The Unknowable Intention: Desire Is a Demon

Thacker’s Types of Worlds in relation to horror: 

1. Pagan horror, such as Wicker Man, The Witch, and Midsommer, are the horror of the World-for-Us because pagan techne is for the instrumentalization of the world. In Pagan religious praxis the spiritual realm is studied to transact with according to the intentions of the practitioner. From the perspective of Demonology, which is how the Christian Church viewed pagan praxis, demons were identified by name to bind them for a transactional intention. However, once summoned, demons often were able to trade their binding for the binding of the summoner. The mythological structure of the Faustian Bargain reveals this reversal in which obtaining the demon’s favor exacts a high price. 
2. The Horror of the unknowable intention of the Other explored in narrative troupes such as the “Slasher” or demonic possession is the horror of the World-In-Itself. The world of the unknowable other withdraws from us as the enigma of Being-In-Itself. This is the same enigma as that of the Being-for-Itself of Heidegger's Present-at-Hand intention, but the Other’s intention withdraws from subjective intention in a sinister manner in the Horror genre because the paradox of intentional ambiguity appears as the threat of desire’s inherent unknowability. It is not just unclear what motivates Jason Vorhees or Michael Myers to kill, it is unknowable. This unknowability is the horror of the “in-itself” of desire’s eternal withdrawal from the intention. When this indeterminacy shifts from the external Other to the internalized Other of the voice from within, the question shifts from “What does the Other want from me?” to “What does the Other who speaks as me want?”. This internalization of unintentional desire is ultimately the reason why the desire of the Other is unknowable i.e.: the Other’s desire is also unknowable to himself. Jason Vorhees and Michael Myers also don’t know why they do what they do, even though the narratives of both include various versions of “Origin Stories.” Origin Stories may go some way to suggesting the Slasher’s intentions but offer no final or definitive account of the ambiguous excess of his desire. The demonic possession narrative simply conveys the unknowability of the desire of the Other to the ambiguity of the desire within. The intention of the Other withdraws from the subjective intention in the same way that the subject withdraws from itself as the subjective unconscious, which is why the unconscious is the fount of all horror. 
3. The Cosmic horror of no-intention is most associated with HP Lovecraft. The end of entropy is not the unintentional relations of chaos but the total absence of relations. Cosmic Horror such as Stephen King’s The Mist or Lovecraft’s The Color out of Space present the absence of intention as what cannot be brought into relation with the subjective intention. This is not the unknowability of intention, nor the negation of intention, but the before and beyond of both.