The Vanishing: Is This Horror?

This week’s movie The Vanishing brought a question to what constitutes as Horror. Defined by Caroll’s Taxonomy of Horror this movie along with Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho wouldn’t be considered as horror due to their not being any form of a supernatural creature. I can see Caroll’s point of view considering something that can’t be explained and is a threat to your wellbeing can instill the feelings of dread not only for the victim but also for the audience empathizing with the victim.

I on the other hand do still constitute this movie as being a part of the horror genre. The one scene within The Vanishing that convinced me of this being a horror movie was the first scene of Raymond performing experiments upon himself. Especially with him inducing himself to sleep with the chloroform which involved him timing how long he was unconscious the amount of chloroform he allowed into his system and calculating the distance of how much he can travel while the victim is unconscious. With someone such as Raymond able to go to these limits and having this level of intelligence can clearly make him a much more dangerous threat to other people especially since his motives are curiosity is what I believe is what makes this movie horrifying.