What makes a movie scary?

[stephan_jenkins]

what do you guys think makes a movie scary?

me and my buddy might write a horror script and i was wondering what yall thought made a good scary movie.

[ScaryGary]

atmosphere.

all-together the story and all doesn't really matter. I mean...you can make the most innocent children's show eerie, with the right atmosphere.

play Dead Space. a great example.

[Monkmaster]

Music/scoring plays a big part.

[Mantikore]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3537938.stm

an old article. im sceptical about it though

[BornToKill]

Films are scariest I find when you can imagine the situation happening to yourself, and so the setting has to be a place evryone can recognise and relate to, so not like a space ship, but that's just my opinion

[Dfg]

Background Music/Score plus some epic climax scenes and the scenes should be realistic as much as possible, like in Final Fantasy 1 etc.

[johnplywd]

surprise. when something happens totally unexpected

[Kwinnie Bogan]

^Fuck no. That shit ruined horror.

[Monkmaster]

^Fuck no. That shit ruined horror.

Agreed. Surprise is either inevitable or not necessary at all. It's the suspenseful atmosphere before/after a surprise; that is, if a surprise is warranted in the first place.

[Fish]

Being startled =/= being scared.

I'm not saying that scary movies should never have startling moments, but it's really unfortunate when you watch through a horror movie and later realize that it was never actually scary, but that they just relied on making shit jump out at you. Suspense and genuine horror is what gives horror movies their fangs, not just a "boo!" moment that any jackass with a camera could have pulled off.

As Hitchcock once explained:
The element of suspense is giving [the audience] information.
You and I are sitting here . . . . suddenly a bomb goes off and up we go, blown to smithereens. What have the audience had while watching this scene? Five or ten seconds of shock. Now we do the scene over again, it's a five minute scene. You and I are talking about football, something very innocuous, but the audience are informed by a method unknown to us that there's a bomb under the table and it's going to go off in five minutes.
Now this innocuous conversation about football becomes very potent. "Don't talk about football, there's a bomb under there", that's what they want to tell us, as the bomb ticks away...

[Mankonaut X]

Being startled =/= being scared.

I'm not saying that scary movies should never have startling moments, but it's really unfortunate when you watch through a horror movie and later realize that it was never actually scary, but that they just relied on making shit jump out at you. Suspense and genuine horror is what gives horror movies their fangs, not just a "boo!" moment that any jackass with a camera could have pulled off.

As Hitchcock once explained:

Damn right dude. Attaching importance to seemingly mundane things is a time-honoured way to scare audiences. There's a good wiki article on it but I forget what the actual name is, my bad. See the video from the original Japanese Ring movie for an example. I don't get what any of the crap in it means but it damn well looks like it had some special meaning. It's also one of the few times a movie has ever really had me in fear as opposed to being frightened.

[Mister B]

atmosphere.


Being startled =/= being scared.

I'm not saying that scary movies should never have startling moments, but it's really unfortunate when you watch through a horror movie and later realize that it was never actually scary, but that they just relied on making shit jump out at you. Suspense and genuine horror is what gives horror movies their fangs, not just a "boo!" moment that any jackass with a camera could have pulled off.

As Hitchcock once explained:

These.

Jump scares work, but they do not last. You have to get under the skin of an audience buy building suspense and atmosphere is a huge help.

[Fish]

http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Creepypasta <-- all of the pictures here are pretty much scary. And none of them had to jump out at me to do it.

[---Beany---]

Deep primordial fears expressed as hallucinations or paranoia, or manifest as a monster.
Although in our dreams and imagination our fears expressed as monsters are experienced in different forms which is why "Seeing less" is better for monster films as we can experience our own personal monsters that way. The only problem is "seeing less" has almost already become a cliche.

The other kind of monster films are the ones where we do see the monsters but since they are alien they keep that "fear of the unknown" feel to it (ET was scary).

[stephan_jenkins]

Damn right dude. Attaching importance to seemingly mundane things is a time-honoured way to scare audiences. There's a good wiki article on it but I forget what the actual name is, my bad. See the video from the original Japanese Ring movie for an example. I don't get what any of the crap in it means but it damn well looks like it had some special meaning. It's also one of the few times a movie has ever really had me in fear as opposed to being frightened.

post it if you ever find the article, itd probably be pretty helpful

[Mankonaut X]

post it if you ever find the article, itd probably be pretty helpful

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia ;)

[Razor]

"Don't"s:
1.No cheap scares (screamers etc...).
2.Avoid cliches (creepy asian boys, creepy white girls, mirrors, television static, pretty much anything that was ever in The Ring or The Grudge).
3.Happy endings are not scary! A dark ending to a dark movie is much more fitting and realistic.
4.Do not rely on gore. Gore can be part of a story, but gore alone is not enough to scare an adult.

"Do"s:
1.A good plot is the basic for any good movie. A good plot is the best way to build suspense.
2.Make the characters someone that you're audience can identify with.
3.The situations do not have to be realistic, but they do have to make sense. Ghosts, aliens, etc are fine, but don't come up with something that people will think is stupid. The events should be realistic within the "world of the movie."
4.Don't be afraid to use disturbing ideas or imagery that challenges your audience's values.
5.Use appropriate music. Nothing can ruin the atmosphere in a scary movie like upbeat music.

Honestly I can say that I have never seen a movie that really scared me, but a good horror movie will get me involved. In a really good one I can feel the suspense, but movies just don't scare me (with the exception of the dinner scene in Alien which I saw when I was 4 or 5).

And OP, tell us about your script! Do you have any ideas yet?

[stephan_jenkins]

nothing concrete yet. i was telling my friend a lot of what you said, (mostly that gore cant carry a movie) its hard to think of something completely original though.

and if we want to send it to a film festival (really local, basically anyone can get in) i dont think we can use copyrighted music. so we gotta make our own, which might be hard. ill just ask some violinist kid i know to make up something scary.

i really want to have some disturbing images in it though. something so gross that the main characters hurls when he sees it.not slaughtered babies or ed gein necrophelia stuff, but stuff that will make the audience nauseous. (i dont plan to solely rely on that though)

[Trix Are For Kids]

Don't do some creapy shit like Saw or any Sthephan King movie. Actually have a simple plotline.