Character Design

 Character design will be a very useful tool for us to use in our piece. Many films use this to convey a characters emotions and beliefs in their own films, which is an effective way of doing so subtly. This means a characters mental state could be shown without the use of dialogue or anything of that nature. In our case, this would be effective to show the characters declining mental state post-crash. We could depict them with unkept hair, dark eye bags, and other defining features of a depressed person. Eye bags would be extra effective to show how our character had been crying a lot and mourning the loss of their loved one.

Us (2019)

Above is a picture from the film Us where they use character design to reflect a inner change within a character. The change is noticeable compared to a before and after of what the character had looked like in the past. They used to be an upbeat happy young girl, to a terrified girl surrounded by blue hues to show her negative emotions. This is a very effective method since it uses character design to explain a characters emotions without using words or direct dialogue. Which in most cases of a psychological horror, emotions are better displayed silently rather than direct. 

Addition example from the movie Him (2025)