Why Is 'Behind Her Eyes' Considered Psychological Horror?

Question

Finished the Netflix adaptation but found it more unsettling than scary. What specific psychological elements or mind-bending twists earn it the horror label?

Mocha Latte · Answer

Much of the horror in this story comes from the slow revelation of the protagonist’s reality being twisted and altered in ways she cannot even begin to fathom. We are left questioning her sanity as well as the intentions of those around her. A similar theme is explored in ‘The Erotica Heroine Trapped in a Horror Game’ where a reader familiar with the genre expects a light hearted romantic story but instead finds herself having to fight to survive a gruesome game. Expectations are continuously subverted leading to a growing sense of paranoia as the protagonist struggles to remain one step ahead of her enemy.

Zane · Answer

I just finished reading ‘Behind Her Eyes’ by Sarah Pinborough and it has messed with my head in the best way possible. Like a slow seeping fog the psychological horror creeps up on you until you realize you’ve been breathing it in. At first I thought it was just another love triangle set in a thriller type world but oh no, so much more. The sleep paralysis episodes of the main character are also chock full of horrible moments that are also vaguely ‘real’. What makes ‘Behind Her Eyes’ so horrible is how it uses trust. Every single character in the book has very dark and horrible secrets and they all are slowly revealed in different ways to show just how horrible people can be to each other.

It is also excellent at making you complicit in the horror. So the little things that do not add up start to become apparent. Like a character knowing something that they shouldn’t. Or how the story can shift in reality between chapters. The way the author has dealt with the astral projection in this story is also Psychologically disturbing. It is the kind of thing that could have been so silly in another story, but not here. The end is infamous, and the reason it is so is because of the kind of horror that it is. The real horror is not supernatural. It is what people are capable of doing to each other when given the opportunity. It shows how normal people can be living normal lives, and you have no idea what really goes on.

Sawyer · Answer

So I’ve read loads of thrillers but Behind Her Eyes is unique in that it is horror and it’s not of the jump scare variety or the bloody kind. It’s all about psychological manipulation which leaves you feeling dirty and violated. The way it changes your perception of what you thought were innocuous scenes to become something terrifying is masterful. The horror seeps in through minute cracks in reality to make even the most mundane things like sleep or even your relationships seem sinister. And that twist at the end isn’t just shocking, it completely changes your perception of the whole story in a really unsettling way.

Prakriti saxena · Answer

The genius of the book is its structure. Our POV switches between Louise in the present and Adele’s diary in the past. The present is awkward and foreign but as we read the diary of the past that explains it all, we realize that everything in the past was a clever fabrication. This is the psychological horror of the book. Our brain is striving to make the two storylines fit. They don’t, and this is just how Louise feels. So we are not watching her go down the rabbit hole. We are there with her. And when the last piece falls into place, it doesn’t bring relief. It’s a cold, hard, sickening realization. And the structure of the book was the trap the entire time.

Cc Lopez · Answer

I've been reading so many in-depth analysis of this story that I've sort of forgotten what I thought of it, initially. My first reaction was that it was so, so messed up and really fun to read. The ending is insane. While reading it, I didn't think of it as horror, no. More of a crazy thriller, but after reading it, I couldn't stop thinking about it for days (in a bad way). I can only assume that the feeling of being unable to stop thinking about something in a negative way for days must be horror. It has certainly horrified me. So, yeah.

Marilyn Riego- Harris · Answer

For me, the greatest horror in The Little Stranger is experienced after finishing the book. During my reading of The Little Stranger, I was completely hooked. But, it was after I finished the book and I was lying in bed that the full horror of what had happened at Nonsuch began to sink in. The horror of a young son calling a strange and malevolent entity ‘Mom’. The horror that David was forever trapped with this monster, knowing exactly what had been done to him but unable to do anything about it. The slow manipulation of Louise by this strange and malevolent entity from the moment that it first arrived at Nonsuch. The greatest horror of all is recursive – it grows in your mind after the story has finished. A good thriller will get you whilst you are reading it. A psychological horror will plant a seed of dread in your mind and it will grow in the quiet hours after you have finished reading the book.

Jenny Leach · Answer

The dual narratives of Louise and Adele created a false sense of empathy with both characters, particularly with Adele, which made the conflict between them devastating in the end. But also in the end, false. In the end, the reader is left wondering who to believe, who is the real victim here? The worst part is that the reader’s initial sense of compassion for one of the characters is used against them. That’s to say, the reader feels for the wrong person. What the reader feels for is a fictional persona, created solely for the reader’s acceptance, in the form of Adele’s diary. This is a betrayal on the part of the text and makes the reader wonder about their own capacity for compassion and their gullibility as readers. Creating dread in a reader by using their emotional investment in a character is one of the most difficult tricks in psychological horror writing, and I think Atwood succeeds in doing just that.

Angie Janes Smith · Answer

I saw this as a horror story about loneliness. There’s Louise, who’s just gone through a divorce, and she’s lonely. And David, who’s lonely in his marriage. And then there’s Adele, who seems like she wants to be friends with Perdita. She’s lonely too. The vulnerability of loneliness is exploited by a predator. The horror of this story is that your loneliness, your desire to be seen and loved, is what lets the monster in. Every friendly overture, every new connection could be a bad thing. Could that person who finally gets you be studying you for the purpose of taking over? That’s the kind of thing that keeps me up at night in this hyper-isolated world of ours. Modern anxiety about being alone gets twisted into a nightmare where the act of reaching out for help is the instant you go from being safe to being annihilated.

Courtiie · Answer

Behind Her Eyes is very close to being a good story, but it doesn’t quite reach it. One way to look at this is to compare it to Gone Girl, a razor-sharp thriller with monstrous characters and a big twist. Gone Girl feels realistic, like the author is showing us the worst of human psychology. Behind Her Eyes has monstrous characters and a twist too, but it introduces a supernatural ruleset that for some readers will make the whole thing feel less real and therefore less horrifying. I see exactly the opposite, though. By making the predator’s act literal soul-stealing, the book externalizes and therefore magnifies the metaphor for a toxic, all-consuming relationship. And what it shows is that there’s no therapy for this, no way to escape from this kind of horror. The monster becomes you, in all your fully developed complexity, and that is just the darkest, most fantastical, and therefore in some ways most horrifying of conclusions.

Iqra Sheikh · Answer

It's the mundane details that are so horrific. The lock on the spare room door. How Adele always knows things. How Louise's son is having nightmares. These things don't have to be frightening in themselves. They can just be there to create a sense of growing unease and they do pile up rather_horribly in the stomach. But the real horror is contained within the domestic. The house is supposed to be safe from harm. And here the harm is coming from within. Perhaps even in the form of a friend. The book uses the basic fears of every person. The basic human dysfunctions. Of every human relationship. Marital distrust. Loneliness. Manipulation. And it takes them to a supernatural place. But the fear has to work first. And it does work because it is grounded in real human vulnerability. And then it takes off from there in a totally fantastical manner. Which is totally terrifying in a metaphorical sense.

Why Is 'Behind Her Eyes' Considered Psychological Horror?

10 Answers

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