Room to Scream: A Therapist’s 10 Horror Movie Prescriptions
A couple weeks ago, I watched a scary movie with my partner. When it ended, we sat in the dark before a bathroom light flickered down the hall. Suffice it to say, we startled, laughed nervously, and sank deeper into the couch, with blankets pulled halfway up our faces. We found ourselves in a monstrous mix of emotions: terrified, thrilled, excited, upset, and, ironically, desperate to use the one (haunted) bathroom available.
It got me thinking. Conventionally, fear is understood as negative and unpleasant. After all, one look at the state of the world and we’re liable to spiral into a doom loop of uncertainty, anxiety, and, well, fear. We tremble, we dread, we think in loops at the speed of light, we feel nauseous, clammy, on edge.
So why was I somehow thrilled by a scary movie and a flickering light?
I happened upon a quote by Stephen King in his analysis of horror, Danse Macabre. He writes: “We make up horrors to cope with real ones.” In other words, horror movies provide a container for us to practice and safely play out our fears, anxieties, and dreads. In fact, research contends that our brains are fundamentally predictive machines and horror allows us to safely develop flexibility, capacity, and resilience in the face of uncertainty. There is an urge, even a thrill in brushing up close with horror and coming out the other side relatively unscathed: we survive our imagined, horrifying, uncertain nightmares and, with practice, can learn to regulate our fear response in the moment.
Well, it’s officially spooky season and sometimes it feels like there is more uncertainty in the world than ever before. So let’s give ourselves some room to scream. I’ve compiled a list of 10 horror movies that I love and might just help you find the thrill of uncertainty and dread.
Psycho (1960) – Alfred Hitchcock
Need something to work through issues with mom? Look no further than Psycho, which blends family, possession, and unresolved trauma into a groundbreaking film that defined the horror genre for decades to come. Also helps practice fears of shower curtains.
2. I Saw The TV Glow (2024) and Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026) – Jane Schoenbrun
Okay, I cheated on this one by lumping two films together. Both films address the grief, dread, and uncertainty of pre- and post-transition for all those genderqueer folx out there. Schoenbrun makes sure to center the complicated nature of queerness, so often marginalized or villainized across the horror genre. They ask: what does it mean to not just sit with but revel in the tensions of trans experience? What does it mean, as a queer person, to take pleasure in and be informed by the anti-queer tendencies of the horror genre? And what does it mean to be the shower curtain from Psycho?
3. The Shining (1980) – Stanley Kubrick
What better way to observe the effects of isolation, burnout, and intergenerational trauma. A great reminder to get outside, meet up with friends, and get involved with some extracurricular social groups. After all, all work and no play…
4. It Follows (2014) – David Robert Mitchell
Sex can be really scary! And no less so than in It Follows, wherein having sex opens you up to being stalked by an invisible monster and the only way to redirect it is to have sex with someone else. Mitchell’s view of his plot: “We can’t escape our mortality… but love and sex are two ways in which we can at least temporarily push death away.” Sex opens us up to death yet staves it off. Questionable sex therapy, but give it a go.
5. Host (2020) – Rob Savage
One of the first COVID-19-era horror films, Host is a masterclass in processing the illusion of safety with distance. In the age of the internet, we are simultaneously more isolated yet more connected than ever before – and that tension is nothing less than horrifying. Please don’t quit our Telehealth services because of this.
6. Scream (1996) – Wes Craven
Poking fun at and yet still effectively deploying horror film tropes, Scream launched a movement of self-aware horror. The grand takeaway: insight into your patterns isn’t enough to excuse you from your participation in them. Perhaps the true horror lies in the predictability of it all.
7. Get Out (2017) – Jordan Peele
Peele is a master at identifying the effects of societal racial oppression as psychological horrors. A scathing indictment of American white culture’s exploitation and predation of Black bodies, Get Out reminds those living under racialized, oppressive systems that it’s not just in their heads. It’s in their hypnotist’s teacup.
8. Midsommar (2019) – Ari Aster
Look, just because your relationship is tanking, doesn’t mean you need to join a cult. Going through his own break-up at the time of production, Aster channels the zeitgeist of malaise, whereby disaffected white America hungers for a coherent sense of a collective in an imagined Sweden, no matter how death-driven it might be. Maybe this is a reminder that there are other outlets, like book clubs or bowling.
9. The Thing (1982) – John Carpenter
Widely panned as a failure upon initial release, The Thing has undergone a reevaluation as a masterfully unsettling paranoia thriller, in which a group of men begin to panic when they can no longer tell who amongst them is a human or an alien-to-be. If you’re concerned about contemporary political disintegration whereby the lines between friend and foe become impossible to ascertain – maybe don’t check this out. Or do. It’s good practice, I guess.
10. The Sixth Sense (1999) – M Night Shyamalan
What if your therapist is actually dead?
Interested in working with Em? Connect with them at Sandberg@RoomToBreatheChicago.Com
