Sanity Not Included
If you’ve ever thought, “You know what I need? A slow, joyless, confusing British horror film starring Charisma Carpenter having a nervous breakdown in an ugly house,” then Psychosis (2010) is the movie for you—and possibly the last one you’ll ever watch before switching to cartoons for good.
Directed and written by Reg Traviss (who seems to have confused direction with hoping for the best), Psychosis is a remake of an obscure segment from the 1983 horror anthology Screamtime. Unfortunately, it plays less like a modern update and more like someone tried to adapt a fever dream into a BBC drama. It’s part haunted house story, part mental illness metaphor, and part I really wish I were watching literally anything else.
Prologue: Eco-Terrorists Die, Audience Prepares
The film opens in 1992 with a group of anarchists—yes, anarchists—camping in the woods to “save wildlife.” Nothing says radical environmentalism like drinking beer and loudly declaring revolution next to a pile of dead leaves. Within five minutes, they’re brutally murdered by a mysterious maniac wielding a shotgun and a bad attitude.
This opening massacre is supposed to be shocking and gritty. Instead, it’s confusing and dimly lit, like an old episode of EastEnders directed by someone who just learned what a fog machine does. You can’t tell who’s dying, why they’re dying, or why you should care. But that’s okay, because neither can the film.
Fast Forward Fifteen Years (and Downhill From There)
We jump to 2007, where Susan (Charisma Carpenter) and her husband David (Paul Sculfor) move into the countryside. Susan’s a successful crime novelist with trauma, insomnia, and possibly the worst real estate agent in England. David is the kind of man whose smile looks like a prelude to betrayal.
Their new home? The same property where the anarchists died. Because when you’ve had a nervous breakdown, what better therapy than buying a murder house with your cheating husband?
From the moment Susan arrives, she’s plagued by visions: corpses in bathtubs, bloody anarchists in hallways, and a lurking gamekeeper named Peck (Ricci Harnett), who appears to have been hired solely to provide unwanted sexual tension and rural sleaze. Peck watches her, stalks her, and, in one particularly grim turn, assaults her—because apparently, the script needed a reason for audiences to hate literally everyone.
When Ghosts Are Less Scary Than the Lighting
Let’s be clear: Psychosis is supposed to be a supernatural thriller. But the scariest thing about it is how committed it is to dull beige interiors and murky lighting. Half the movie looks like it was shot through a damp napkin.
Every “scare” follows the same rhythm: Susan walks down a hallway. The music hums ominously. She sees something weird. It vanishes. Repeat. It’s less The Shining and more Mildly Annoyed House Guests: The Movie.
At one point, a psychic shows up to declare, with great seriousness, that “spirits walk this land.” It’s the film’s attempt at exposition, but it lands like a weather report. Even the ghosts seem bored to be there.
Charisma Carpenter, Doing the Lord’s Work
Let’s pause here to acknowledge Charisma Carpenter. She’s the reason Psychosis isn’t a total write-off. She commits, body and soul, to playing Susan as a woman teetering between fragile sanity and full-blown breakdown. She emotes through long takes of nothingness, reacting to invisible ghosts and invisible logic.
She even manages to make us care, a little, about Susan’s spiral into madness—no small feat given the dialogue she’s saddled with. Lines like “It’s happening again!” and “There’s blood… everywhere!” make you wish she’d just start monologuing about her old Buffy days instead.
But despite her best efforts, Carpenter can’t elevate a script that treats trauma like set decoration. The film’s approach to mental illness is: “What if she’s crazy? Or what if ghosts are real? Or what if the writer forgot which?”
Spoiler: it’s probably the last one.
The Men of Psychosis: A Parade of Terrible Choices
If the film’s supernatural element doesn’t unsettle you, the men definitely will. David, the husband, spends most of the runtime “away on business”—which we quickly learn is code for “cheating with someone who has better lighting.” He’s smarmy, detached, and only returns to the plot when it’s time to cash in on his wife’s misery.
Then there’s Peck, the gamekeeper-slash-pervert. He starts as a creep, escalates to a rapist, and somehow still gets more screen time than the ghost. By the time Susan accidentally kills him (because who wouldn’t), you’re practically cheering.
There’s also a priest, a psychic, and a few random side characters who wander in, deliver exposition, and promptly vanish—possibly because even the ghosts were tired of them.
The Big Twist: Sanity Schmanity
After a prolonged sequence of screaming, stabbing, and flashbacks that could double as an art school project called Confusion in Motion, Susan is locked in a psychiatric hospital. Everyone assumes she killed Peck in a psychotic break, and David wastes no time turning her trauma into profit.
Yes, you heard that right: her new bestseller is based on her hallucinations, and David cashes in while she’s institutionalized. It’s capitalism with a body count.
But wait! In true horror fashion, there’s a final twist: Susan’s visions were real all along! The killer from the prologue—who apparently survived, got incarcerated, and escaped—is back, murdering David in the exact house she was “imagining.”
So, the ghosts were prophetic, Susan wasn’t crazy, and the moral of the story is… what, exactly? Never trust your husband? Don’t move into houses with anarchist ghosts? Don’t watch this movie?
All of the above, really.
A Million-Dollar Budget and Not a Penny Spent on Logic
It’s hard to believe Psychosis cost $1 million. Was it spent on fog machines? Ghost extras? Peck’s collection of filthy hats? Because it certainly wasn’t spent on coherent writing.
The pacing is glacial, the scares are recycled, and the editing is so disjointed it feels like the film itself is having a nervous breakdown. Scenes don’t end—they simply dissolve out of shame. The musical score alternates between “mournful violin” and “someone leaned on a keyboard.”
Even the ghosts look embarrassed to be haunting this house. One of them actually apologizes with their eyes before disappearing again.
The Horror of Missed Potential
The tragedy of Psychosis is that it could have worked. The premise—a writer losing her grip on reality in a haunted house—is classic Gothic fodder. In the right hands, it might have been a stylish psychological horror in the vein of The Othersor The Innocents.
Instead, it’s an endurance test for viewers and actors alike. The tone wobbles between serious drama and straight-to-DVD pulp, and the result is a movie that’s never scary enough to be horror or smart enough to be psychological.
Final Diagnosis
Watching Psychosis feels like being gaslit by a movie. It keeps insisting something profound is happening while you sit there, numb, waiting for a plot to materialize. By the end, you’re not sure whether Susan lost her mind or you did.
Charisma Carpenter deserves better. Horror fans deserve better. Even the ghosts deserve better—they’ve been haunting this script since 1983 and still can’t find closure.
Final Grade: D
A movie about insanity that makes you question your own for watching it. Not scary, not smart—just psychotic in the wrong ways.
