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As Halloween approaches, challenges such as ‘31-day days of Halloween movies’ are aired on major TV stations. It begs the question of what type of horror is the best. 

Now imagine this, you wake up in a dark, cold room, no windows, nothing on the walls, and no furniture, only a door, and a note on the floor. This note says you need to pick someone to die, you or the person in the other room. 

That would be a psychological horror type of movie. A slasher movie would be a killer running around killing people, it’s kind of boring right? Though slasher movies tend to have good storylines and interesting characters, as do psychological movies, slasher movies are predictable. Most of the time the main protagonist dies a horrible death after all their friends die, or live after watching all their friends die. Not all slashers end like that, but most do.

Psychological movies typically end in the same fashion, but they’re hard to predict, harder to figure out why the killer does this or why kill that person. Are there also questions like this with slasher movies? Yes, but typically, it’s just a killer trying to kill someone.

Slasher movies don’t tend to mess with the mind of the person watching. Lots of people expect good storytelling but know what they’re getting into with slasher movies. They have lots of gore and are pretty fun to watch if you’re not scared of graphic violence.

But with psychological thrillers, there can still be gore, but they string along the watcher more, getting them attached to the character before killing them. These movies put characters through physically and mentally difficult challenges.

There is also the combination of these types of horror movies. Though normally a movie has only one of the options, some movies have characteristics of both. Overall, slasher movies tend to have lots of different faster deaths; psychological movies go through a game, test or challenge and then die – which takes time. That doesn’t mean there are fewer movies with combined qualities, but they just don’t always have the best storyline cause too many things are happening at once.

Both sides have their decent shares of bad movies. Reasons range from bad storylines to bad effects, but that is the same with all movies. Ultimately, both types of movie are enjoyable for different reasons and what you find enjoyable will depend on your taste.