Faux Horror Film

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This is where a film is advertised as a Horror film, but there is no horror. The supernatural elements, monsters, aliens, psycho killers, etc., are a ruse of some kind. Frequently, the heroes just turn out to be schizophrenic or overly paranoid.

Compare Through the Eyes of Madness, where the hero's paranoia is the horror. See also Scooby-Doo Hoax.

Could also overlap with Doing In the Wizard.

WARNING LIKELY SPOILERS BELOW!

Examples of Faux Horror Film include:

Anime and Manga

• The first chapter of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, Rena and Mion don't want to kill Keiichi.

Film

• This was a major trend in the early American talking pictures; nearly every horror featured the ghosts and ghoulies explained away at the end. It took the one-two punch of Dracula and Frankenstein to knock the genre out of it.
• April Fools Day
• Bug
• Catacombs
• Cry Wolf (for the most part)
• Donnie Darko qualifies as this. Definitely creepy, but never outright horror, despite every poster and trailer of this movie making it look like a slasher with a bunny serial killer.
• Hide and Seek
• Session 9.
• Scooby Doo - Though subverted in the animated and live action films, in which the monsters are actually real.
• The Village
• Likewise for the horror movie Shrooms, although its also a case of Tomato Surprise.
• The Uninvited (2009) is a perfect example of this trope. Turns out there is no ghost, no monster, the step mother is not a crazy psycho murderer. Emily Browning's character is just nutso.
• Possible Trope Maker: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
• Stay (2005)
• Obscure 80's horror film The Slayer. After the protagonists are picked off one by one without a monster ever showing up it was pretty obvious one of them is the killer, probably via Tomato Surprise. In fact Kay (the Final Girl) is almost set up this way, Until the actual Slayer monster thing shows up at the front door during the last few seconds of the film. The appearance of an actual monster was jarring, since people expected there was none. Although among the small cult following it's highly debated whether or not the monster was real due to the Mind Screw nature of the flick
• Played straight then subverted in the Thai horror film Who Are You.
• The Last Exorcism Played this cynically straight. Until the last 5 minutes or so, where it fantastically subverts this. Turning it into Real After All. Likely the main reason for it's Critical Dissonance.
• Shutter Island
• Volver, a rather hilarious (and sad) example.
• Black Swan
• The Last Horror Film
• Lost Signal