In this paper the author is trying to describe the key
points of the relationship between psychoanalytic
theory and horror, putting special emphasis on the
so-called psychoanalytic theory of the horror film
that still causes many discussions about its status.
The author specifically analyses the approach to this
genre established by American critic Robin Wood in
his study Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan (1986).
His approach was inspired by Freudian and post-
Freudian psychoanalysis and it was built based on the
opposition between repression and surplus repression
and the analysis of the repressed and the return of the
repressed. Wood was the first to try to offer systematic
theoretical analyses of this genre, to re-evaluate
it while giving it credibility and emphasizing its sociocultural
importance. The mentioned parameters are
used to analyse the film The Mist (2007) by Frank Darabont as a film that directly reacts to the sociocultural
and political situation in the USA in the last
decade and they are further developed in the context
of the perception of the masses in the psychoanalytic
works by Sigmund Freud.

Dejan Durić