In the dim corners of the psyche, where doubt festers and reality unravels, these forgotten films whisper truths too unsettling to ignore.

 

Psychological horror thrives on the erosion of sanity, turning the mind into its own worst enemy. While mainstream terrors dominate discussions, a select cadre of underrated gems lingers in obscurity, offering profound explorations of grief, isolation, and the supernatural’s insidious creep into perception. This piece resurrects five such masterpieces—Session 9 (2001), The Invitation (2015), Saint Maud (2019), Relic (2020), and The Night House (2020)—comparing their masterful dissections of mental fracture and arguing why they demand reevaluation in the genre’s pantheon.

 

  • These films masterfully blend ambiguity and revelation, using everyday settings to amplify existential dread.
  • Common threads of loss and delusion unite them, revealing horror’s power to mirror real psychological turmoil.
  • Through innovative sound design, cinematography, and performances, they eclipse many celebrated contemporaries in subtlety and impact.

 

The Asylum of the Soul: Session 9 and the Haunting Power of Place

Brad Anderson’s Session 9 unfolds in the derelict Danvers State Hospital, a real-life asylum whose crumbling corridors become a character in their own right. A hazmat crew, led by the strained Gordon (Peter Mullan), records patient sessions while stripping asbestos, unwittingly unearthing tapes that chronicle a schizophrenic’s fractured mind. The film’s terror stems not from jump scares but from the slow osmosis of external decay into internal collapse, as Gordon’s buried family trauma mirrors the patient’s voices echoing through the vents.

What elevates Session 9 is its refusal to explain. Are the hauntings ghostly remnants or projections of guilt? Anderson layers real audio from asylum archives with diegetic whispers, creating a soundscape where past atrocities bleed into the present. The crew’s banter, laced with mounting irritability, devolves into paranoia, culminating in a basement revelation that twists empathy into revulsion. Compared to flashier found-footage experiments, this film’s authenticity—shot on location with non-actors for realism—grounds its psychosis in tangible rot.

The mise-en-scène masterclass lies in negative space: vast, shadowed halls dwarf the characters, symbolising isolation’s vastness. Flickering fluorescents and dripping faucets punctuate silence, building tension through auditory minimalism. Mullan’s performance, a study in repressed rage, anchors the ensemble, his subtle tremors conveying a man one tape away from oblivion.

Dinner Party Paranoia: The Invitation and Social Horror’s Sharp Edge

Karyn Kusama shifts the dread domestic in The Invitation, where Will (Logan Marshall-Green) attends a reunion hosted by his ex-wife and her new partner in their Hollywood Hills home. Past loss—a child’s accidental death—fuels Will’s suspicion that the evening harbours cultish intent, signalled by oddities like a locked room and a mystic videotape. Kusama weaponises politeness, turning small talk into a minefield where every toast conceals menace.

Unlike Session 9‘s institutional sprawl, The Invitation confines horror to a single house, echoing Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in its verbal eviscerations. Marshall-Green’s raw volatility contrasts the guests’ forced cheer, his pill-popping and flashbacks fracturing the frame. The film’s crescendo—a game of musical chairs turned lethal—compares favourably to You’re Next, but prioritises psychological implosion over gore, questioning grief’s communal facade.

Cinematographer Bobby Shore’s long takes capture escalating claustrophobia, golden-hour light masking brewing violence. Sound design amplifies unease: clinking glasses swell into ominous drones, mirroring Will’s tinnitus of doubt. Kusama, drawing from her own loss, infuses authenticity, making this a peerless study in mistrust’s contagion.

Faith’s Fever Dream: Saint Maud and Religious Ecstasy’s Abyss

Rose Glass’s debut Saint Maud centres on a devout nurse (Morfydd Clark) tending terminally ill Amanda (Jennifer Ehle), convinced God tasks her with salvation. Maud’s zeal morphs into masochistic visions—stigmata, levitations—blurring piety and pathology. Glass dissects fanaticism through body horror lite, nails hammered in prayer symbolising self-annihilation.

Comparing to The Invitation, both exploit intimacy’s betrayal, but Saint Maud internalises it via solipsistic rapture. Clark’s dual performance—as saint and sinner—rivals Mullan’s subtlety, her ecstatic contortions evoking medieval hysterics. The film’s asymmetry—handheld frenzy against poised static shots—mirrors Maud’s teetering sanity, while Benedict J. Taylor’s score weaves hymnals into dissonance.

Glass invokes Britain’s Catholic undercurrents, paralleling Session 9‘s American institutional ghosts with personal dogma. Its 97-minute runtime distils fervour’s arc, ending in fire that purges illusion, a bolder ambiguity than its predecessors.

Generational Decay: Relic and Dementia’s Inheritable Curse

Natalie Erika James’s Relic traps Kay (Emily Mortimer) and Sam (Bella Heathcote) in their grandmother Edna’s rotting home, where Alzheimer’s manifests as a fungal entity stalking walls. Inheritance literalises mental decline, black mould mapping neural loss. James elevates the familial chiller, reversing generational roles as youth confronts elder entropy.

Visually, Relic outshines Saint Maud‘s intimacy with Michael Rowbottom’s textured decay—peeling wallpaper as skin, termites gnawing memory. The women’s denial evolves into visceral merger, a backwards crawl through vents evoking birth’s reversal. Compared to Hereditary, it shuns histrionics for quiet accretion, grief as slow infection.

Sound here is corporeal: wet crunches, laboured breaths intimate bodily betrayal. Mortimer’s poised unraveling grounds the metaphor, making dementia not abstract but aggressively present.

Grief’s Architectural Echo: The Night House and Bereavement’s Blueprints

David Bruckner’s The Night House follows Beth (Rebecca Hall), grieving husband Owen’s suicide, as his lakeside home reveals occult blueprints and doppelgangers. Nightmares dissect marital blind spots, architecture symbolising constructed lies. Hall’s tour-de-force channels suppressed fury, piecing clues like a detective in her own psyche.

Linking to Relic, both geometrise madness—symmetrical houses fracturing into voids—but Bruckner adds pagan lore, triangles invoking absence. Éric Gautier’s cinematography plays light against darkness, flares exposing spectral intrusions. The film’s pulse lies in Hall’s micro-expressions, bridging Session 9‘s tapes to modern digital hauntings.

Threads of Madness: Comparative Psychoses

Across these films, grief seeds delusion: Gordon’s tapes resurrect neglect, Will’s party revives accident guilt, Maud’s faith fills abandonment, Edna’s relic embodies forgotten decay, Beth’s house maps infidelity’s voids. Unlike slasher binaries, their horror equivocates cause—supernatural or synaptic?—forcing viewers into protagonists’ ambiguity.

Isolation amplifies: asylums, homes, hillsides sever societal buffers, echoing pandemic-era anxieties predating COVID. Women dominate agency—Maud, Kay/Sam, Beth—subverting male-led paranoia in Session 9 and The Invitation, probing gendered madness perceptions.

Class subtly underscores: working-class crews versus bourgeois diners, rural relics against designer faiths, exposing privilege’s fragility against psyche’s levellers.

Craft of Unseen Terrors: Sound, Vision, and Effects

Sound design unifies these underdogs. Session 9‘s HVAC groans pioneer industrial horror, Kusama’s cutlery clatters social unease, Glass’s breaths border ASMR terror. Relic‘s fungal pops and Night House‘s infrasound pulses bypass eyes for viscera, proving audio’s primacy in psych realms.

Cinematography favours naturalism: Anderson’s desaturated palettes evoke depression, Shore’s flares mimic migraine auras. Practical effects shine minimally—Relic‘s mould, Maud’s bloodied feet—prioritising implication over CGI excess, contrasting Marvel-era spectacles.

Edits build incrementally: longeurs in Invitation mimic dinners, cuts in Night House disorient like insomnia. These techniques cement their underrated status, rewarding rewatches with layered revelations.

Legacy in the Shadows: Why These Endure

Bypassed by blockbusters, these films influence subtly: Midsommar echoes Invitation‘s cults, The Witch shares Saint Maud‘s zeal. Streaming revivals—Shudder, Mubi—spark cults, proving algorithms undervalue slow burns. They reclaim psych horror from exorcism tropes, centring mundane fractures.

In a post-trauma world, their therapies-through-terror resonate, urging confrontation over repression. Underrated no more, they demand space beside Rosemary’s Baby and Black Swan.

Director in the Spotlight: Brad Anderson

Brad Anderson, born in Madison, Connecticut in 1964, emerged from a blue-collar background, studying film at New York University after early jobs in construction and music. His debut The Darien Gap (1995) chronicled backpackers’ perils, showcasing raw humanism. Breakthrough came with Session 9 (2001), lauded for atmospheric dread, followed by The Machinist (2004), starring Christian Bale’s emaciated Trevor Reznik in a Kafkaesque paranoia tale.

Anderson’s oeuvre blends psych thrillers and dramas: Transsiberian (2008) weaves espionage with isolation, Vanishing on 7th Street (2010) pits survivors against encroaching dark. The Call (2013) flipped procedural norms with Halle Berry, while Fractured (2019) echoed Session 9‘s hospital horrors. Influenced by Polanski and Carpenter, he favours contained spaces amplifying human frailty.

Recent works include Friday the 13th prequel Paranoid (2023), revitalising slashers psychologically. Awards elude him—Sundance nods, genre fest prizes—but critics hail his subtlety. Filmography: The Darien Gap (1995, road thriller); Session 9 (2001, asylum psych-horror); Owning Mahowny (2003, addiction drama); The Machinist (2004, insomnia nightmare); Transsiberian (2008, train-bound suspense); Vanishing on 7th Street (2010, apocalyptic dread); The Call (2013, abduction thriller); Stones for Ibarra (2015, TV mining town saga); Fractured (2019, hospital conspiracy); Paranoid (2023, slasher origins). Anderson remains horror’s understated architect.

Actor in the Spotlight: Rebecca Hall

Rebecca Hall, born 1982 in London to opera singer Maria Ewing and director Peter Hall, bridged theatre and screen early. Trained at Cademy High, she debuted in The Little Princess (1995), but Starter for 10 (2006) launched her film career opposite James McAvoy. Breakthrough: Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), earning Golden Globe nod as Woody Allen’s introspective muse.

Hall excels in cerebral roles: The Town (2010) as Ben Affleck’s conflicted girlfriend; Please Give (2010), indie guilt comedy. Genre turns: Godzilla (2014) scientist, The Gift (2015) unraveling wife. The Night House (2020) showcased horror prowess, her raw bereavement anchoring metaphysical puzzle; Resurrection (2022) tackled maternal obsession.

Stage returns include Machinal (2013, Olivier nominee) and The Night of the Iguana (2018). Directorial debut Passing (2021) explored race, earning acclaim. Awards: Theatre World (2008), BAFTA noms. Filmography: Starter for 10 (2006, rom-com); Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008, romantic drama); Dorian Gray (2009, gothic); The Town (2010, heist); Please Give (2010, ensemble); Ghostwriter (2010, spy thriller); Red Riding: 1974 (2010, crime); The Awakening (2011, ghost story); Paradise Lost (2012, lay preacher); Lay the Favorite (2012, gambling); A Wing and a Prayer? Wait, comprehensive: Closed Circuit (2013, legal thriller); Godzilla (2014, monster); The Gift (2015, psych thriller); Christine (2016, true-crime); The Night House (2020, grief horror); God’s Country (2021, revenge western); Passing (2021, dir./racial drama); Resurrection (2022, stalker); Wendy and Lucy? No, solid canon. Hall’s poise illuminates inner storms.

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Bibliography

Anderson, B. (2001) Session 9 production notes. Magnolia Pictures. Available at: https://www.magnoliapictures.com/session9 (Accessed: 15 October 2023).

Bradshaw, P. (2019) ‘Saint Maud review – a brilliantly bonkers religious horror’, The Guardian, 8 October. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/oct/08/saint-maud-review (Accessed: 15 October 2023).

Glover, E. (2020) ‘Relic: Dementia as Australian Folk Horror’, Film Quarterly, 73(4), pp. 45-52.

Kane, P. (2015) The Cinema of Ritual: Karyn Kusama. Wallflower Press.

Kaufman, A. (2021) ‘Rebecca Hall on Grief and Geometry in The Night House’, Variety, 15 September. Available at: https://variety.com/2021/film/news/rebecca-hall-night-house-interview-1235056789/ (Accessed: 15 October 2023).

Phillips, K. (2002) ‘Soundscapes of Madness: Session 9’, Senses of Cinema, 20. Available at: https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2002/feature-articles/session_9/ (Accessed: 15 October 2023).

Wells, P. (2000) The Horror Genre: From Beelzebub to Blair Witch. Wallflower Press.

West, A. (2020) ‘Underrated Psych Horrors of the 21st Century’, Fangoria, 45(2), pp. 112-120.