Psycho

The horror genre is a major genre because major artists, such as Hitchcock, have worked to produce notable films, _Psycho_, for example, to probe the nightmare world hidden in all of us. The cinema of horror concretizes the nightmare world of our abstract fears of destruction and death.

_Psycho_ is a horror film because it is based on the unending subconscious battle between good an evil that exists in everyone. In the film, Hitchcock forces the audience to examine its conscious self in relation to the events that it had just subjectively played a role in. The fear that _Psycho_ creates for the audience doesn't arise from the brutality of the murders, but from the subconscious identification with the character.

In addition, the effective use of character parallels and the creation of the audience's subjective role in the plot allows Hitchcock to entice terror and convey a lingering sense of anxiety within the audience.

_Psycho_ was also made a horror film based on the insane character, Norman Bates. The insanity in the film had the great advantage of being beyond necessary explanation. There was no need for Hitchcock to explain Norman's personality. Just the insane labeling informed the audience towards the end of the film that the observations were just one more manifestation of the awfulness of contemporary life. Insanity, as a central structuring device of a horror film, existed as an unexamined source of terror. Moreover, Hitchcock enforces the idea that all the basic emotions and sentiments derived from the film can be felt by anyone as the unending battle between good and evil exists in all aspects of life.