5 - Norwegian Psychological Horror

Summary

Norway is correctly perceived as a peaceful and prosperous country. Yet the dark side of this social-democratic nation has reared its head not only in the dystopian slasher fantasies that were discussed in the previous two chapters, films that bask in the perversion of national romantic landscapes to create highly generic horror entertainment. The darkness has also surfaced in films that are arguably more disturbing: psychological horror movies. This is a different type of horror, in which the violent threat to the body is eclipsed by the disorientation in space and time that threatens the sanity of the mind.

In the spiritual realm of the psychological horror movie, defeating evil is harder than what is the case in the material world of the slasher. The killer of the Cold Prey (Fritt vilt) series can ultimately be overcome through the use of physical force, but the main characters of the psychological horror film in Norway are stricken by a debilitating spatial and temporal disorientation. A kind of mental and emotional isolation is the fundamental premise that gives rise to very different types of subgenre films. Pål Sletaune’s The Monitor (Babycall, 2011) is a ghost story, Pål Øie’s Hidden (Skjult, 2009) is a slasher-related tale of possession, and Joachim Trier’s Thelma (2017) is a coming-of-age story centred on a young woman with supernatural powers. Eskil Vogt’s The Innocents (De uskyldige, 2021) is a further exploration of supernatural themes in current Norwegian cinema, putting children front and centre unlike any other psychological horror film in the country’s film history.

The film that started this type of horror in post-2000 Norwegian cinema, Sletaune’s Next Door (Naboer, 2005), is the most intense and modernist example of the subgenre. Where the slasher movie is a surface-oriented thrill ride with a heavy focus on physical stalking and the opening of the body, the psychological horror film in Norwegian cinema deals with the inward escape, with closed doors and hidden rooms, and with the rational and logical impossibility of the main characters’ experiences of the world they inhabit.

The impossible tale: psychological horror

John rounds the corner in the hallway, but all that he sees is a blank wall. Where once there was a door, there is now simply a concrete surface.