Georges Méliès’ 1896 film, Le Manoir du Diable (The Devil’s Castle, The Haunted Castle, or House of the Devil) is considered to be the first “horror” film (Glasby 7; Leeder 6-7). The three-minute silent film shows a bat turning into the devil and creating terror in the castle through his seemingly supernatural haunting. Horror coming from inside the home is a theme consistent throughout horror history. The lavish yet decaying haunted castle, mansion, or house is rooted in gothic iconography (Friedman et al. 391) for it has acted as a backdrop to many gothic novels such as The Castle of Otranto (1764), The House of the Seven Gables (1851), and Dracula (1897). In horror cinema, dark old houses are used as a setting for supernatural story telling. Early prominent haunted house films include The Old Dark House (1932) and The Uninvited (1944). Since then, there have been many haunted house movies throughout the decades, including The Haunting (1963), The Amityville Horror (1979), Poltergeist (1982), The Others (2001), Paranormal Activity (2007). Each of these films feature a domestic location as the primary setting. They contrast the assumed comfort and security of home with a supernatural twist. In most cases, this twist is a ghost haunting the grounds seeking to harm the protagonist. 

The 2010s saw numerous films that followed the aforementioned haunted house formula: Insidious (2010), The Woman in Black (2012), Sinister (2012), The Conjuring (2013), Poltergeist (2015), and Winchester (2018) (Stone). However, horror films that take place in domestic settings more generally are just as widespread. Setting a horror film in a domestic space presents a threat to normalcy, safety, and more specifically the nuclear heterosexual family unit. Creating anxieties around familiarity is a common way for filmmakers to build fear. It symbolically dismantles the family unit by illustrating how a threat can come from within the house. These threats take one of three forms: 1) a threat caused when someone invades the space, a threat created in the space, and a threat that has always existed in the space. The Purge (2013), Don't Breathe (2016), and Get Out (2017) are examples of 2010s horror films that take place in domestic settings and present the primary threat in one of those three ways. Every 2010s film listed thus far is an example of a horror movie that is set in a house, but they are differentiated by the fact that not all of them are truly “haunted house” films. A key aspect of the haunted house trope/setting in horror cinema is the personification of the house. It is not enough for the film to be set in a house; the house must act as a character. Therefore, what distinguishes a haunted house movie from a movie merely set inside a house, is the presence of a haunting. Nonetheless, as I will argue, the “haunting” does not have to be a ghost in the literal sense. The haunting can be something left lingering, something that is tethered to the location in which the film is set. Thus, while a haunting is oftentimes a ghost, in some cases it could be a person, monster, or a memory. 

For my analysis, I will be defining a haunted house using those two components: personification and haunting. I will provide examples of how The Babadook (2014), The Invitation (2015), and Crimson Peak (2015) use their domestic settings to build fear and establish tone while also creating personalities for the respective homes. Furthermore, I argue that the relationship between physical and emotional space is a strikingly prominent theme in 2010s horror films. As I will later explore in my conclusion, this era of horror initiated an unprecedented exploration of emotional fear and trauma. These discussions of mental health, grief, and trauma were consistent with cultural conversations at the time, in line with the growing mental health de-stigmatization movement. With this in mind, I found that overarching themes of madness, grief, and tragedy are used in all three films to critique the social norm of repressing one's trauma. By studying the film dimensions of The Babadook, The Invitation, and Crimson Peak, I aim to illustrate how these themes are exemplified on screen and how they connect to the gothic horror haunted house trope.