There’s a difference between scares and startling. Most people want scares. I like both personally, but I can definitely appreciate those that really don’t like being startled. It triggers some intense emotions and is a cheap trick most of the time.
They can have a little jump scare, as a treat. But it better not be all you got.
Personally, I’m partial to a slow burn horror movies. I don’t mind jumpscares if they serve a purpose other than to startle you. For example in Hereditary, one of the jump scares is the mom driving alone in her car and she hears her dead daughter make her signature mouth click sound. That startles you, but also lets you know the daughter may not be gone. As opposed to a generic jumpscare like a cat jumping out of a window with a dramatic music sting.
My all-time favorite horror movie technique is a lingering camera after the dialogue and characters leave. Like even if they don’t show anything it makes me uneasy. I don’t know what that’s called but it’s so good if the director does it right.
“There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.”
Alfred Hitchcock
Hereditary was also so good at having scary, weird things in the background. Instead of having a music sting to accentuate them, it leaves it to the viewer to notice something creeping in the shadows and I find that more effective at building dread.
I once saw a horror movie that had scary, weird, subtle things in the foreground. For example, the main one I remember was early in the movie, when it was still keeping the viewer in suspense about whether anything supernatural was happening; in that scene the camera panned across an area and the silhouette of a ghost was right up front, but easy to miss. It’s the only movie I can recall doing that; I was watching the movie with my then-girlfriend and she didn’t even see it until I rewound to show her.
I can’t remember the name of the movie, I’ll have to ask my now-wife, but it was quite good.
edit: Actually managed to remember on my own. It was The Awakening.
I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives In The House was really, really good at this… although, maybe, not much else.
The Last Will & Testament Of Rosalind Lee did it really well too.
The Murmuring is a really good slow burn horror piece.
Thanks for this, I don’t think I’ve seen either of those. Gonna have to check them out.
You may like The Witch.
Oh yeah, The Witch was great. Period piece horror can be hit or miss, but that one hit it out of the park for me.
Jump scares are a bit like added public laughs on sitcoms, if you need them to make it work then probably is mediocre…
This is a really good joke.
Some people like to be tickled and would even pay for it. No problem with that. Perhaps we need a new genre or subgenre name?
I 100% agree. The most scared I have ever been watching a horror film in the theater was when I saw The Others. No jump scares, just building dread, knowing that something is going to happen that is going to scare me. My knuckles were white.
That is a wonderful movie, but there’s at least one jump scare that I can recall (when the old lady opens the cabinet near the end) and it’s been at least a decade since I saw it.
Agreed on every other point, though.
Side note: As I write this, my toddler is laying beside me and started breathing deeply, reminding me of the “stop breathing!” scene, which was fantastically done. I should watch that movie again.
I think you’re right, but I’ll forgive it the one jump scare.
The Cable Guy is the scariest film I know.
My favorite is when you can see some shit happening in the background, usually blurry and out of focus.
I could take or leave jump scares if they aren’t the whole thing, I just don’t have great night vision so when a director thinks dark=scary I just end up watching a black screen with sfx and music, at least one of the home movies in Sinister and some of the later scenes was that I couldn’t see any detail at all just a flat black screen. It was really disappointing after so much great tension building in the first half.
