‘Eli Roth’s History of Horror’ Recap: ‘Psychics’

Written by John Edward Betancourt

Caution: This article contains spoilers for Episode 303 of ‘Eli Roth’s History of Horror’.

The vast majority of horror documentaries out there, focus upon the monsters that populate the genre and rightfully so. After all, beings such as Freddy Krueger or the living dead from George Romero’s sweeping saga, serve as allegories for our modern world and their actions and the genesis of their evil really do give us plenty to discuss. But while it is nice to know that these types of documentaries are going to offer us fascinating insight on what makes The Shape, tick, sticking with only the monsters in documentaries… can be problematic in some respects. After all, there are other dynamic aspects to the genre and other types of characters that can offer audiences similar subtext and meaning and thankfully, as our love of the genre and our demand to learn about every corner of it, grows, there are documentarians out there that are starting to focus on those other aspects.

Such as Eli Roth. Because after spending a few years digging into the more common creatures and concepts that make our skin crawl, his series, Eli Roth’s History of Horror is indeed starting to focus on those other corners and characters of the genre that aren’t discussed enough. Such as psychics for instance. For these unique human beings have populated the horror landscape for decades and have accomplished wonders storytelling wise, but since they are often in the company of say… iconic haunted hotels or madmen with machetes, their abilities and their meaning is buried behind the icon. But ‘Psychics’ finally let them have their day in the sun and what we learned about their time in the genre was quite fascinating to say the least.

Since we came to learn, that psychic characters can in fact… stand in as the outcasts of the world and explore the troubles they experience. Since movies like Firestarter and The Dead Zone showcase individuals that don’t quite fit into the norms of the world and often found themselves under fire in some form or fashion from people who didn’t understand them. Which is quite relatable since we’ve been those very people or known them. Plus, they can also be fascinating villains as evidenced by Scanners, since their abilities can twist the minds of some individuals and make them predators of sorts and psychics can even handle the funnier corners of the genre… as evidenced by Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice.

But while it was fascinating to learn how these characters work within the framework of the genre, what truly makes psychics so special and worthwhile storytelling wise, is the sheer fact that their abilities can help us to relate to supremely complex and powerful moments and emotions. For instance, The Shining saga, which is comprised of the 1980 Stanley Kubrick film, and the Mike Flanagan sequel, Doctor Sleep, are a pair of stories that use psychic powers to explore the nature of addiction and recovery and trauma. Allowing for psychic phenomena to stand in for the pain that we experience in regard to those concepts and how dealing with them makes us more attuned to certain situations, emotionally.

Which in essence, makes the psychic perhaps one of the most versatile characters in the horror genre, since people with these powers can explore concepts on a level so intimate that they in essence, can put the real horrors of the world upon display. Making them far more intriguing than men with knives for fingers, or flesh-eating corpses… simply because our feelings and the realities of life are far more frightening than anything those beings can produce. If anything, this episode deserves a serious round of applause for going to places that few documentaries ever do and this just goes to show that Eli Roth is eager to showcase every corner of the genre, no matter how big or how small and it will be quite interesting to see what other fascinating aspects of horror this series will explore in the weeks to come. Until next time.       

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