Exposure therapy is a method of treatment targeted toward anxiety disorders. It works by exposing the patient to the source of their anxiety in a non-threatening environment in order to desensitize them to it. This is exactly what has happened to ghost movies over the past few decades. There are tropes that define nearly every entry in the genre and cause them to all be nearly identical save for a different mentally perturbed damsel in distress. Some of these tropes include, but are not limited to; prolonged silences filled with swelling string music as the protagonist wanders through a dark room, footprints appearing on the floor without any corporeal form attached to them, children talking to ghosts, children drawing disturbing pictures of themselves and said ghosts, and certain areas of creepy old houses being off limits to the protagonist. The Turning falls victim to all of these tropes and then some.
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