Scaring it out of us: how Candyman and psychological theories can be used to view the darker sides of our personalities and perpetuate the search for self-completion through confronting the 'other'

The aim of this article is to offer a new perspective on why horror films exist and thrive within society. Using a combination of the analytical theories of Charles Horton Cooley, Jacques Lacan, and Carl Gustav Jung, this article considers the psychological function of mirrors in the development of human identity in relation to the mirroring apparatus found in many horror films. Cooley's Looking-glass Self Theory joins Lacan's Mirror Stage in the human development of conceptual identity as dependent upon like social creatures. This concept of identity is constructed by sifting through the human traits found in each person and either accepting or abjecting them in order to ‘fit in' and appear as one desires to be seen by others. The mirroring apparatus can be used to explain how viewers attain a sort of recognition of their own identities when watching the interplay between male monsters and female victims in horror films. This article explains how horror films can be beneficial in representing the abjected sides of the human identity and used to reinforce the bonds between the people who watch them.