Sensing space in horror cinema : textures, orientations and transgressions

How might we understand or experience the horror film if we stripped the genre of its seemingly central figure of the monster? This thesis considers the often-neglected role of cinematic space in horror cinema as one especially productive answer to this question, proposing that the sensory experience of space constitutes a distinct and highly affective means of producing fear. Bridging sensory and phenomenological theories of film and spatial studies as applied to horror cinema, this thesis follows a progressively expanding trajectory, from textured spaces on-screen to the spectatorial space beyond it. Its main chapters examine, across three levels of spatial engagement, the significance of space in horror cinema and the ways in which it is experienced both sensorially and affectively. Chapter One focuses on the most immediate and material aspect of space: its texture. It identifies five types of textured spaces in horror cinema and further develops this framework through a close analysis of Silent Hill (2006). Chapter Two shifts away from this fine-grained attention to texture to examine the metamorphosis of space in a series of haunted house films, including 1408 (2007) and The Haunting (1963), alongside the uncanny sensations that emerge as audiences attempt to bodily orient themselves within these misaligned spaces. Drawing variously on William Castle’s gimmick horror, Incantation (2022) and other horror films that directly implicate their audience, Chapter Three moves beyond the space presented on screen to consider how spectatorial space can be actively transgressed, manipulated or absorbed into the horror experience. By foregrounding space in horror cinema, I explore a new sensory pathway for the production of horror, one in which space itself becomes a new kind of monster.