Horror Films That Meaningfully Address Grief and Loss by Claire Fitzpatrick

The phenomenology of grief

In January, I lost my husband to suicide. Though he had his demons, the act was sudden, unexpended, and inextricably traumatising. While I am predominately a horror writer, finding and seeing his body was the single most traumatic experience of my life, a visage so terrifying I doubt the image will ever go away. Now, a few months later, I’ve started thinking about grief and loss, and the horror genre’s ability to encapsulate these feelings and teach us something.

Horror usually elicits two types of emotion – fear or disgust. Beyond the surface-level threat by the usual suspects – ghosts, killer clowns, werewolves – horror concerns itself with fears, anxieties, and traumas – real or perceived – that assail the human experience. This led me to ruminate on films I’d seen in the past, and what I could learn from their depictions of sudden death and bereavement, namely The Night House (2021), A Ghost Story (2017), and The Descent (2005). How do they meaningfully address grief and loss? And what can we learn from them?

Horror Films That Meaningfully Address Grief and Loss by Claire Fitzpatrick

The Night House (2021)

 The Night House, directed by David Bruckner, is an exceptional take on grief and loss following suicide. From the opening scene, we know the main character Beth is grieving the loss of her husband, Owen, through suicide. As the film unfolds, we learn Beth was declared clinically dead following a car crash. After full recovery, she Owen, that she saw nothing. Owen was never convinced by the idea and insisted on changing her mind, which he didn’t. 

Throughout the film, we see Beth go through the five stages of grief in a unique and personal way, and through her dreams, learn many upsetting things about Owen. In her dreams, she encounters women suffering physical trauma, a mirror image of Beth’s emotional trauma. And while she is unsure if there is an afterlife and if Owen is haunting her as a ghost, she begins to explore who he was, leading to some dark discoveries about his secret life. 

Though Beth begins in a dark place, as events unfold, her grieving process evolves over time. Finally, she reaches acceptance – acceptance of what Owen did, acceptance of who he was, and acceptance of not knowing what comes next. Personally, I worry a little too much about the afterlife. I’ve always experienced an existential crisis. I am agnostic, my dad was Catholic, and my husband was an atheist. When my dad died, I worried about not knowing where he was. He believed he would be reunited with his dad in heaven, yet I wasn’t sure. My husband was a great comfort after my dad died, and we spoke at length about our own beliefs. As an atheist, my husband didn’t have the same worries I do. He was rational about his beliefs and presented a compelling argument, yet he couldn’t persuade me. I’m still on the fence.

The Night House presents an incredibly unique view of life after death. Over time, Beth sees Owen’s ghost, except it’s not his ghost at all, it’s the Nothing, a shadowy, inferred demonic entity who hunts those who cheat death, i.e. take their own lives. The only way for Beth to reconcile with the fact there’s nothing after we die is to accept there’s Nothing after we die. Through this symbolism, we can make up our own minds about the afterlife, something that is somewhat comforting to me. 

Does fear feel like grief?

Grief and fear share the same feelings of uncertainty. Anticipatory grief occurs when you’re uncertain of the future. Though two months have passed since my husband passed away, I can’t quite wrap my head around life going on without him, specifically my life. It’s like what Skeeter Davis sings: I can’t understand, no I can’t understand why life goes on the way it does.

There is fear in this grief, fear another loved one will pass away. And then another, and another. In October 2020, two months after my husband and I got married, my dad passed away from cancer. I also felt anticipatory grief about his death, since I knew his days were numbered. As I watched him slowly wither away, I could reconcile with the fact my dad would die at the young age of 53. However, I didn’t get that reconciliation with my husband. One day he was there, and the next he wasn’t, so the anticipatory grief I feel is different this time. 

Within horror films, the anticipatory fear is often physical. Our heart races and our muscles clench. Many trauma survivors enjoy the comfort of horror films. It’s a safe and controlled environment where one can experience these emotions. Horror films are ideal for examining the grieving process as their upsetting incidents or ‘monster’ protagonists closely resemble our own mourning experiences, whereas trauma is utterly unpredictable. My flashbacks occur out of nowhere, jostling me from my thoughts.

Horror Films That Meaningfully Address Grief and Loss by Claire Fitzpatrick

A Ghost Story (2017)

A Ghost Story, written and directed by David Lowery, opens with a single quote:  

“Whatever hour you woke, there was a door shutting.”

 –Virginia Woolf, ‘A Haunted House’.

In the film, ‘C’ and ‘M’ are a couple living in a rundown suburban house, unsure whether to move. At night, the house projects strange patterns of light on the wall, and piano sounds echo around the walls. Though ominous, it remains unexplained. Soon after, C dies in a car accident, however, he ‘wakes’ in the morgue, sits up, and discovers he is shrouded in a mortuary sheet, with infantile eyeholes cut out, resembling a crude Hallowe’en costume. Leaving the mortuary, he wanders the halls of the hospital and discovers a portal, however, instead of leaving this world, he decides to return to his house to be with his grieving wife. For the remainder of the C observes M mourning his death, though she never senses his presence in the house. 

 The film depicts M’s grief as she sorts through C’s possessions, listens to C’s music, and stress-eating an entire pie left in her kitchen by a sympathetic friend or neighbour, in one harrowing, uninterrupted take. All of this is observed by C, standing quietly to the side. While I haven’t stress-eaten a pie, I am filled with an emptiness my brain confuses with hunger, and I often eat more than I should. I’ve always had problems with binge eating, so my grief is coupled with feelings of regret and embarrassment. I understand M. I understand how eating the pie may momentarily alleviate the feeling of abandonment and emptiness. Later, the movie shows M moving on – she packs up her things and drives away. Yet C can’t follow her; he is stuck in the house. Years pass, and the house is torn down, yet C remains, eternally bound, moored in time. 

I believe we all hope to leave a part of us behind. Not only for our children, but for ourselves. After we die, we exist only in memories until our name is spoken one last time. Even then, our imprint on the world persists. We were born, we lived, we died – we were here. While A Ghost Story is bathed in sadness, it is also speckled with moments of hope and ends on a note of optimism. For me, this is how I hope to keep my husband alive, especially regarding our 7-month-old daughter, who will never know the man I loved, and who loved her. 

The unfolding of grief

Grief unfolds over days, months, and years. It is not a single emotional state but rather accepted as an evolving process, including large gaps where grief is not actively experienced. When one grieves, their memories of their loved ones are filtered through the knowledge that they are dead. They are not away, missing, temporarily gone – they will never return. The five stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance – can happen slowly over time, or sometimes even all at once. 

Tending to grief is the same as tending to a physical wound. Proving a sanctuary for its unfolding – in the body, the mind, and the psyche – requires us to relinquish the walls we build around ourselves and weep. Losing someone you loved to suicide is not something you can get over. But you can learn to live with it and unpack it in all its unpleasantness. For me, the flashbacks of finding my husband is like a physical strike to the heart. Like me, my husband loved music, and I listen to music every day.

I chose three songs for his funeral, and whenever I hear them, I see him again – as he was when I found him, and as he was when I viewed his body before his funeral and said goodbye. I wore a nirvana shirt, shorts, sunglasses, and no shoes to his funeral. I hate shoes, and he did, too. He was cremated without them. For me, not wearing shoes was a way to remain connected to him. Feeling the carpet under my bare feet was a way to remain connected to myself. 

Horror Films That Meaningfully Address Grief and Loss by Claire Fitzpatrick

The Descent (2005)

Written and directed by Neil Marshall, The Descent is somewhat of a metaphorical traipse into the damaged mind of Sarah, who is grieving the death of her husband and young daughter in a car accident a year earlier. A potent study of grief and loss, the film follow six women who enter an uncharted cave system and struggle to survive against the monstrous, grotesque humanoid creatures inside. 

 Using a cave is a wonderfully creative way to explore Sarah’s grief, for it’s not just a movie about being hunted by a monster in a confined space, but a metaphor for her scarred psyche and the inability to escape the pain of her loss. By physically lowering herself into the cave system, Sarah is emotionally lowering herself into her own pain. 

As the women explore the cavernous chambers, we learn about her friends and their own struggles, though the focus remains om Sarah. Terror ensues as they encounter the crawlers – blind, cavern-dwelling humanoids who begin hunting the women killing them one by one. Using sounds and echolocation, they scale the cavern walls with immense speed and strength. Trapped alongside these creatures, the women are enclosed not only by the cavern walls, but their own inner turmoil. 

One of the challenges of mourning is that we’re required to learn how to cope. We may think we know what mourning means, but we don’t. Our learning is both emotional and aversive, with the thought of our own mortality always lingering in the distance, registered as a threat. Often, we think of our own death more than the death of our loved ones and resist to confront the idea that they are gone, for when we do confront it, we can easily become overwhelmed by tidal waves of intrusive thoughts and negative emotions, resorting to escapism or avoidance activities as a form of respite. But, like terrifying, claustrophobic feeling of being trapped in a cave with monsters, there is no escaping grief, or trauma. It’s there whether we like it or not. 

Accepting the monstrous disruption of grief.

Existential disruptions caused by the death of a loved one can be horribly harrowing and almost too much to bear. It can sever symbiotic connections and cause intense emotional changes to our sense of self and our place in the world. Grief is incredibly distracting. It’s easier to avoid reminders of the loss as we are helplessly thrown around waves of intense and often uncontrollable emotion. But grief is something we must accept.

We must realise it’s not just a form of depression, but its own entity that can take a long time to process. While I can get up in the morning, take one kid to school, the other to daycare, and pop down to the shop, I often can’t do much else. Sometimes, I spend all day outside, gardening or attending to my animals. Other times, I’ll read on my comfy egg chair on the back veranda. Some days, I go out to the local recycling centre to find things I can use in my yard. Other times, I’ll binge-watch a show and feel guilty for not doing any washing. But this is my grief. 

So, what can we learn from this? The Night House tells us that grief can come in various forms – it’s the act of grief that’s important. Grief isn’t always about acceptance but allowing yourself to go through the motions. There are many facets of grief, all equally as important as the next. A Ghost Story tells us it’s important we feel every single iota of grief – sadness, anger, confusion, nostalgia, compassion, heartache. It teaches us to sit with our feelings and think about what they mean. The Descent tells us we can’t escape our grief, and that we must face it head-on. We must deal with unresolved emotions and accept death as an inevitability, rather than pretend it doesn’t exist.

I don’t know what the future holds for me. I don’t know which path I’ll take. But I do know that my experience of grief will be intrinsically mine. I can’t bring back my husband. I can’t turn back time and take away his sadness. I can only accept this monstrous disruption and move forward, one step at a time. 

If I can do it, so can you.

Claire Fitzpatrick

Claire Fitzpatrick is an award-winning author of speculative fiction and non-fiction. Her debut collection ‘Metamorphosis’, released by IFWG Publishing Australia in 2019, was hailed as ‘simply heroic.’

Claire is the current President and Social Media Coordinator of the Australasian Horror Writers Association. She’s been a regular non-fiction contributor to Aurealis magazine since 2015.

Within non-fiction, her self-published anthology ‘The Body Horror Book,’ which she compiled, co-wrote, and edited, won the 2017 Rocky Wood Award for Non-Fiction and Criticism. Her article ‘How Mary Shelley Continues To Influence Science Fiction,’ published in Aurealis #145, was shortlisted for the 2022 William Atheling Jr Award for Criticism or Review.

For her 2023 collaborative non-fiction anthology ‘A Vindication Of Monsters – essays on Mary Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft’ (IFWG Publishing International), Claire was the 2021 recipient of the Horror Writer’s Association’s Rocky Wood Memorial scholarship fund, a 2024 Bram Stoker Award® Nominee, and shortlisted for the 2024 Rocky Wood Award for Non-Fiction and Criticism.

Claire has a Bachelor of Government and International Relations, a Graduate Certificate of Writing, Editing, and Publishing, and will die on the hill of the Oxford comma. She operates Edit Without Mercy, providing proofreading, copy-editing, content editing, and academic editing services.

Claire runs a Women In Horror blog with guest posts about – you guessed it – women in horror. Drop her a line if you’d like to be featured.

Claire lives in Queensland, Australia, with her three cats, two guinea pigs, six chooks, two birds, and two slightly human eldritch offspring. It’s truly a menagerie.

Her Lovecraft-obsessed husband, Matt Schuler (1988-2024) was a spray paint artist specialising in science fiction themes. He designed several covers for speculative fiction magazines. He passed away in 2024.

“May flights of Angels sing thee to thy rest.”

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