Why Are Some Scary Movies Scarier Than Others?
May 2, 2011Horror films are movies in which the goal is to terrify, shock, or illicit feelings of disgust from the watching audience. They have been around since the late eighteen hundreds and sometimes overlap with other genres such as thriller. The term “horror” can be used to describe all kinds of different movies from ones involving ghosts to ones about murderers. What makes some scary movies scarier than others is often hard to gage as well.
The first movies of this type were the silent films about cursed locations and demons in the early 1900s. The first ever film version of Frankenstein by Mary Shelly was released in 1910 and was successful in scaring both North American and European audiences. Back then, the majority of the horror movies were produced and made in Germany, who, early on, had cornered the horror market effectively. American filmmakers, by the thirties, started jumping into the game with works such as Frankenstein, Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde, and Dracula.
Different things scare different people but the producers and directors of the early twenties and thirties quickly discovered that factors such as eerie sound effects, suspense, and sudden plot twists were much more effective at frightening people than bloody guts and scary monsters.
Perhaps the greatest contribution to the horror genre was made by the world famous writer and director, Alfred Hitchcock. Throughout his long and successful career, he pioneered numerous techniques and methods that are still used in suspense and psychological films today. Hitchcock is considered to be one of the best directors in the world with most of his fifty feature films being considered absolute classics.
Hitchcock’s most famous early movie, “Shadow of a Doubt” is also one of the original psychological thrillers and the man himself’s personal favorite. The film was so culturally relevant that it was selected to be included in a National Film Registry so its scary dialogue, well developed characters, and suspenseful camera angles could be viewed and studied by film fans for years to come.
“Rear Window”, “Strangers on a Train”, “Vertigo”, and his other most well known projects were completed in the fifties. Each one of them showcased the director’s natural ability to use well placed spooky music, emotionally unstable characters, and intelligent plots to frighten an audience.
Although monsters like Godzilla and King Kong are pretty scary, many of the industry’s most frightening thriller and horror films are ones in which the antagonist or ‘monster’ is never actually seen. “Rosemary’s Baby” did a great job with this by avoiding showing the demonic baby which is mentioned and alluded to throughout the movie. Other films such as “The Blair Witch Project” and “Jaws” use this technique as well. By not showing something, directors could ultimately force the audience to fear it even more.
Another popular and effective technique involves the placement and type of music that a scary movie uses. Sometimes a film’s soundtrack is the most powerful factor when it comes to frightening or shocking people. While they may not have realized it at the time, the audiences who watched “Jaws” were kept on the edge of their seats by the movie’s infamous score.
If you like watching scary movies then why not play scary games? There are many free scary games that can be played online like the scary maze game.
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