about cinematography in horror without mentioning the work of Alfred Hitchcock, and, specifically, my first introduction to his films: Vertigo.
Alfred Hitchcock is known as a father to horror films for his innovative techniques and ideas. Many of those ideas are still used today, such as his infamous smile from Psycho that inspired later directors like Stanley Kubrick. In Vertigo, it is the camera work that really captures the feeling of the story.
As explained in the article “Cinematography Analysis of Vertigo (In Depth)” by Salik Warquas on the Color Culture website, Hitchcock’s use of dolly shots gives the audience the perspective of main character Scottie Ferguson’s fears and feelings. We get sucked into his dizzying, dreamlike, mental state as he spirals deeper into obsession and paranoia.
I first saw Vertigo in my early high school years thanks to my best friend, who isn’t a horror fan but is a fan of Hitchcock movies. Yes, she is an icon. Anyway, before the introduction to the classic film, my experience of horror was exclusive to contemporary films. I knew jump scares and monsters and the supernatural. I remember watching the film and feeling like I was discovering real horror for the first time. Real horror that was personal to the human experience: psychological horror. The way the film was captured emphasizes this focus.
We experience the story through Scottie’s eyes through what I like to call, “first person-third person.” It’s a perspective I like to use in my own writing, and which you see very commonly throughout a lot of books and films. The story is technically told in third person, but you experience the story at the same time as the main character. We see the world as Scottie sees it, which means that we can’t be completely sure we are getting the full story. We are just as confused, as lost, as obsessed with the mystery as he is. We are, in a sense, within Scottie’s mind.
The wide-shots are off-centered, including big blocks of objects that take up a majority of the shot and give the audience a sense of claustrophobia. The audience gets a sense of feeling that they are just as lost as Scottie is, a sense of being overwhelmed and anxious. The technique adds to the mystery of the story as well. We are quite literally not getting the full picture. Hitchcock visually obscures context from the viewer, from Scottie, which emphasizes how much is unknown throughout the film. The audience is made aware that they don’t have the full picture.
The only scenes that are unobscured, that aren’t heavy with visual noise, are the dizzying heights produced by the dolly shots. These scenes in particular struck me due to the realism of the sense of panic and fear they portray. The few times I have found myself dizzy with spikes of terror it was like my mind cleared so quickly that it felt cold. What Hitchcock shows us is the visual representation of that feeling.
Another classic horror film that uses cinematography to capture the mental state of the main character, but in a different way, is Rosemary’s Baby. This movie, believe it or not, is nostalgic for me. Yes, I might only be twenty-seven, but my parents made sure that my brothers and I had quality media experiences, for which I am ever grateful. It probably shouldn’t be a surprise that I had a deeper interest into the minds of my fellow humans knowing that fact about me, honestly.
When watching Rosemary’s Baby, the audience sinks slowly into paranoia with Rosemary herself. The film utilizes the “first person-third person” perspective by only giving us bits and pieces… even from Rosemary herself.
We view Rosemary in the same way as we view her environment. The long, slow, scenes follow Rosemary as she tries to piece together what is happening around her and builds suspense as her fear grows. Unlike Vertigo, we don’t always see what Rosemary does. We get close-ups of her reactions and dream-like visuals of what she is experiencing, but we aren’t meant to know if Rosemary is seeing everything as it really is or if she is losing her mind. That is a horror within itself. It’s a horror that is realistic, because I think we all have had the thought, “What if I am crazy and I don’t know it?”
The camera not showing us everything not only adds to the question of if Rosemary is a reliable narrator but also builds the horror of the film. At the end of the film, we never see the baby. We only get reactions and descriptions, which leaves it up to the viewer to imagine what this child might look like. How inhuman does he look to get such a strong reaction out of Rosemary the second she sees him? Is it just his eyes, or is it something more? And how does the devil look? Not seeing the monster is something that I have strong feelings about. Once a monster is visually revealed, the suspense and horror tend to go away, at least for me, because often the mind can conjure up a more horrifying picture than special effects can. Seeing the monster is a relief, and there is never that sense of comfort given to the viewer in Rosemary’s Baby. You start the movie relaxed and then end it anxious.
While Rosemary’s Baby and Vertigo focus on a more emotional and psychological horror, The Conjuring balances in the middle. Because it’s a more modern film, the scares are more obvious, immediate and sudden. The film follows a style that feels like it is modeled after more contemporary groundbreaking films like Paranormal Activity and The Blair Witch Project. While the previous two films in this blog focused on camera angles, shots and perspective, The Conjuring uses light and color to its advantage in order to get its desired effect.
This movie may or may not have been one of the first horror films to actually scare me, and not because of the subject matter. It was all the visuals. The scene from the picture above was the big one. The tension of the moment as she lights the matches over and over. The fact that we can’t see anything behind her, and that she is looking down into the creepy basement that we all feared as children. The long shots snapping between what she is seeing and her increasingly anxious face. And, finally, the big scare: the fucking hands.
A very specific fear of mine has always been human parts – hands, heads, feet, full bodies – taking on unnatural positions or angles. It’s the idea of the uncanny valley, something that tries to tell us it’s human but isn’t quite right. We see this effect several times in the film, such as in the first hide-and-clap scene or the scene with the sheets on the clothesline, and the fact that we don’t see the monster for a majority of the film heightens the fear.
A study conducted for the Journal of Language Education, Linguistics, and Culture entitled, “Semiotic of Colour and Lighting in Horror Movie The Conjuring 2013 Building Atmosphere Dread,” addresses color and lighting used in the film to create the atmosphere of the story. Color is manipulated and used throughout the film to visually give the audience signals about when the characters are in danger. Darkness takes away the sense of security that the audience feels to make them paranoid about what could be lurking in the shadows. What can you not see, but can see you? It’s an implication of helplessness, of vulnerability, through lighting. Color is used in the same way. Muted tones color scenes to let us know something is wrong, while colors brighten and gain vibrancy when resolution hits to give the audience a sense of relief.
Looking between these films, each could not be more different from the other in storyline and themes, but they all intentionally use cinematic effects to impact the emotions and minds of the audience. They are great examples to look to for how the visual aspects of a film can have more of an impact than the story itself. Without carefully planned shots, music and lighting, films would be a lot more boring than we realize. The viewer experience is half the work, and it’s an art that seems to be finally returning with the light of recently released horror films such as Obsession.
Film isn’t just entertainment. That is something that is lost in the contemporary epidemic of remakes, live actions and sequels. Respect for the art needs to return to the industry that has been overrun by the apparent need to get movies out as quickly as possible to make as much money as possible. It’s about quality over quantity. A good film is like stopping to smell the roses or pausing to admire a beautiful painting. A good movie doesn’t have to be especially deep and meaningful, but it should be set up to do more than just entertain.
Sources
Carstensen, T. (2023). Is It Really Happening? The Postmodern Horror of Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby. American Studies in Scandinavia, 55(2), 8-25. https://doi.org/10.22439/asca.v55i2.7039
Salik Waquas. (2024, December 11). Cinematography Analysis Of Vertigo (In Depth) - Color Culture. Color Culture. https://colorculture.org/cinematography-analysis-of-vertigo-in-depth/
Sihombing, J., Sinambela, E., & Pasaribu, D. R. (2026). Semiotic of Colour and Lighting in Horror Movie “The Conjuring 2013” Building Atomisphere Dread. Journal of Language Education, Linguistics, and Culture, 6(1), 49–64. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.25299/j-lelc.2026.27003
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