The Best and Worst Depictions of Mental Health In Horror
I actually enjoy horror based around mental health, because I have a mental illness and I’m always curious how it will be depicted on the big screen. It’s with an odd morbid curiosity I seek out asylum horror or characters suffering from depression. To me, it’s an opportunity to show the world the dark side of mental illness, but I want this type of horror done right. Think along the lines of Shirley Jackson, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Chuck Palahniuk. They treat mental illness with accuracy and respect. So, here is my list of best and worst movies and books.
BEST
They Look Like People
Movie summary:
Suspecting that people around him are turning into evil creatures, a troubled man questions whether to protect his only friend from an impending war, or from himself.
Why it’s the best:
This is a haunting look at one man’s struggle to stay grounded in reality that will relate to many struggling with the same affliction.
Lullabies for Suffering: Tales of Addiction Horror
Back of the cover:
Addiction starts like a sweet lullaby sung by a trusted loved one. It washes away the pains of the day and wraps you in the warmness of the womb where nothing hurts and every dream is possible.
Yet soon enough, this warm state of bliss becomes a cold shiver, the ecstasy and dreams become nightmares, yet we can't stop listening to the lullaby. We crave to hear the siren song as it rips us apart.
A powerful list of talent has woven tales featuring the insidious nature of addiction--damaged humans craving for highs and wholeness but finding something more tragic and horrific on the other side. You're invited to listen to these Lullabies for Suffering.
Why it’s the best:
These stories dive into the horror of addiction while portraying realistic mental health struggles.
A Tale of Two Sisters
Movie summary:
After being institutionalized in a mental hospital, Korean teen Su-mi (Yeom Jeong-ah) reunites with her beloved sister, Su-yeon (Im Soo-jung), and they return to live at their country home. The girls' widower father (Mun Geun-yeong) has remarried, and the siblings are immediately resentful of his new wife, Eun-joo (Kap-su Kim). As Su-mi and Su-yeon try to resume their regular lives, strange events plague the house, leading to surprising revelations and a shocking conclusion.
Why it’s the best:
This movie is beautifully tragic with intense emotion and heartache. It explores multiple aspects of mental health that center around grief. Extremely well done.
The Babadook
Movie summary:
A single mother, plagued by the violent death of her husband, battles with her son's fear of a monster lurking in the house, but soon discovers a sinister presence all around her (2014).
Why it’s the best:
This is one of the scariest depictions of postpartum depression and grief on the big screen. I absolutely loved the ending.
Her Body and Other Parties: Stories
Book summary:
In Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women’s lives and the violence visited upon their bodies.
A wife refuses her husband’s entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store’s prom dresses. One woman’s surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. And in the bravura novella “Especially Heinous,” Machado reimagines every episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a show we naïvely assumed had shown it all, generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelgängers, ghosts, and girls with bells for eyes.
Earthy and otherworldly, antic and sexy, queer and caustic, comic and deadly serious, Her Body and Other Parties swings from horrific violence to the most exquisite sentiment. In their explosive originality, these stories enlarge the possibilities of contemporary fiction.
Why it’s the best:
This book tackles many sensitive topics that will grip reader’s by the gut and never let go.
But it here!
WORST
Gothika
Movie Summary:
The life of psychiatrist Miranda Grey (Halle Berry) is derailed after she nearly hits a girl with her car one night. Later, Miranda wakes up in her own mental hospital under the care of her peer, Pete Graham (Robert Downey Jr.). Completely disoriented, Miranda is accused of killing her own husband, but she has no memory of anything after she encountered the girl. Slowly Miranda begins to uncover what happened, but she has to escape the asylum to solve the mystery.
Why it’s the worst:
No, no, no, no, no, noooooooo! This movie gets it wrong from start to finish, using mental health as a way to discredit the female character from abuse. NO!
Distorted
Movie summary:
A couple moves to an isolated, modern, safe apartment building with CCTV after the wife has problems with nightmares. However, something's not quite right with the building (2018).
Why it’s the worst:
While I love Christina Ricci and John Cusack, this movie is the worst. It’s the definition of exploiting bipolar to create an unreliable narrator who isn’t taken seriously.
Perfume
Book Summary:
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is a 1985 literary historical fantasy novel by German writer Patrick Süskind. The novel explores the sense of smell and its relationship with the emotional meanings that scents may have.In the slums of eighteenth-century France, the infant Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with one sublime gift—an absolute sense of smell. As a boy, he lives to decipher the odors of Paris, and apprentices himself to a prominent perfumer who teaches him the ancient art of mixing precious oils and herbs. But Grenouille’s genius is such that he is not satisfied to stop there, and he becomes obsessed with capturing the smells of objects such as brass doorknobs and fresh-cut wood. Then one day he catches a hint of a scent that will drive him on an ever-more-terrifying quest to create the “ultimate perfume”—the scent of a beautiful young virgin. Told with dazzling narrative brilliance, Perfume is a hauntingly powerful tale of murder and sensual depravity.
Why it’s the worst:
I feel like out of everything on the list, this one is going me the most push back. This is an acclaimed novel that was given an extra popularity boost when Kurt Cobain mentioned it happened to be his favorite books. And to a degree, I get it. It’s a unique story, well written, very dark, but the mental health aspect seemed one-dimensional (I feel fans of this book cringing). This will have to be one where we “agree to disagree” on whether or not it’s one of the greats. Oh, and it was made into a movie.
The Visit
Movie summary:
A single mother sends her two young children to visit their grandparents on a remote Pennsylvania farm for a week-long trip, but the children discover that the elderly couple is involved in deeply disturbing activity, and the youngsters' chances of getting back home look less and less likely with every minute that passes.
Why it’s the worst:
Not only does this movie make a mockery of mental health, it does so by using the elderly as a vessel. The details of the character’s mental health illness are simply wrong. Did anyone research before putting this movie into production?
