What’s The Scariest Element Of Horror Film?

Movies that force you to use your imagination are much more effective because they make your mind wander to all sorts of crazy places. And it is my belief that our imagination is capable of creating something much more scary than anything you can actually see. A recent example that I have seen is the movie Session 9, which is about an asbestos crew working at an abandoned insane asylum. There are only a couple gory scenes, and very few jump scares throughout the film. The eerie tone is created just by the background music, and by long tracking shots down dark hallways. The film succeeds not by forcing scares, but instead by getting into your head.

One of the scariest moments of the film is when one of the crew members finds a series of tapes of a doctor talking to his patient, which were recorded back when the asylum was still operating. Hearing the patient’s voice, and listening to the implications of what she says, is to me much more frightening than actually seeing her on camera. My mind pictured what this person must look like, and the image in my head is what made me unsettled, even after the movie had ended.

Horror films that mostly focus on blood and gore or special effects might be effective in their own way, especially if made by the right director. Yet, they still do not scare me nearly as much as a psychological horror film would, such as Session 9. It is often what you don’t see that is the most terrifying.

While most cinemas are packed with what has become known as ‘cattle-prod horror,’ the true horror classics creep under the skin because they rely on slow-building tension that chills you to the core. A key example springs to mind that mastered the slow suspense of true horror: the ending sequence from Silence of the Lambs where the viewer looks through the eyes of the killer in the pitch-black as he is stalking Clarice Starling. The POV technique is scary enough, but what the film does so well is take its delightful time letting the audience writhe in unpleasant anticipation. Blood, gore, and spooks all entertain when done well, but it is this that stays with you the longest after the film has concluded.

Yash Bhatia – Perfectly Placed Sounds

Whenever there is a discussion on this genre, I compulsively begin with the Holy Grail quote on this by the master. Mr. Alfred Hitchc*ck had rightly said, “There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.”

This is particularly relevant today because most horror films are disgusting and sloppy instead of thrilling or scary. They up the gore and violence content and dial down on the classic horror elements. My answer to this question is: the perfectly placed sounds in a horror movie scare the hell out of me. And James Wan‘s film The Conjuring did it best.

Sitting quietly in a dark theater while the screen shows the image of a child walking down a corridor is an unnerving experience in The Conjuring, because it immediately increases the creep factor by putting the lashing of thunder against the windowpane at the perfect time. Same is the case with the cinematography: a girl checks underneath her bed for monsters and the frame goes upside down. In those beautifully crafted moments, I was scared out of my wits.

Jay Ledbetter – The Unprovoked Villain

I should begin by saying that I am generally not a fan of traditional horror movies. I don’t like being scared for the sake of being scared. However, there are times that horror movies do something original or creative that can suck me in; films like The Shining and Suspiria spring to mind. But the film that has scared me more than any other is The Strangers. The Strangers stays far away from the cheap pop-out scares and manipulative smash cuts that you see in so many of today’s horror movies. Instead, the movie utilizes long takes with the terrifying antagonists looming in the background, unseen by the film’s tormented couple. The lighting in the film is terrifically executed. The terrifying hooded villains emerge from the dark so calmly and casually. They know that they are in control at all times. It is a slow burn of a horror movie, with an omnipresent threat of violence providing a refreshing reprieve from the bloody affairs of so many of its counterparts.

What scares me the most in horror movies is a villain or set of villains with no true motive. These baddies do what they do for the thrill of it. They aren’t crazy. They aren’t vengeful. Instead, they just seem to be bored. And because of this they will string their victims along, always meandering in the background, knowing they have the upper hand. Why did the hooded figures in The Strangers decide to torment their victims? “Because you were home,” they explain. That’s as scary as it gets.

Shane Bliss – Domestic Terror

Although movies involving supernatural elements can often be frightening, there is nothing that scares me more than a horror film that involves domestic terror. These are the films that typically involve normal people facing horrific events in “safe” places like their homes. In many cases, these people are just young babysitters or teens minding their own business until someone invades a safe place.

No film captures this better than the original When A Stranger Calls. The film does drop off in quality after the opening, but the opening 20 minutes are some of the most terrifying moments in film history. As the babysitter continues to receive menacing phone calls, the terror gets ratcheted up because of the domestic setting. Every dark corner of a normal house is possibly dangerous. The tension is such that even showing the phone when it’s not ringing adds to the suspense.

It works because it is domestic and realistic. Horror films like that connect to us because these are situations we could find ourselves. These are the films that stick with you, and make you a little uneasy when you’re alone in the dark.

Jeff Peterson – Being Blindsided

A horror movie that actually scares me these days is like the Holy Grail. Ever since one particularly messed up experience with a Takashi Miike film when I was about 14 (I watched a copy of Audition that had been mislabeled as a romantic comedy), nothing has quite done it for me, at least when it comes to movies. Horror video games? Ha, yeah right. I’m a total pansy. But movies leave me cold.

To a large degree, I think it’s because the whole concept of horror – a safe environment to explore things that scare us – hinges on very specific conventions. Just going into a horror movie, you already kind of know what it will entail, at least in broad terms. There’s a contract between filmmaker and audience – certain people are, generally speaking, safe; certain elements will or won’t make an appearance, depending on the subgenre; and due partially to the limitations of the medium, everything basically boils down to a question of physical pain and how much of it characters will endure before they either do or don’t die. Even when movies do try to diverge from the formula, they do it in pretty predictable ways.

Frankly, one of the scariest things I’ve seen recently was from an episode of Game of Thrones – the big Season 4 duel, for those of you who have watched it. George R.R. Martin and Co. have a reputation for messing with audiences, but this one still took me by surprise and, actually, left me kind of shaken. Fantasy doesn’t have the same kinds of expectations, and I felt like Game of Thrones had, for a brief, jarring moment, violated its contract with the audience in terms of how it dealt with a character who, one episode before, seemed to have been set up as the closest thing in the series to a clear-cut hero.

So, for lack of a better way to explain it, I’d say the only thing that can still scare me in horror is being completely blindsided by something.  It’s a tall order for a genre so based in cliché. [Rec] is perhaps the best example of how to do it, though. What could have just been a really solid found-footage outbreak movie completely changes direction in the last 20 minutes with one of the best horror movie endings ever put on film, in my opinion. Still didn’t freak me out the way Audition did all those years ago, but it was a nice reminder of how it feels to not know what to expect next.

Kim Gamble – Childhood Fears

Monkeys and aliens.  These are my two biggest fears from childhood. Scary movies themselves usually don’t bother me. Sure, the occasional jump scare will have me screaming, but it quickly wears off. A frightening face here and there will stick with me for a while, too. (One of my favorites for its haunting images is Grave Encounters.)

But my (maybe irrational) fear of monkeys and aliens thrives above all else. I saw a movie when I was very young called Monkey Shines. My mom and dad wouldn’t let me watch it with them, so I remember sitting at the top of the stairs, hiding so they didn’t know I was there! But that night, I had to crawl into bed with them because of the scary tiny monkey and his evil little face!!

After trying to watch that film now, I laugh because it’s such a terrible, slow-moving story. But that killer monkey will stick with me for life. I had trouble watching the newest Dawn of the Planet of the Apes because of Koba. I shiver at the thought of him holding a rifle.

My other fear – aliens – I’m pretty sure spawned from watching the X-Files at a young age. My dad usually had on all the scary shows and movies, and they intrigued me even more because I wasn’t “allowed” to watch them. Signs was especially unnerving because it brought to fruition one of my biggest worries as a child – what would happen if the earth was invaded? The first time I watched the scene where the local news played the amateur video from a children’s birthday party, I must have jumped ten feet. My fiancé thinks I’m nuts, but Signs scared me more than most other films when I first saw it in theaters because it seemed so real.

(top image source: The Exorcist – Warner Bros.)