#it's a bit difficult to translate dissociation into written form when the best way to even interpret it is like. doing and being and saying

[smol-grey-tea]

Secret Ending Three - Chapter Nine: I Want to Root for Hope

Love this chapter. Yeah, this is the one where Tei gets that professional help we were talking about

Bit of a heavier one so prepare. 90% of this is pulled from my own personal experience of mental health treatment and Tei's thoughts and feelings are...let's say a reflection of my own experience last year. This chapter....its just my own diary of the 13th of July 2023 in disguise as Tei really isn't it -3-

I hope you enjoy, please be aware that there will be a sort of panic attack and discussion of suicide below ❤️

I wave goodbye to the owner and crane my neck to watch her leave as the limo continues on. She's not alone, and those she's with will hopefully keep her safe. When she regretfully leaves my sight, I pray in my head that she isn't hurt today. The trees run past my vision, cut by the window and blurred as the pace quickens.

She's gone. Gone. Gone, I hope that today will go well. Gone, I pray that today is not the day I drop a plate from the plethora of fragile China my shoulders balance.

Gone. Not today.

Not today.

Today. Today will be a normal day, crisp as the morning grass dew and clear and perfect as the melting snow. Dry fingers trace knuckle lines, sure as the day. Same as yesterday, but not same as the first time, the first day, the first second. Different and dry and cracked, no longer perfectly smooth and fake clean. Deteriorated and dirty. Dirt under my nails, I breathe in and out. Picking and scratching only goes so far.

Today will be fine, same as normal, completely normal. Completely fine and uneventful.

No it won't.

"Yuri, you missed the turning." "I told you this morning you're not going to work today and yet you're here in your uniform anyway." "I thought you were joking." "I'm never joking. We're almost there." "Where?"

"Well," he sighed. The limo stopped. "Here."

I've walked past this building before. Past its silent atmosphere and gated entrance. Past its warm yellow lighting peeling out onto the pavement outside. I've walked past before and thought to myself how likely or unlikely it is that I might ever enter.

"The doctor's surgery? What's going on?" "What do you think's going on?" The engine's hum dies, the door locks click and the keys fall into his hands. He gets out the car and then he's opening the passenger door for me as he says to me, completely matter-of-fact, "you've got an appointment."

"Wh-... Why? No, I haven't. Now?" "Yeah, come on. Get out." "No-" I unbuckle my own seat belt and step onto the concrete before he can drag me out himself. "What do you mean? I don't recall speaking to any doctor recently other than that deluded school nurse. You're saying you booked a doctor's appointment for me??"

Yuri rolls his eyes at me behind his black sunglasses, lips pursed and eyebrows furrowed. With a disapproving look, he takes off the glasses and folds his arms.

"You think I wasn't listening when you were talking to the owner on New Years?" "I didn't-" "Tei, I'm not deaf. You said that day you'd do something. And what have you achieved in the past couple of weeks? Nothing! So I'm taking matters into my own hands."

He throws his hands in the air - like a magician after playing an impossible magic trick - with a smile that actually looks genuine rather than patronising. You've got to be kidding me...

"Look- no. This isn't going to be that simple. We've got no way of knowing if this will actually help or not. We can't just jump in to things like this." "Well it's certainly better than sitting around and doing nothing." "I'm not ready." "I already booked it. The least you could do is show up."

I move to retort, open my mouth to form words, but there's nothing. It would only be polite.

This man... "What's in it for you?" "Knowing there's no more danger to my honey is enough for me." "... No catch? "No catch." He holds his sunglasses in one hand while the other draws a cross over his heart.

"Now," he says, locking the car and tucking those stupid sunglasses into his pocket. He dips into a dramatic, low bow with a flourish and a wink, gesturing towards the building. "Shall we?"

"... Okay."

... I hate the waiting room- "Hello, madame, we've got an appointment booked for Tei today-" the white lights glare furiously and the dirty white flooring disgustingly compliments it- "Oh yes, you're early-" The television screen at the front fills the small room with a dull buzz- "take a seat-" the people sitting quietly talk amongst themselves- "the doctor will be with you shortly-"

Is the heating on?- I hate this place- Does Mr Hobin know where we are- Is the owner alright- Where is she- Is she- Is she okay-

"Maybe we shouldn't have quit school-" "What are you talking about?" He's just sitting there, reading a pamphlet about heart disease. "You ever heard of Murphy's law? There are too many ways this could go wrong." "Oh, I don't know about that, but listen-" "We should probably go back. I'm starting to feel a bit sick, that won't be good-" "No, listen. When talking about mental health, I heard it's best to exaggerate the issue so that they take you more seriously- "Yuri, listen to me-"

"But I really don't think you need to exaggerate, considering-" A voice calls my name and Yuri looks up. "Oh, that was quick. Come on then."

I'm glued to the chair. Somehow. I think I am. But that can't be. I follow Yuri.

"So, it says here..." the man sits at a desk across from us at a computer. Plastic computer keys clack. "... You're here for an appointment about mental health, is that right?" "... Yes..." Can anyone else hear my own heartbeat right now? "And what's that concerning?" "..." My mouth is dry...

"Ahem- well, my friend Tei here told me that he has been struggling for a while and realised that the best thing to do was to speak to a professional about it. Tei?" Yuri is looking at me. "Are you going to tell him about what you've been experiencing?"

The doctor has turned to me. He's looking me in the eye. His hands are together on his lap. Eye contact.

"Well..." I look down at my hands. Eye contact. "I don't..." I think my legs are shaking. "I'm not...used to talking about..." Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out.

Breathe in. Breathe in. Breathe in.

"I don't know how to..."

Get it together.

Is this what I want to be happening right now? What do I even start with?

"Well, I... I guess I...have...thoughts about...um..." Breathe in. "About...hurting...someone..." Breathe in. "Myself... I... I think." Breathe.

The man makes a grimace and turns back to his computer. The sound of the keyboard again.

"So how long has this been going on for?" "Um... Well, since...for about... Well, a few years now. And I've... It just... It's just been getting worse..." "Mhm." He's not looking at me. "And I... I get...worried...about things going wrong and..."

My nails pierce through the fabric of my apron. A death grip skewers my knees, but I still can't stop the shaking. No matter how hard I try to hold it back. Why can't it stop?

"And I..." can't breathe. "I go to work but..." Are the words even mine anymore? "I tried to..." The man's looking at me again. "Tried to...to walk into the..." Breathe. "To the oncoming..."

My tunnel vision halts. Something else has entered my sight.

My two hands gripping my knees for dear life. And the slender hand, rested on my arm.

... I just give up. I release the tension in my shoulders, in the crease of my brow and in my two cracked and dry hands.

Breathe out.

I look next to me, he's on my right. Glasses off, eye contact unflinching, brow creased. No words. Is this the first time I've seen him wear such concern?

He gives my arm a light squeeze. There's no trying to be done anymore. There's no point. I can't stop the shaking and I can't stop the tears, just how I could never stop becoming dirty so, so long ago.

I'm just going to breathe out...

"Well," the man says, typing something else out on his computer. "That's awful. I understand you've been through a lot. You're not alone in this. Trust me, you did the right thing by coming here."

When I look back at Yuri, there's that smug expression of "I told you so". But I can't find it in me to hate it.

"There are multiple different options to choose from for treatment. The most effective treatments are medication and counselling. Is that something you like the sound of?" "... Ah..." I really can't believe it... I run my hands across my face and try to wipe away the tear tracks. "I, um... Yes, please."

"That's alright then. We can start you on some medication today, which you can take one of every day for two weeks and we'll see how you get on. For counselling, I can provide you with the number for the mental health services to get you on the waiting list. Is that alright?"

"Ah..." "Yes, that would be great, thank you," Yuri spoke up. "Could we get a copy of everything we need to know as well?" "Oh of course, yes. You might experience side effects from the medication, so book another appointment with me in two weeks to discuss. I'm just sending the note to your local chemist now. Your medication should be ready to collect there in two hours.

"Is there anything else?" "No thank you," Yuri says, flashing a grateful smile as he stands up. "That'll be all for today, thank you for all of the help. We really don't know what else we would have done." He turns to face me and gestures for me to get up. "Come on, Tei, that's all we needed to speak about. Let's get out of here now."

It takes me more than a moment to even register what he said. And a moment even later to act on the knowledge.

My legs move slowly and with effort to stand. "Thank you, sir, for the help today," I manage, with a quick bow. And I breathe in and out as I right myself. "Not at all," he bows back, "the pleasure is mine." And like that, my appointment was over.

I was out the door and back in the limo before I even realised it. My hands moved like clockwork, without any mental input, to put my seat belt back in, and there was nothing I could do for a while but sit and stare out the window blankly.

Somewhere in there is a grim joke about when I couldn't move my doll body, but it's not as much impossible to tilt my head downwards, towards my still shaking legs, arms, jaw.

A long stretch of silence fills the car when Yuri turns on the engine. I think he's looking at me but it's like I'm underwater or I'm watching everything happen now, no longer present. The car starts moving.

... Oh. "Yuri... You missed the turning again." "Now you can speak?" I can hear the raised eyebrow in his tone. "You think we're still going to Banjul? After that? No, I already told Mr Hobin you were sick today, you can take the rest of the week off." "Yuri, we need the money." "Not that badly. I'm taking you home for the day and I'll pick up the medication for you after work. You're welcome."

"..." There's nothing else for me to say. Fine. I can't muster up the energy to even think anyway. No chance of an argue.

When we get home, I get out of the car and unlock the front door. I kick off my shoes and just sit down at the sofa.

Just. Sitting...

The house is only this dark and quiet when everyone's asleep. I don't think I've ever been home alone before like this.

"... What are you doing?" He's not gone? Actually, I don't remember the sound of the car leaving.

"Uh..." "Are you just sitting here in the dark?" "..."

"At least go to your room instead of just sitting here. The owner will think you've just witnessed a murder if she sees you just sitting here staring like that when she gets home." "... Eri." He's got a point...

I heave a big sigh and walk into our room and just sit down on the bed. There are a hundred books to read in this room. I can't recall a single word of them...

Ugh... I throw my head into my hands. They're still shaking now, just barely. I wonder if it'll ever stop.

I look at my hands again and it's all I can do. All I can think about. I can't afford to think. But my nails are too long, I can think about that, I can understand that.

I should find Yuri's nail file. I know where it is. Next to the hair brush on the second shelf down, on the right corner.

I should. It's all I can think about. I should.

But I still can't move.

It's all so difficult... Ugh.

"Tei." My door opens. My head snaps to the sound. Yuri is still here. "Don't just sit there, eat this."

I register now the warm smell of tomato. A bowl is presented to me on a tray with a spoon. The soup steams.

"Don't let it go cold." He sets it down on the bedside table and steps back out the door with not a word more...

I feel awake enough now to notice the sound of the limo's engine starting and hear him drive away again.

I'm left here in my bedroom with a steaming hot bowl of tomato soup in front of me. I can hear my stomach growl.

I close my eyes... What a day.

Bit by bit, I manage to clean up the whole bowl with still hands. And on a full stomach, I lay down and I take a well-needed nap...

Yuri... Thank you.

[scripttorture]

Sorry for the multiple asks. In Harry Potter, Neville Longbottom's parents were tortured to what I assume is catatonia by the cruciatus curse. Is this a realistic portrayal of the effects of torture, or does it involve some degree of magical handwaving? If realistic, then would you mind suggesting some avenues, both grounded in reality and more fantastical, by which their condition may be helped?

So I had a long answer written out for this and then it got eaten and I’d deleted my backup (both of them) and don’t you just despise technology sometimes? Join me as I scream into the void.

 Once more, from the top-

 No need to apologise for multiple asks. They are in fact encouraged. I’d rather you looked for answers to your questions then assumed you already know the answer. Thank you for coming to me. Thank you for taking an interest. It really does mean a lot to me to see people engaging with the subject. :)

 It’s been a long time since I read Harry Potter. From what I can remember I don’t think the books handled torture survivors well.

 I think this particular portrayal landed smack bang in ‘torture makes victims passive’. It was also pretty explicitly using that misconception about torture survivors being unable to live full, happy lives or make any kind of recovery.

 You could make the argument that these are magical, rather then the effects of torture. But I don’t think Rowling did any work to show that was the case. From what I can remember the stuff that’s actually in the books just suggests the curse causes pain and… that’s it.

 Which doesn’t stop you from trying to make a bad portrayal better.

 @scriptshrink is the mental health professional in the family and may disagree. From what I can remember I don’t think the description of the Longbottoms in the books was exactly catatonia. It seemed more like a combination of catatonia and late stage dementia to me.

 Which creates a bit of a problem for a narrative arc if you want to treat these characters in a more realistic way. Because catatonia is easily treated now with drugs and late stage dementia is… there’s basically no effective treatment. There are things patients can be given to slow the progression of dementia but what they’ve lost is gone. (I’ve spent quite a long time around people with various forms of dementia and I’m going to cite experience as my source there).

 The reason that’s an issue for a narrative is that there really isn’t a middle ground between ‘take this pill to recover’ and ‘there is no treatment at all’. And that’s not on you, it’s on the source material.

 So, suggestion time: I do have a few different ideas depending on what you want from a recovery arc and how you want to characterise Wizard culture in your story.

 Let’s assume that (like catatonia) this fugue state survivors of the curse are in is easily treatable. What happens when you take it away? When survivors are present, not dissociating and remember what happened to them?

 Well suddenly you get confronted with an actual torture survivor with all the loud, messy, complex mental health problems that implies.

 And if you don’t know a lot about mental health? Then it looks like you went from someone who is calm and ‘at peace’ to someone who is incredibly distressed and obviously in pain. It also means you went from someone biddable and ‘easy to handle/care for’ to someone who is exponentially less likely to put up with shit. Someone who demands explanations, cries hysterically, has panic attacks or flashbacks.

 With that sort of big visceral difference- A culture that doesn’t know how to deal with mental illness might well decide survivors are ‘better off’ in that fugue state.

 Because it would probably be easier to take care of a quiet, unemotional drone then to deal with trying to help someone with severe, complex mental health problems.

 With that kind of cultural background the dementia-like state might actually be the result of the treatment survivors are given. Because they’re ‘better off this way’.

 This would give you a much more traditional recovery arc in your story but by its nature demands a narrative discussion of how mentally ill people are treated by society. Which may not be something you want in the story.

 The other main suggestion I had was to treat this fugue state and this unrealistic depiction of memory loss as if it’s part of the curse itself.

 The cruciatus curse is supposed to be designed to cause the maximum amount of pain, so why not factor lasting generational pain into that? Stripping away important, foundational memories with longer use of the curse seems like it could be an additional terror tactic.

 ‘It doesn’t matter if they survive. It doesn’t matter if you rescue them. You’ll never get them back.’

 In that kind of scenario you’d probably end up with a different recovery arc, one that’s as much about magic as mental health. And I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing when you’re explicitly dealing with something magical.

 If you wanted a plot line involving some kind of magical quest this would be a really good fit. I think it would also work well with a more… straight forwardly heroic story? There’d be less of the cultural and moral arguments that are naturally brought up if you’re talking about cultural attitudes to different medical treatments. It would also be a good pick if you want to lean into the intelligence/research skills of some of the canon characters: a combination of cleverness and compassion resulting in a breakthrough that saves the day.

 I’ll finish off with a short general discussion about writing torture survivors realistically and writing them in fantasy.

 I’ve got a post on the common long term symptoms of torture here. And I’ve got a post on what memory problems look like in survivors here.

 We don’t have a way to predict symptoms. Different individual survivors get different sets of symptoms and we’re not sure why. Because of that variation I think that it’s best to treat symptoms as a writing choice.

 Pick symptoms based on what you think adds to the story and creates interesting narrative opportunities. If a symptom emphasises the themes in your story, creates good opportunities to show the readers something about the characters or makes for interesting conflict then it’s a good choice. Conversely if a particular symptom doesn’t appeal to you or you don’t want to write it for any reason, feel free to choose something different.

 I stress realism and writing survivors realistically. I don’t do that because I think fiction ‘must’ be realistic. I do it because the ways we choose to break with reality matter.

 And right now most of the ways we choose to be unrealistic tacitly support/condone torture.

 The majority of the time that’s not the author’s intention. I certainly don’t think it was Rowling’s intention here. (I’ll admit I haven’t been keeping up with her string of controversies but I don’t think active support for torture was ever among them.)

 But these tropes keep getting repeated. Partly because finding accurate information on torture is hard. It’s difficult to search for. It often costs money. A lot of it just isn’t translated (I’m actually saving up to get a bunch of core texts translated into English when the plague is over.) And oh boy do not get me started on the lack of inter-disciplinary communication because I will go off like an unplanned quench of an NMR’s super magnets.

 These are issues that hamper academic researchers to a huge degree. It’s no wonder they impact non-specialists trying to make sense of this mess.

 Having said all of that: I think that we should make space for metaphor and fantastical elements in our fiction.

 The issue is passing off tropes that are unrealistic and harmful as if they’re fact.

 I have significant issues with portraying torture survivors as passive objects. I think it really hampers general understanding of torture and ethical treatment of survivors today. It encourages people to think that real survivors are ‘faking it’ because they don’t look like the passive objects we see portrayed in fiction.

 That said, if a story explicitly states that what it’s doing is magical and unrealistic, it should be less of an issue.

 I do not think that’s what Rowling did in this particular portrayal. I think she presented a curse that the audience was supposed to read as only causing extreme pain and she linked that to the idea of pain turning people into passive objects. You can remove the magic from this scenario and it’s unmistakably torture apologia.

 But I can imagine alternatives where a fantasy story could separate these things out. It would be hard work and require a lot more focus on the curse itself.

 Say you have a fantasy story that takes one of the non-Western approaches to ideas about human souls. Particularly the idea that our memories and experience constitute a separate spiritual part of ourselves.

 Magic that stole and imprisoned that portion of someone would, by the logic of the magic system, create something a little like this catatonia/late-stage-dementia symptom set Rowling presents. And I think if that was presented, divorced from ideas about pain and what suffering ‘should’ do to people- Well it’s no longer really talking about torture. It’s talking about a fantastical scenario.

 We’re not really used to thinking through the implications of where we break with reality. But it does get easier with practice.

 I hope that helps. :)

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Disclaimer

[mental-health-advice]

Is it normal to 'steal' the traits/habits/mannerisms of characters in media I absorb? I also become obsessed with people that I know. I have full-blown conversations with my friends in my head, to the point where I come up with a totally different persona to them. I forget huge chunks of time, too. Like, a whole summer.

Hi darling,

I’m sorry to hear that you’ve been struggling with this lovely! I always find it hard to answer the question about whether something might be normal, since there isn’t exactly a definition of what would be ‘normal’  and what not. So I’m afraid I can’t answer that question of yours, but I hope I can still help you out. While it isn’t something everyone experiences, there definitely are other people who struggle with this too! You aren’t alone

To a certain point I’d say it’s understandable to take on the traits of characters. It’s like, if you hang out with someone a lot you’ll find yourself talking a bit more like they do too. So if you for example read a lot of fanfiction on certain characters, it’s understandable you take on some of these traits. However, it sounds like for you it’s getting a little bit out of hand, especially since there are other issues you’re dealing with as well.

I’m not a professional, so I don’t know what could be causing this. I do have a theory, but I can be very wrong too, so please let me know if that’s the case. Sometimes we can obsess over other things as a coping mechanism, because it means that while obsessing we won’t have to spend time with our own thoughts, or in reality. The same can happen with having full-blown conversations with friends in your head- it can be a way of escaping reality. There are many reasons of why someone would want to escape reality, and in general it all comes down to the fact that reality is too difficult to cope with. However since you also struggle with taking on traits from characters in media, I’m wondering whether maybe you’re also struggling with low self-image? Low self-image can cause for the present/reality to become very difficult. By taking on traits from characters (that you maybe idolise?) you might also feel a bit better about yourself, because you won’t feel as low about yourself as you normally do. I’m just thinking out loud here, but I’m sure there could be many other explanations as well! I do think it’s good to look into why this might be happening, as that can be the key to finding ways to cope with it.

If it turns out that this indeed is a coping mechanism because reality is too difficult, then a good first step would be to look into other coping mechanisms. You can’t just start facing reality, if that was possible you wouldn’t need these escapes. It can be difficult to find a coping mechanism that works for you, it’s a lot of trial and error. I find that the emotional alternatives to self-harm in this video are great examples of coping mechanisms. Self-harm can be a coping mechanism as well, so that’s why these alternatives work as such great coping mechanisms. You can also check out our page with self-harm alternatives, although there will also be alternatives on there that might not help if you aren’t struggling with self-harm.

Once you’ve found a coping mechanism and have made yourself a little more familiar with it (so that it isn’t as scary), it’s important to take small steps. This is a difficult process for you and you’re allowed to take things slow. You can start with just one issue for example, let’s say the conversations in your head. I don’t know if you’ve heard of maladaptive daydreaming before? To put it really short, maladaptive daydreaming is when daydreaming gets out of control, but our page here explains it more. The thing with maladaptive daydreaming is that someone might not notice they’re doing it and it can be hard to snap out of. Since I think you might experience the same struggles when it comes to the conversations in your head, I think some tips that apply to maladaptive daydreaming can help you as well. First of all, it can help to set alarms when you’re on your own. By setting an alarm every ten minutes for example, you get snapped out of the conversations if you’re having them, and when you aren’t having them you just continue with what you were doing. And reward yourself! If you manage to go an hour without having these conversations it’s amazing already. Slowly build this up. There will be good and bad days, but slowly you’ll get there.

If you struggle with low self-image, a ‘whitebook’  can be very helpful. This is a word that’s literally translated from Dutch, but I don’t know an English word that describes it. For a whitebook you pick a pretty notebook. Every day, you write down things that are positive, whether that’s something you did, something that gave you a good feeling, something you thought, something someone said, anything! At first this will feel very uncomfortable, but in time it will become easier. Once that’s happened, try to increase the amount. A next step would be to look at the positive things you’ve written down, and see if you can connect positive characteristics to these. I’m currently doing this in therapy so I’m gonna give you an example from myself. I had written down as a positive thing that I had done a bunch of stuff for MHA that day. So we looked at the fact that I work here at MHA , what characteristics could fit to that. It was really hard, but eventually my therapist wrote down ‘empathetic, caring, assistant/helpful (we wrote it in Dutch and it’s hard to literally translate), friendly’. So there were four characteristics from one positive thing!! I’m not gonna lie to you, I found it really hard. What helped most was to think of it all as if I was doing it for a friend. So I asked myself what characteristics I thought the other admins here had. Even though I currently don’t feel like those characteristics fit to me, by continuing to work on this whitebook I think they eventually will.

When it comes to missing big chunks of time, this could be explained by multiple issues as well. When someone struggles with maladaptive daydreaming, they can end up missing time as well, hours they just spend daydreaming without really noticing. So I’m guessing the same can happen when you’re having these conversations in your head. Another possibility could be dissociation. There are multiple forms of dissociation, which you can all read a bit more about here. Dissociation is a defensive mechanism. It’s a way for your body to kind of shut down whenever things get too much. You become disconnected to your feelings and then you don’t have to cope with them anymore. When struggling with dissociation, grounding techniques can be really helpful. We have a page with a lot of different ones here. It can take a while to find out which grounding techniques work for you and which don’t. And even when you’ve found which ones work for you, they might not work in every situation. It takes quite a bit of trial and error (and time) before you’ve figured out which techniques work best at what time. My personal favourite is the following one:

Describe 5 things you can see;

Describe 4 things you can hear;

Describe 3 things you can feel;

Describe 2 things you can smell;

Describe 1 thing you can taste.

Since you’re dealing with a lot right now, I’d highly recommend you to reach out for professional help lovely. You really don’t have to deal with this on your own! With a mental health professional you can look more into why this is happening and what treatment would be best to make sure that these struggles will reduce as soon as possible. You can read more about getting help here, but I’d recommend you to visit your GP / local doctor. You can explain to them briefly what’s been going on, and they can then refer you to a therapist, counsellor, psychiatrist, or other mental health professional. I’m really sorry for how long this turned out to be! I hope this helped at least a little bit.

Sometimes what seems impossible, is just hard.

Keep fighting beautiful Love Pauline

[chmcdo]

The 15 Best Horror Movies of 2017

The best horror movies of 2017 writhe in grief and mourning: Evil is mundane, they say—sure—but what does that actually mean about moving on with one’s life? In two of these films, the grief-stricken struggle to communicate with those they’ve lost, realizing the process of doing so is difficult, an incredibly tedious series of motions (much like one’s everyday life) in which we’re never really sure they’re succeeding, or just feeding their own serious neuroses, plunging them deeper into depression. One film is a musical reveling in the harshness of young love, in the terrifying lengths to which someone, women especially, are expected to go to be loved. One is the highest grossing horror film of all time, and another is a genre-transcending treatise on America’s treacherous post-Obama racial landscape, both changing the industry for low-budget genre films immeasurably. Even M. Night Shyamalan’s pulpy thriller ends on a surprisingly bleak note. In 2017, we’re just trying to find some way out of all of our most pessimistic impulses. We’re just trying to not wake up every day and assume the worst.

In other words, it was a fertile year for horror, America’s most vital form of filmmaking, especially for non-white, non-male voices laying waste to the genre’s most tired tropes. A number of titles almost made our list, worth mentioning: The Blackcoat’s Daughter, a film awe-struck with despair for humanity and a mind-bogglingly great performance from Kiernan Shipka; The Girl with All the Gifts; We Are the Flesh; Alien: Covenant, proving that the older Ridley Scott gets the grosser he’s willing to be; Happy Death Day; one of many good Stephen King adaptations this year (see below), Gerald’s Game; and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, which isn’t a horror movie but kind of works like one, and anyway it’s fine because you’ll see it on other lists elsewhere.

Here are the 15 best horror movies of 2017:

15. A Cure for Wellness Director: Gore Verbinski It’s a bit of a tragedy that Gore Verbinski’s delightfully bizarre, absurdly violent and grotesque A Cure For Wellness went largely unnoticed. Hollywood’s versatile trickster, Verbinski and screenwriter Justin Haythe go for broke cramming various sub-genres and mood-drenched tropes into an overstuffed, batshit-crazy horror epic, a loving nod to old Universal monster movies, among many, with the mad scientist conducting experiments that “defy god and nature” in a picturesque old castle perched atop a village that somehow skipped the 20th Century, Bojan Bazelli’s gorgeous cinematography taking full advantage of the Euro-gothic aesthetic. It’s a no-fucks-given gonzo experiment, laced with the riskiness of Giallo and the surrealist imagery of a Lynchian nightmare, disparate tones wrapped dreamily around an angry, blunt satire about the self-destructive, soul-sucking nature of greed and ambition. —Oktay Ege Kozak

14. XX Directors: Roxanne Benjamin, Annie Clark, Karyn Kusama, Jovanka Vuckovic, Sofia Carrillo It’s important that the scariest segment in XX, Magnet Releasing’s women-helmed horror anthology film, is also its most elementary: Young people trek out into the wilderness for fun and recreation, young people incur the wrath of hostile forces, young people get dead, easy as you please. You’ve seen this movie before, whether in the form of a slasher, a creature feature, or an animal attack flick. You’re seeing it again in XX in part because the formula works, and in part because the segment in question, titled “Don’t Fall,” must be elementary to facilitate its sibling chapters, which tend to be anything but. XX stands apart from other horror films because it invites its audience to feel a range of emotions aside from just fright. You might, for example, feel heartache during Jovanka Vuckovic’s “The Box,” or the uncertainty of dread in Karyn Kusama’s “Her Only Living Son,” or nauseous puzzlement with Sofia Carrillo’s macabre, stop-motion wraparound piece, meant to function as a palate cleanser between courses (an effectively unnerving work, thanks to its impressive technical achievements). Most of all, you might have to bite your tongue to keep from laughing uncontrollably during the film’s best short, “The Birthday Party,” written and directed by Annie Clark, better known by some as St. Vincent, in her filmmaking debut. XX is a horror movie spoken with the voices of women, a necessary notice that women are revolutionizing the genre as much as men. —Andy Crump

13. Split Director: M. Night Shyamalan Split is the film adaptation of M. Night Shyamalan’s misunderstanding of 30-year-old, since-discredited psychology textbooks on Dissociative Identity Disorder, but if we deign to treat it with scientific scrutiny, we’ll be here all night. Suffice it to say, don’t go looking at anything in this film as psychologically valid in any way. But do go see Split, because it’s probably M. Night Shyamalan’s best film since Signs. Or maybe since Unbreakable, for that matter. And if there’s one way that Splitreinvigorates Shyamalan’s stock most, it’s as a visual artist and writer-director of tension and thrilling action. The film looks spectacular, full of Hitchcockian homages that remind one of Vertigo and Psycho, to name only a few. It’s a far scarier, more suspenseful film in its high moments than Shyamalan’s last film, The Visit, ever attempted to be, and it may even be funnier as well, although these moments of levity are sown sparingly for maximum impact. Mike Gioulakis deserves major props for cinematography, but the other thing that will stick in my mind is the unexpectedly great sound design, full of rumbling, groaning metallic tones. After so many films that relied on the kind of overwrought twist ending that made The Sixth Sense so buzzy in 1999, it seems like Shyamalan has finally gotten over the hump to make the kinds of stories he makes best: atmospheric, suspenseful potboilers. Here’s hoping that this newfound streak of humility is here to stay. —Jim Vorel

12. Thelma Director: Joachim Trier Thelma (Eili Harboe) is a meek and quiet young woman moving away from her strict Christian parents (Henrik Rafaelsen, Ellen Dorit Petersen) for the first time in her life. To study Biology at a Norwegian university. She’s devoted to her faith and doesn’t indulge in alcohol, drugs or other earthly desires. But all of that changes when she sits next to Anja (Kaya Wilkins), a warm-hearted and empathetic schoolmate, during a study session. The two don’t even know each other yet, but Thelma’s close proximity to a girl she feels an intense attraction toward is enough to trigger a violent seizure, which may or may not be the result of her intense rejection of her feelings, spurned by her religious upbringing. With subtle yet passionate performances by its two leads, the film would have worked fine as a straight drama about Thelma’s journey towards (hopefully) acknowledging her nature. What makes Thelma so special is in the way Trier and co-writer Eskil Vogt wrap this already palpable drama around a fairly downplayed supernatural horror premise with surgical precision. —Oktay Ege Kozak

11. It Director: Andy Muschietti 2017 was the year of blockbuster horror, if ever such a thing has been quantifiable before. Get Out, Annabelle: Creation and even would-be direct-to-video gems such as 47 Meters Down turned sizable profits, but they were just priming the box office pump for It, which shattered nearly every horror movie record imaginable. Perhaps it was the uninspiring summer blockbuster season to thank for an audience starved for something, but just as much credit must go to director Andy Muschietti and, especially, to Pennywise star Bill Skarsgård for taking Stephen King’s famously cumbersome, overstuffed novel and transforming it into something stylish, scary and undeniably entertaining. The collection of perfectly cast kids in the Loser’s Club all have the look of young actors and actresses we’ll be seeing in film for decades to come, but it’s Skarsgård’s hypnotic face, lazy eyes and incessant drool that makes It so difficult to look away from (or forget, for that matter). The inevitable Part 2 will have its hands full in giving a similarly crackling translation to the less popular adult portion of King’s story, but the camaraderie Muschietti gets in his cast and the visual flair of this first It should give us ample reasons to be optimistic. Regardless, it’s impossible to dismiss the pop cultural impact that It will continue to have for a new generation discovering its well-loved characters. —Jim Vorel

10. The Lure Director: Agnieszka Smoczynska In Filmmaker Magazine, director Agnieszka Smoczynska called The Lure a “coming-of-age story” born of her past as the child of a nightclub owner: “I grew up breathing this atmosphere.” What she means to say, I’m guessing, is that The Lure is an even more restlessly plotted Boyhood if the Texan movie rebooted The Little Mermaid as a murderous synth-rock opera. (OK, maybe it’s nothing like Boyhood.) Smoczynska’s film resurrects prototypical fairy tale romance and fantasy without any of the false notes associated with Hollywood’s “gritty” reboot culture. Poland, the 1980s and the development of its leading young women provide a multi-genre milieu in which the film’s cannibalistic mermaids can sing their sultry, often violently funny siren songs to their dark hearts’re content. While Ariel the mermaid Disney princess finds empathy with young girls who watch her struggle with feelings of longing and entrapment, The Lure’s flesh-hungry, viscous, scaly fish-people are a gross, haptic and ultimately effective metaphor for the maturation of this same audience. In the water, the pair are innocent to the ways of humans (adults), but on land develop slimes and odors unfamiliar to themselves and odd (yet strangely attractive) to their new companions. Reckoning with bodily change, especially when shoved into the sex industry like many immigrants to Poland during the collapse of that country’s communist regime in the late ’80s, the film combines the politics of the time with the sexual politics of a girl becoming a woman (of having her body politicized). And though The Luremay bite off more human neck than it can chew, especially during its music-less plot wanderings, it’s just so wonderfully consistent in its oddball vision you won’t be able to help but be drawn in by its mesmerizing thrall. —Jacob Oller

9. The Transfiguration Director: Michael O’Shea Michael O’Shea’s The Transfiguration refreshingly refuses to disguise its influences and reference points, instead putting them all out there in the forefront for its audience’s edification, name-dropping a mouthful of noteworthy vampire films and sticking their very titles right smack dab in the midst of its mise en scène. They can’t be missed: Nosferatu is a big one, and so’s The Lost Boys, but none informs O’Shea’s film as much as Let the Right One In, the unique 2009 Swedish genre masterpiece. Like Tomas Alfredson’s bloodsucking coming-of-age tale, The Transfiguration casts a young’n, Milo (Eric Ruffin), as its protagonist, contrasting the horrible particulars of a vampire’s feeding habits against the surface innocence of his appearance. Unlike Let the Right One In, The Transfiguration may not be a vampire movie at all, but a movie about a lonesome kid with an unhealthy fixation on gothic legends. You may choose to view Milo as O’Shea’s modernized update of the iconic monster or a child brimming with inner evil; the film keeps its ends open, its truths veiled and only makes its sociopolitical allegories plain in its final, haunting images.

8. Creep 2 Director: Patrick Brice Creep was not a movie begging for a sequel. About one of cinema’s more unique serial killers—a man who seemingly needs to form close personal bonds with his quarry before dispatching them as testaments to his “art”—the 2014 original was self-sufficient enough. But Creep 2 is that rare follow-up wherein the goal seems to be not “let’s do it again,” but “let’s go deeper”—and by deeper, we mean much deeper, as this film plumbs the psyche of the central psychopath (who now goes by) Aaron (Mark Duplass) in ways both wholly unexpected and shockingly sincere, as we witness (and somehow sympathize with) a killer who has lost his passion for murder, and thus his zest for life. In truth, the film almost forgoes the idea of being a “horror movie,” remaining one only because we know of the atrocities Aaron has committed in the past, meanwhile becoming much more of an interpersonal drama about two people exploring the boundaries of trust and vulnerability. Desiree Akhavan is stunning as Sara, the film’s only other principal lead, creating a character who is able to connect in a humanistic way with Aaron unlike anything a fan of the first film might think possible. Two performers bare it all, both literally and figuratively: Creep 2 is one of the most surprising, emotionally resonant horror films in recent memory. —Jim Vorel

7. Prevenge Director: Alice Lowe Maybe getting close enough to gut a person when you’re seven months pregnant is a cinch—no one likely expects an expecting mother to cut their throat—but all the positive encouragement Ruth’s (Alice Lowe) unborn daughter gives her helps, too. The kid spends the film spurring her mother to slaughter seemingly innocent people from in utero, an invisible voice of incipient malevolence sporting a high-pitched giggle that’ll make your skin crawl. “Pregnant lady goes on a slashing spree at the behest of her gestating child” sounds like a perfectly daffy twist on one of the horror genre’s most enduring contemporary niches on paper. In practice it’s not quite so daffy, more somber than it is silly, but the bleak tone suits what writer, director, and star Lowe wants to achieve with her filmmaking debut. Another storyteller might have designed Prevenge as a more comically-slanted effort, but Lowe has sculpted it to smash taboos and social norms. Because Prevengehates human beings with a disturbing passion—even human beings who aren’t selfish, awful, creepy or worse—in it, child-rearing is a form of real-life body horror that’s as smartly crafted and grimly funny as it is terrifying. —Andy Crump / Full Review

6. mother! Director:   Darren Aronofsky   Try as you might to rationalize Darren Aronofsky’s mother!, mother! does not accept rationalization. There’s little reasonable ways to construct a single cohesive interpretation of what the movie tries to tell us. There is no evidence of Aronosfky’s intention beyond what we’ve intuited from watching his films since the ’90s. The most ironclad comment you can make about mother! is that it’s basically a matryoshka doll layered with batshit insanity. Unpack the first, and you’re met immediately by the next tier of crazy, and then the next, and so on, until you’ve unpacked the whole thing and seen it for what it is: A spiritual rumination on the divine ego, a plea for environmental stewardship, an indictment of entitled invasiveness, an apocalyptic vision of America in 2017, a demonstration of man’s tendency to leech everything from the women they love until they’re nothing but a carbonized husk, a very triggering reenactment of the worst house party you’ve ever thrown. mother! is a kitchen sink movie in the most literal sense: There’s an actual kitchen sink here, Aronofsky’s idea of a joke, perhaps, or just a necessarily transparent warning. mother! is about everything. Maybe the end result is that it’s also about nothing. But it’s really about whatever you can yank out of it, it’s elasticity the most terrifying thing about it. —Andy Crump

5. Personal Shopper Director: Olivier Assayas The pieces don’t all fit in Personal Shopper, but that’s much of the fun of writer-director Olivier Assayas’s enigmatic tale of Maureen (Kristen Stewart, a wonderfully unfathomable presence), who may be in contact with her dead twin brother. Or maybe she’s being stalked by an unseen assailant. Or maybe it’s both. To attempt to explain the direction Personal Shopper takes is merely to regurgitate plot points that don’t sound like they belong in the same film. But Assayas is working on a deeper, more metaphorical level, abandoning strict narrative cause-and-effect logic to give us fragments of Maureen’s life refracted through conflicting experiences. Nothing happens in this film as a direct result of what came before, which explains why a sudden appearance of suggestive, potentially dangerous text messages could be interpreted as a literal threat, or as some strange cosmic manifestation of other, subtler anxieties. Personal Shopperencourages a sense of play, moving from moody ghost story to tense thriller to (out of the blue) erotic character study. But that genre-hopping (not to mention the movie’s willfully inscrutable design) is Assayas’s way of bringing a lighthearted approach to serious questions about grieving and disillusionment. The juxtaposition isn’t jarring or glib—if anything, Personal Shopper is all the more entrancing because it won’t sit still, never letting us be comfortable in its shifting narrative. —Tim Grierson

4. A Dark Song Director: Liam Gavin In Liam Gavin’s black magic genre oddity, Sophia (Catherine Walker), a grief-stricken mother, and the schlubby, no-nonsense occultist (Steve Oram) she hires devote themselves to a long, meticulous, painstaking ritual in order to (they hope) communicate with her dead son. Gavin lays out the ritual specifically and physically—over the course of months of isolation, Sophia undergoes tests of endurance and humiliation, never quite sure if she’s participating in an elaborate hoax or if she can take her spiritual guide seriously when he promises her he’s succeeded in the past. Paced to near perfection, A Dark Song is ostensibly a horror film but operates as a dread-laden procedural, mounting tension while translating the process of bereavement as patient, excruciating manual labor. In the end, something definitely happens, but its implications are so steeped in the blurry lines between Christianity and the occult that I still wonder what kind of alternate realms of existence Gavin is getting at. But A Dark Song thrives in that uncertainty, feeding off of monotony. Sophia may hear phantasmagorical noise coming from beneath the floorboards, but then substantial spans of time pass without anything else happening, and we begin to question, as she does, whether it was something she did wrong (maybe, when tasked with not moving from inside a small chalk circle for days at a time, she screwed up that portion of the ritual by allowing her urine to dribble outside of the boundary) or whether her grief has blinded her to an expensive con. Regardless, that “not knowing” is the scary stuff of everyday life, and by portraying Sophia’s profound emotional journey as a humdrum trial of physical mettle, Gavin reveals just how much pointless, even terrifying work it can be anymore to not only live the most ordinary of days, but to make it to the next. —Dom Sinacola

3. Raw Director: Julia Ducournou If you’re the proud owner of a twisted sense of humor, you might sell your friends on Julia Ducournau’s Raw as a coming-of-age movie in a bid to trick them into seeing it. Yes, the film’s protagonist, naive incoming college student Justine (Garance Marillier), comes of age over the course of its running time: She parties, she breaks out of her shell and she learns about who she really is on the verge of adulthood. But most kids who discover themselves in the movies don’t realize that they’ve spent their lives unwittingly suppressing an innate, nigh-insatiable need to consume raw meat. Allow Ducournau her cheekiness: More than a wink and nod to the picture’s visceral particulars, her film’s title is an open concession to the harrowing quality of Justine’s grim blossoming. Nasty as the film gets, and it does indeed get nasty, the harshest sensations Ducournau articulates here tend to be the ones we can’t detect by merely looking. Fear of feminine sexuality, family legacies, popularity politics and the uncertainty of self govern Raw’s horrors as much as exposed and bloody flesh. It’s a gorefest that offers no apologies and plenty more to chew on than its effects. —Andy Crump

2. It Comes at Night Director: Trey Edward Shults It Comes at Night is ostensibly a horror movie, moreso than Shults’s debut, Krisha, but even Krisha was more of a horror movie than most measured family dramas typically are. Perhaps knowing this, Shults calls It Comes at Night an atypical horror movie, but—it’s already obvious after only two of these—Shults makes horror movies to the extent that everything in them is laced with dread, and every situation suffocated with inevitability. For his sophomore film, adorned with a much larger budget than Krisha and cast with some real indie star power compared to his previous cast (of family members doing him a solid), Shults imagines a near future as could be expected from a somber flick like this. A “sickness” has ravaged the world and survival is all that matters for those still left. In order to keep their shit together enough to keep living, the small group of people in Shults’s film have to accept the same things the audience does: That important characters will die, tragedy will happen and the horror of life is about the pointlessness of resisting the tide of either. So it makes sense that It Comes at Night is such an open wound of a watch, pained with regret and loss and the mundane ache of simply existing: It’s trauma as tone poem, bittersweet down to its bones, a triumph of empathetic, soul-shaking movie-making. —Dom Sinacola

1. Get Out Director:   Jordan Peele   Peele’s a natural behind the camera, but Get Out benefits most from its deceptively trim premise, a simplicity which belies rich thematic depth. Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) and Rose (Allison Williams) go to spend a weekend with her folks in their lavish upstate New York mansion, where they’re throwing the annual Armitage bash with all their friends in attendance. Chris immediately feels out of place; events escalate from there, taking the narrative in a ghastly direction that ultimately ties back to the unsettling sensation of being the “other” in a room full of people who aren’t like you—and never let you forget it. Put indelicately, Get Out is about being black and surrounded by whites who squeeze your biceps without asking, who fetishize you to your face, who analyze your blackness as if it’s a fashion trend. At best Chris’s ordeal is bizarre and dizzying, the kind of thing he might bitterly chuckle about in retrospect. At worst it’s a setup for such macabre developments as are found in the domain of horror. That’s the finest of lines Peele and Get Out walk without stumbling. —Andy Crump