Let me start by asking this: What does it mean to be a ‘crazy woman?’ The word hangs in the air, a loaded accusation. How does it feel to be hysterical—a state so beyond the confines of acceptable social behaviour, you find yourself untethered from reality? Is madness a threshold in our minds? Do we walk an invisible line keeping us from insanity? 

Kier-La Janisse wrote in House of Psychotic Women, her critical memoir that intertwines personal reflection with film analysis, that ‘unlike her comparatively-lauded male counterpart – ‘the eccentric’—the female neurotic lives a shamed existence. But the shame itself is a trap—one that is fiercely protected by men and women alike.’

This societal shame, as Janisse argues, creates a double bind for women experiencing emotional turmoil. They are ostracised for expressing their distress, yet trapped by the very stigma that silences them. This dynamic, Janisse reveals through her analysis, is not just a social construct, but a recurring theme in horror and exploitation films, where female madness becomes a spectacle, both terrifying and strangely liberating.

House of Psychotic Women provides a framework for understanding how the depiction of hysterical women in horror and exploitation films resonates with Janisse’s real-life experiences of psychological distress and societal constraint. Her insightful examination of horror cinema as a space where madness is both a source of fear and a site of empowerment has profoundly influenced my own personal reflection.

Cinema, particularly horror cinema, has frequently used depictions of hysteria as a narrative device to explore themes of madness, fear, and repression. Films like Repulsion (Polanski, 1965), The Haunting (Wise, 1963), and The Corruption of Chris Miller (Bardem, 1973) delve into the psychological unravelling of their female protagonists, clearing the path for contemporary works like Black Swan (Aronofsky, 2010), The Babadook (Kent, 2014), and Saint Maud (Glass, 2020), which continue to grapple with the intersection of mental health and the societal pressures stereotypically ascribed to women. These portrayals underscore the enduring fascination and anxiety surrounding women’s emotional states and their potential for disruption.

But is this fascination a way to ‘other’ experiences that ought to be destigmatised? While bringing attention to the very real challenges women, queer, and non-binary people face regarding mental health and societal expectations, these portrayals also risk sensationalising their experiences. These stories create and perpetuate a societal narrative in which emotions are inherently dangerous or monstrous, causing them to be further condemned. These portrayals hold the potential to turn struggle into spectacle rather than fostering empathy and understanding.

Thankfully, as new voices emerge both in filmmaking and film analysis, we’re witnessing a shift in how we approach these trends: audiences are encouraged to connect with characters through their own personal experiences. Instead of simply observing these characters unravel, viewers are empowered to see themselves reflected in the characters’ struggles, a first step in dismantling the systems that create these constraints in the first place.

1: I have cultivated my hysteria with pleasure and terror.

The starting point of my journey in exploring hysteria in film was not with horror, but with romantic comedy.

There is a scene early on in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Edwards, 1961) where Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn) describes to a dumbfounded Paul Varjak (George Peppard) her feelings of disenfranchisement with her life and explains why it is in stasis. She calls it ‘the mean reds.’

‘The mean reds?’ Paul responds. ‘You mean like the blues?’

Without so much as a look in his direction, Holly retorts: ‘No. The blues are because you’re getting fat and maybe it’s been raining too long, you’re just sad that’s all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you’re afraid and you don’t know what you’re afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling?’

Audrey Hepburn’s portrayal of Holly is undeniably captivating. Even in moments of vulnerability, she retains a certain elegance, making her sadness seem almost enviable, a melancholic state adorned with pearls and little black dresses. The film doesn’t delve deeply into the practicalities or ugliness of Holly’s depression, instead presenting a sanitised version of emotional turmoil.

Her ‘mean reds’ become another layer of intrigue surrounding her. There’s a lack of exploration into the root causes of her anxieties, making them seem almost exotically fascinating rather than a symptom of a deeper issue. The film positions Holly’s emotional state as a quirky personality trait rather than a serious mental health concern. 

Holly’s emotional struggles are painted with a layer of glamour and mystery, presenting a one-dimensional view of mental health, neglecting the complexities and challenges that come with facing these issues. Taking into account the era the film was produced, when mental health was a stringently taboo subject, ‘the mean reds’ might have been a way to introduce audiences to hints of emotional struggle while keeping Holly’s lightness and quirk. However, by framing them solely through the lens of a privileged young woman, the film reduces mental health to a temporary inconvenience.

This romanticising of self-alienation became a constant in my life, from early adolescence to late adulthood. Holly’s description of the ‘mean reds’ seemed to perfectly encapsulate my own experiences with depression, and the shine I would put on things to appear externally stable. These emotions were not just transient sadnesses but profound, paralysing fears that left me feeling untethered and overwhelmed. For a while, the mean reds offered some definition for the inexplicable dread that seemed to swallow me whole at times.

Looking back, my teenage years were an emotional hurricane. The mean reds weren’t just occasional visitors; they were practically roommates, clinging to me the worst during my relationships. Back then, validation felt like the key to my happiness, and I craved it like a drug. This desperate need attached itself to whoever showed me the slightest bit of attention, leading to a string of intense adventures, ultimately becoming unhealthy relationships, mirroring the chaos in my head. The minute things got rocky, which they inevitably did, I felt like I was free falling. This cocktail of emotional dependence and inevitable heartbreak just made the depression dig its claws in deeper.

Food became both a source of comfort and a tool for control. On bad days, I would turn to food as a means of coping, seeking the instant gratification, the warm hug which I knew was temporary and would only lead to more self hatred. When things would get worse, food became the enemy. Every calorie felt like a burden, and I’d punish myself with severe restrictions, trying to control something, anything, in a life that felt like it was spiralling. This dichotomy—oscillating between overindulgence and extreme restraint—mirrored my broader struggles with anxiety and depression, my constant battle to find some kind of balance.

These experiences have set the stage for a deeper exploration of hysteria, not just as a historical or cinematic concept, but as a personal reality. Cinema has always been a powerful emotional outlet for me. While romantic comedies like Breakfast at Tiffany’s offered a more palatable way to relate my anxieties, it was the raw and unfiltered emotion of horror that resonated on a deeper level. Here, female characters weren’t expected to maintain a facade of composure. They screamed, they fought back, and they grappled with their fears in a way that felt refreshingly honest.

Seeing these characters wrestle with intense emotions on screen, especially those that mirrored my own struggles, gave me a strange sense of validation. It wasn’t just Holly Golightly’s mean reds I connected with. There was Carrie White in Carrie (De Palma, 1976), unable to control her telekinetic abilities due to the extreme bullying by her peers and her own mother; Regan MacNeil in The Exorcist (Friedkin, 1973), whose possession manifests as a violent and terrifying battle between good and evil; Angela Baker in Sleepaway Camp (Hiltzik, 1983), ostracised for her ‘otherness;’ Beverly Marsh in IT (Wallace, 1990), wrestling with childhood trauma whilst being relentlessly pursued by Pennywise the dancing clown…it was the possessed protagonists, the final girls facing down masked killers, and the women in all walks of life confronting, and at times, embracing the monstrous that I found true connection with. These portrayals allowed me to explore my own neurosis through a safe, separated lens. Through horror films, I could confront my anxieties head-on, processing them alongside the characters on screen. In the company of these fictional women, I began to understand and even cultivate a strange sense of power within my own emotional chaos.

2: Fucked and eaten alive by life itself.

There are three films that burned themselves into my memory, not just for their chilling portrayals of hysteria, but for the eerie way they mirrored what was happening in my own life at the time I came across them. Fatal Attraction (Lynne, 1987), Possession (Zulawski, 1981), and Trouble Every Day (Denis, 2001) became uncanny touchstones for my experiences.

Fatal Attraction, with its portrayal of obsessive rage, felt like a dark foreshadowing during a particularly messy relationship; Possession, with its nightmarish descent into madness, mirrored a period of intense anxiety in my marriage where everything felt like it was crumbling around me; Trouble Every Day, with its raw exploration of female rage, weirdly coincided with a time when I was starting to claim my own voice, but felt choked and unheard.

‘You know that I don’t ask for much’ – Trouble Every Day

I’m 15 years old and in the throes of my first breakup. Dad says if I keep stuffing my face like this, I’ll never have another boyfriend. His words are a curse, echoing every time I look in the mirror. I feel disgusted with myself, blaming my body for everything. So I stand over the sink, toothbrush in hand, like a weapon. I just want to feel in control, to feel like I’m doing something to fix what he says is broken inside me… 

Growing up, food always had a disproportionate place in my life. I careered between eating too much or starving myself—depending on what image was projected back to me by my parents. For me now, it’s easier to understand that their constant judgments and policing over my body and over my siblings stemmed from their own upbringing and emotional deprivations, but rationalising something doesn’t make the headfuck go away. Evolving in that environment meant my self-worth was inextricably linked to my dress size, with an ever-changing goalpost.

This warped perspective bled into my sexuality. Sex became a tool, a desperate bid for validation, mirroring the constant hunger for approval at home.

Whether I was secretly skipping meals, feeling a perverse sense of pride at the growling emptiness in my stomach, or jumping into bed with anyone, trying to satiate the ache to touch and be touched, the reward would never materialise. 

It’s a depressingly common narrative: women as vessels of restriction, constantly policing our bodies and desires. Count calories, withhold pleasure, and ensure your sexuality aligns with societal norms. Any deviation from this script is met with a chorus of shame. For far too long, I was a willing participant in this narrative, accomplice to a voice that constantly vomited a stream of self-hatred.

Then I saw Claire Denis’ Trouble Every Day in the early 2000s.

The film delves into the raw, primal desires of its protagonist. Coré (Béatrice Dalle) writhes with a desperate hunger, a yearning that manifests in a horrifying dance between predator and prey. Her cannibalistic acts become a grotesque reflection of an unfulfilled emotional need.

Denis keeps the narrative thinly sketched, instead focussing on graphic depictions of the feeding frenzies, reflecting the insatiable nature of Coré’s desires. Is it a hunger for love, for connection, or something more primal? The act of consuming serves as the central theme, speaking to the consuming nature of love and carnal desire, while also suggesting that perhaps modern society drives the inherent need to consume constantly for pleasure. 

While Coré’s actions are undeniably disturbing to witness, Denis invites us to consider the societal forces that have driven her to such extremes. Is she a monster, or a tragic reflection of repressed desire?

About the film and subsequent titles with a similar central theme, film and culture critic Cody Corrall writes: ‘these films flip the script on patriarchal ideologies that make up a lot of genre films—women who are powerless because they’re sexless or villainous because they’re promiscuous, for example—and instead champion women as barbaric, complicated monsters.’

Coré’s hunger mirrored, in a horrifying way, the gnawing emptiness I felt inside. Both of us consumed, but neither of us felt truly satiated. Coré’s unbridled hunger, however disturbing, seemed a more honest expression than the constant self-denial I practised.

Of course, while Coré’s actions are portrayed as uncontrollable and ultimately tragic, my journey has involved a continuous struggle for agency and self-awareness. The parallels in our experiences lie in the intensity of our desires and the ways in which we have sought to navigate our emotional landscapes. Trouble Every Day helped me understand that the shame I felt wasn’t inherent to my desires, but rather a result of internalising parental and societal expectations.

‘I can’t exist by myself because I’m afraid of myself, because I’m the maker of my own evil.’ – Possession

I’m 30 years old. It’s over, I know it. How long have I been here? Lying completely still in bed, I am grappling with the painful realisation that my marriage is disintegrating before my eyes. Conversations replaced by endless screaming fits. Each outburst is a raw, uncontrollable release of the guilt and regret that consume me. The knowledge that I am responsible. That I now stand alone in the ruins of what we once had. As per usual, my instinctive response is to hurt myself. Amidst this chaos, a close friend recommends I watch Possession. An uncut version of the film has recently been released on Blu-ray and there’s a buzz of excitement around the infamous former Video Nasty. My friend tells me ‘It will be a cathartic experience.’ 

Possession presents a surreal and psychologically complex portrayal of hysteria. It follows Anna (Isabelle Adjani) and her husband Mark (Sam Neill) as their marriage disintegrates in a series of bizarre and violent episodes. Anna’s hysteria is depicted through her disturbing physical transformations and her involvement with a monstrous, otherworldly entity. The film blurs the lines between psychological and supernatural horror to explore themes of identity, control, and the abject.

Anna’s identity crisis is central to the narrative, caught between her failing marriage to Mark and her disturbing affair with the entity. Her behaviour flips between extreme emotional outbursts and eerie calm, reflecting her fractured sense of self. This duality is a powerful depiction of how inner turmoil can manifest physically, leading to self-destruction that alienates those around us. 

Anna’s physical transformations in the film are a grotesque embodiment of her internal conflict. In one of the most iconic scenes, she suffers a violent, convulsive breakdown in a subway tunnel, her body contorting and writhing uncontrollably. This intense physical display is a powerful representation of how internal struggles can erupt into physical symptoms, something I deeply relate to, especially as my own marriage crumbled. Just like Anna’s contortions in the subway tunnel, I found myself lashing out in ways I never thought possible. Screaming uncontrollably to the point of having to be physically restrained; crying until I made myself violently sick just to escape the here and now. These were desperate attempts to control the emotional earthquake happening inside. The disconnect between how I felt internally and how I presented externally was jarring. Looking back, I think that maintaining my job through this was an incredible feat. I don’t believe for a second people at work couldn’t tell something was off, but nobody ever asked, which feels tragic itself. It’s as if I was sending a facsimile out in the world, a gentle version of myself that did not have needs, demands, or indeed, feelings. Like Helen, Anna’s doppelgänger in Possession, this public persona seemed spawned ‘from a place where evil seems easier to pinpoint because you can see it in the flesh.’ Hidden behind the walls of my house, I felt simultaneously like Anna and the creature she nurtures and hides from the world. 

Fed with self-hatred and resentment, harbouring internal demons that manifest in destructive ways when left unacknowledged. Grief and resentment manifested in my body in the shape of cysts. In a body-horror like twist of fate, one developed in my throat, solidifying all the things I couldn’t bring myself to say—and had to be removed surgically.

Like Anna, I found myself caught in cycles of self-destructive behaviour as I tried to exert some control over my emotions and my body. Apologies from both sides, when they finally came, were hollow echoes in the wreckage of our marriage. A part of me, like Anna, felt an emptiness where trust and love once resided.

And yet despite the bleakness of Possession, Anna’s raw, cathartic portrayal of identity dissolution offered a strange kind of solace. It showed me that even in the face of utter destruction, there was a possibility, however faint, of abandoning any self-determined image and evolving into something else.

‘You thought you could just walk into my life and turn it upside down without a thought for everyone but yourself.’ – Fatal Attraction

I’m 33 years old, and I find myself in a state of emotional turmoil. My phone lays among shattered glass smashed on the floor of my bedroom after I hurled it at the mirror in a fit of rage. He promised we would spend the day together, but he cancelled unceremoniously and now won’t even take my calls or respond to my messages and voice notes. The shards of the broken mirror call out to me: externalise what’s internalised. Show him how much it hurts. 

Fatal Attraction is a quintessential example of the ‘crazy woman’ trope in mainstream cinema. The film tells the story of Alex Forrest (Glenn Close), whose brief affair with Dan Gallagher (Michael Douglas) spirals into an obsessive and violent fixation. Alex’s descent into madness is marked by increasingly erratic and dangerous behaviour, embodying the archetype of the unhinged, vengeful woman. Her hysteria is depicted as both a personal pathology and a societal warning against the dangers of female sexuality and autonomy.

I do not remember how old I was when I first watched Fatal Attraction, and so I struggle to think of a time when I was not familiar with the story, or rather with the unsubtle bias about women the film carries. However, I recall with visceral precision the moment I rewatched it as an adult and the injustice I felt on behalf of Alex Forrest.

When she tries to convince Dan to stay at the end of their weekend together, Alex is immediately coded as unhinged, unstable, and manipulative: first, she berates him for wanting to leave shortly after they have had sex. ‘I don’t think I like this,’ she says in a passive-aggressive manner, before going on the offensive and telling him that she would respect him more if he told her plainly to ‘just fuck off then,’ which he does, resulting in screams and outrage from Alex. As Dan scrambles to gather his belongings and make a swift exit, Alex is framed at her bedroom door, pleading sweetly with him to ‘say goodbye nicely,’ before slitting her own wrists when he finally lets go of her embrace.

I cannot be alone in thinking that Alex’s sense of desperation, though violently and horrifically rendered, is uncomfortably relatable. 

From where Dan is standing, it is clear that Alex has lost her head for him, his magnetism so undeniable she cannot bear for him to be taken away from her. However, subjectivity matters here. The filmmakers present the scene through Dan’s eyes. What about all the disappointments that have led Alex to this moment? All the bad dates, failed relationships, and devastating breakups she endured to finally meet someone with whom she had what she felt was a connection? In society’s eyes, particularly in the often unyielding stringency of 1980’s gender roles, to be single is to be ‘lacking.’ To me, this reflects the intense, destructive nature of obsession and the desperate need for connection in a world that often seems indifferent.

Alex’s subsequent apology for her erratic behaviour is portrayed as ominous from Dan’s point of view: she turns up at his office unannounced, doe-eyed and clad in a black leather wrap-up coat with era-defining shoulder pads. She says she’s sorry, but she’s obviously back for more. He’s everything, she’s just a single woman.

The same scene presented from Alex’s point of view would surely tell a different story. Fresh from a suicide attempt, it takes a lot of guts to show up and own up to it, regardless of your agenda or motivations. Despite being dismissed as a ‘homewrecker’ throughout, it is worth noting that every chance she gets (until the narrative escalates to grotesque proportions), Alex backs off and doesn’t follow through with her threats to ‘tell the wife.’ She calls their landline and puts the phone down when Beth (Anne Archer), said wife, answers. Later, Alex pretends to be a potential buyer for their city apartment. When Dan confronts her about it, she simply exclaims that she had no other choice as he refused to see her anymore or take her calls. 

To say I relate to Alex’s rage is an understatement. Watching her, I see reflections of my own obsession with past partners and the relational dynamics that have played out in my life. The film paints Alex as the villain, but it also unwittingly exposes the deeper societal issues at play: the unrealistic expectations placed on women, the emotional labour endured at the hands of people with false and manipulative intentions, and the consequences of those pressures.

Lest we forget, Alex is actually pregnant with Dan’s child, and much of the ‘horror’ in the film stems from her insistence on her own reproductive autonomy. She refuses to get an abortion despite Dan’s demands, which oddly gives the film a stronger, more overt pro-abortion stance than more recent releases like Juno or Knocked Up, while also reminding him that he was an equal partner in the decision to cheat on his wife. It takes a considerable amount of time before she spirals into a ‘bunny boiler,’ a term born from the film’s popularity and alluding to the scene in which Alex boils alive a pet rabbit belonging to Dan’s daughter. However, it seems the audience is meant to be equally horrified by Alex’s actions such as calling a guy the day after you hook up with him as we are by boiled animals.

What Alex wants is retribution; for Dan to ‘live up to his responsibilities,’ as she clearly communicates when he comes to her apartment to threaten her: to leave him alone, else he will take action. When she doesn’t back down, he violently attacks, pinning her against the wall and strangling her. Tell me again, why are we supposed to root for him?

Male audiences at the time were both scared and fascinated by Glenn Close’s portrayal of the ‘psychotic mistress.’ Could this fascination be because Alex embodies certain fears about infidelity’s consequences and the unpredictability of female behaviour? With this in mind, it is telling that the ending of the film was rewritten to have Dan’s wife, Beth, fatally shoot Alex, instead of Alex taking her own life. The decision was made, according to studio executives, to provide a more ‘satisfying and conclusive resolution for audiences.’ While this ultimate triumph of the nuclear family clearly caters to male viewers, there is also an argument to view this choice as a way to send a message to all women, regardless of their marital status: this is what could happen if/when women feel entitled to ‘too much.’ As Darlene Chan, a 20th Century Fox vice president, puts it: ‘Fatal Attraction is the psychotic manifestation of the Newsweek marriage study.’ ‘Too Late for Prince Charming?,’ the study Chan refers to here, was a cover story in Newsweek magazine published in 1986. The magazine reported on a study that indicated college-educated women over the age of 40 had a less than 3 percent chance of getting married—leading to a famous assertion that women over 40 were ‘more likely to be killed by a terrorist than to find a mate.’

The original ending, where Alex commits suicide and frames Dan for her death, was deemed too ambiguous and unsatisfying in test screenings. Viewers, particularly heterosexual men, wanted a sense of justice and retribution against the ‘crazy woman,’ with an ending that ‘restored the moral order’ by allowing the wronged wife to eliminate the threat and protect her family. As Susan Faludi puts it in her feminist classic Backlash, ‘in the anonymity of the dark theatre, male moviegoers could slip into a dream state where it was permissible to express deep-seated resentments and fears about women.’

Fatal Attraction became more than just a thriller; it became a cultural flashpoint, revealing anxieties about gender roles and the complexities of female desire and agency. It would be more than a stretch to credit Fatal Attraction for directly influencing the deeper explorations of these themes in contemporary horror cinema, but it is certainly part of a legacy that has led to more films aimed at opening up this conversation. From a personal standpoint, the reevaluation of Alex Forrest as a character wronged and failed by the inherent misogyny of her storyline feels like a form of vindication, a badge reading ‘I am not going to be ignored’ (if you know, you know).

‘It doesn’t hurt…’ Anna, Possession.

I’m 39. I sit here, cocooned in the familiar quiet of my home, and the idea of dredging up the past is a bitter pill to swallow. It’s a world away from those days when the label ‘emotionally unstable’ was casually tossed my way, as if it were a simple diagnosis rather than a complex, lived experience. Still the question lingers: what does it mean to be a ‘crazy woman?’

Control, liberation, identity, and alienation are central themes in the women of Fatal Attraction, Trouble Every Day, and Possession, to name but a few of the ‘neurotic woman’ archetype. These characters have helped me understand my own past behaviours and fueled deeper explorations into unhealthy habits. Through their struggles, I see reflections of my battles with obsession, anguish, and self-image. Their stories illuminate the complex interplay between desire and destruction, showing how the quest for control can lead to both confinement and the desperate pursuit of freedom.

Hysteria serves as both a cage and a cathartic release for women and other traditionally marginalised groups, encapsulating the struggle between societal expectations and personal liberation. These films provide a therapeutic outlet, allowing us to confront and process our own emotional upheavals. Through their narratives, we can gain insight into destructive patterns and find a framework for understanding and managing inner turmoil.

My journey is not unlike that of the majority of women I know. This is certainly not a comforting thought, but it makes sharing easier, and self-reflection all the more necessary. Because, in the end, the label of ‘crazy’ I refer to is less about clinical diagnosis and more about a societal tool used to control, silence, and further repress. It’s time to reclaim that narrative. Through open dialogue, shared experiences, and a critical examination of these cinematic portrayals, we can begin to dismantle the stigma surrounding emotion and pave the way for a future where difficult emotions can be expressed freely, without fear of judgement.