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Hi, I'm doing a shorty study about horror movies. I want to know what things and themes are considered the scariest. Just write what you think is the scariest in horror movies or you can describe a scene from a horror movie that really scared you.

When in the dark suddenly anybody occur.. and loud sound begins..

Morbid soundtracks by the band Goblin.
Normal people becoming infected sadistic killers.
16mm film stock is a must. The film must be a rusty nail.
The sense of helplessness and the inevitable pain that is to come.
Moments of calm interupted by loud piercing sounds as an assualt occurs.
Innocence perceiving horrible injustice.
Darkness consuming the light.
Primal fear overwhelming civilised morality.

Some directors have said that Comedy the ability to make a crowd laugh is the hardest thing to do, but it isn't.

To make people truly feel fear. To make them feel the looming dread after a film is the hardest emotion to evoke.

Fear is the oldest and most powerful emotion.

Hope that helps.

I think silence is better in a horror movie... any scene in a movie with complete silence in a dark room with the protagonist breathing hard is scary... other noises help too. Maybe a second breather in the dark room. I hate loud music in horror films or the false scare created by the soundtrack... you know the one I am talking about. A tense moment in a scene and with the movie's soundtrack building up tension to the fake scare and then a loud crescendo. Such a lame and tired trick to make an otherwise boring film lively. It is very hard I think to make a good horror film today, the audience is very sophisticated now and with the internet, it leaves no mysteries intact about what the movie is about. As for themes, if I were to make a horror movie I would find out what scares my audience first. There are some primal things that people are afraid of... such as claustrophobia or small or confined spaces. Other people are afraid of being infested with things... such as spiders, maggots, or tape worms, etc. There are other ****ed up things that a director could find out what his target demographic is... what scares us. There are psychological ones as well. Being left or abandoned for one... seperation anxiety. For kids... its the dark and things that are hidden or unfamiliar that scares them... may not be true for all children. For women, I think it has to do with safety or familiar settings. Then again, not all women are the same. As for guys... think it has to do with losing authority or being reduced to a weak standing. Nothing is scarier to a guy than being emasculated by something scary... or worse.

Poltergeist I think tapped into childhood scares for its time... the dark room, the scary looking tree, the scary looking clown toy.

Rosemary's Baby tapped into what women fears for its time as well... being raped, the child that would arise from an undesirable coupling, losing your sense of direction, losing familiarity, feeling helpless.

Alien tapped into one of men's fears... something inside of you. Being impregnated by the unknown, feeling emasculated by the opposite sex or having another male trump you

I think in the horror movies,so many which are horror for us like cut of peace of head form devil.

What?!? English?

It's when the place is so quiet then suddenly a loud creepy sound plays while the horror character is chasing the main character.

When there is absolutely no hope left.

Hmmmm, good challenge! All of these are subjective opinions but I'll give it a shot.

1. Impending doom.
2. Subtle/obvious contradictions to the world of logic.
3. Desolation/Isolation.
4. Sumbliminal scares.
5. Creepy children/children related things/toys/phobias etc.

I'll elaborate in greater detail here, but incase you don't want to read the wall of text that follows I thought I'd just give the cliffnotes first.

Intro-
While there's certainly a growing genre for gorn (gore-porn) especially with series' like Hostel and Saw being mass produced and ripped off, I tend to assume that such films only have an appeal to a more limited audience. I agree whole-heartedly with mardook that the sensations of horror and terror are far more the result caused from psychological aspects than anything else. Gore at it's best (or worst depending on your P.O.V.) is generally disturbing as you watch it (such as the bottle scene from Pan's Labrynth, the extinguisher scene from Irreversible etc), but those scenes typically only work in a "shock and awe" fashion. They don't stay with you for long and quite frankly, they're easy to desensitize yourself to.
But psychological terror, that's something that creeps inside of you and stays there even when you're unaware of it. When a movie has successfully mind ****ed you, you might even come away from that movie not thinking it was scary, but find yourself later that night at home alone a bit more paranoid at things that are creaking and cracking through the house after the lights go out. To me, at least, that's real fear being generated... And with that:

1. Impending doom-
In my opinion the build up to a scare is usually more suspensful, distressing and effective than the climax of the scare itself. For example, if you look at a horror classic like the original Halloween movies, the scariest or creepiest parts of those films emanated from the scenes where Michael was stalking Jamie Lee Curtis. When the girls see him staring at them from down the street and run over to him to find he had dissapeared. When he's following Curtis all over town in his stolen car. Ultimately, when he's pursuing Curtis as she races across the street to the Doyle household, her struggling to get inside as he gains ground right behind her with a slow, rhythmic walk.
These are the scenes that put me ill at ease using this ideal that something was coming; an impending doom. A notion which movies like the Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity took full advantage of. While failing to scare some, those that these movies did scare did so to perfection. Both movies are basically set up as roller coaster rides where things continue to compound more and more each night, events getting worse and worse all building up to one final big scare moment at the end of the movie similar to someone telling a really really long joke just for the kick of a great punchline. The Ring is another fine example of this type of effective low bodycount storytelling. Psychologically I think these types of devices work on an audience similar to how a close game can put a sports fan in distress; an "it's not over 'til it's over" setting can cause great anxiety. With these situations, nothing is cemented, you know something really bad is going to happen but the fact that it hasn't happened yet and the protaganist still has some chance of survival or escape is probably causing you to grip your seat and clentch your teeth. Your subconcious imagination takes control and you fear the outcome without knowing why. The unkown can be a scary place, especially when you KNOW it's going to end up somewhere horrible.

2. Subtle/obvious contradictions to the world of logic-
As stated, we typically fear the unknown, and as such it's typical to fear what we can't understand. Sometimes movies push us into that corner by forcing our logic to contend with something that can't be explained, and when that happens it can be cause for another source of psychological terror... Basically things are scary when they're someplace things aren't supposed to be. Again we'll be taking pages from the previously mentioned movies. In Halloween, Michael Myers as a very subtle supernatural aura about him. He's been locked away since childhood but somehow, some way, he knows how to drive an automobile. At the end of the film the big cliffhanger results when his dead body is no longer where Loomis left it. In Blair Witch you have these kids hiking for a full day in one direction and they somehow end up at the same place. Later they come upon a house that was said to have burned down. In Paranormal Activity, Katie finds a scortched photo from her childhood which shouldn't even exist and it's tucked away in her boyfriend's attic. In the PA2 trailer they had an image of the baby standing on his cradle in the mirror, but no baby... IN THE ROOM! The Ring is another movie that entirely relied on this point with the fly, the hair and the bruising as well as impending doom to take us down it's thrillride.
Other fantastic examples of this are found in movies like the american remake of the Grudge, a movie that wasn't even scary, but had chills run down my spine when we see a man who died at the beginning of the film knocking on a girls door, only to vanish when she opened to door. In Rec 2 you hear a little girls voice coming out of a room you know clearly has a full grown zombie man inside. Again with Blair Witch, when Josh is presumably VERY dead and you end up hearing him screaming later that night. These kind of sequences put an immediate halt to your suspension of disbelief while watching a film and in order to continue with the watch, you have to simply accept them as being of supernatural elements which leaves way for things that can't be explained; simply put, these are the kind of moments that make you say to yourself "oh shit..." It's uneasy to be left with an option like that because it takes control away from us and our rationalizations; when you have no control over what's happening and no explanation for it, it can be terrifying.

3. Desolation/Isolation-
In movies, when our characters or humanity as a whole have totally lost THEIR control over a situation or their environment, often we end up with a film set in some desolate region or have a group of people cut off from civilization. A good ol' zombie apocalypse can always bring about an empty wasteland of a city to stroll about in. One of the most effective scenes from Romero's original Day of the Dead stemmed from the opening shots featuring a team with a chopper landing down into Miami, the streets completely empty and no response for their cries out (except the vocal zombie one they got a minute later). Same as in 28 Days Later, with Cillian Murphy walking around a presumably empty city. It's a chilling notion because it forces us to subconciously examine humanity's mortality and insignificance in the grand scheme of things, while at the same time subjecting us to instinctually throw ourselves into that type of survival situation and wonder "what I would do." Then of course you have the opposite of being in danger in a desolate region which should be populated, and that's of course being in danger in an isolated region you probably shouldn't be in in the first place. The classic cliche' of a cabin in the woods scenario. We've seen it a thousand times as in Evil Dead, Night of the Living Dead, The Descent, Hills Have Eyes, John Carpenter's Thing etc. These movies put our protaganists in the middle of some great danger before they're even aware they're in it and forces them to have to fight their way out for survival.
What's important about both the isolation and the desolation scenarios is that while they're near opposite location types, they're identical in the reason for causing us anxiety and erecting fear... Man is a problem solver, as stated before we like to have control over things. Our food, our environment, noise, wildlife; man has an urge to assert control over almost ANYTHING... BUT, a single man can not do that alone. We often forget how much we need others for nearly anything we do in everyday life. As Joe Rogan said, "If I leave you in the woods with nothing but an axe, how long before you send me an email?". We are in constant need of our fellow man and the help they provide. Without it we become very easy targets and that's what this issue concerns itself with. We all have an innate fear of being alone (without help/aid/someone to share the burden) and these movies prey on that.

4. Subliminal scares-
When you ARE alone one of the things that will effect you the most after watching a film is probably going to be the subliminal scare. Jump scares are nice, but they're like gore, they tend to only effect you in the moment they happen, but when you see a subliminal scare, it's the kind of threat that creeps into your psyche and stays there into the night. Sometimes these are not subliminal in how they happen but how they stay with you. Examples of what I'm talking about here are again found in previously discussed films. In the original Halloween 2, there's a sequence with a girl talking on the phone, as she struts the hall yapping you see an empty kitchen behind her. The camera moves back and forth and eventually we see Michael standing there looking at her then quickly shuffling off into another room before she takes notice. It's something that's very subtle and if you're focus is on the foreground you may not even notice the first time you watch the movie, but if you do, it's all the creepier. Other examples of this type of scare include the ripple effect in the television at the beginning of the Ring remake, you see... something move in the tv's reflection but you're not quite sure what it is. Even in a movie that wasn't mean to scare, during the scene in Three Men and a Baby we're treated to a "ghost" in the background in a quick pan shot and it's a bit unsettling. While these types of scares are typically rare and also commonly linked to the issue of "shit bein' where it ain't sposed to be" similar to the elevator scene of the goul in the movie the Eye, as well as using aspects of impending doom, they play on a far more primal fear we ALL have again linked to the unknown and that is the fear of something we can't see or fail to notice. When you're on your own you don't have eyes in the back of your head, and unless your back is against the wall you need to be alert at all times because any moment you let your guard down, the door open, the window cracked, or the leave the basement, closet, garage, or attic unchecked.. it could be your last... At the end of the day, it's a more complicated version of our natural fear of the dark designed by eons of evolution and honed during childhoods.

5. Creepy children/children related things/toys/phobias etc.
And speaking of children... Why are little kids so good at being creepy? I fully realize that at this point creepy kids are becoming just another horror movie cliche' but when they are done right, it's still a cliche' that ****in' works. There's a detachment that takes place in early adulthood where you simply don't connect on a child's level anymore. Sure you can connect WITH children, but on the by and large, they're in another world altogether. It's fascinating, but that can also be terrifying as ties back into the world of things that we don't understand or have perhaps forgotten. They're in a completely different place than you can relate to anymore, they're completely cut off from acting and responding in ways you do now, and as a result they're liable to engage in dangerous unpredictability like a wild wolf brought home as a pet. A scary child can become the embodiment of everything that terrified us as children ourselves and it's hard not to look at a "creepy kid" and NOT on some subconsious level be reminded of those things. Aside from that, children are supposed to be a happy and joyful gift (y'know aside from the work load they provide), so if you're dealing with a monster child, or a child ghoul or the like, you know whatever you're dealing with must be REALLY ****ing evil in order to produce THAT.




These are of course all just my own subjective opinions on how movies affect me and why but if you could bare to read through all that, I hope it at least helped.

Realism.

the only horror film that actually scared me is Exorcist.

everything went downhill from there

No one even read my posts did they?

Originally posted by jinzin
No one even read my posts did they?

I just have. Totally agree with you on the impending doom factor, that scene where Jamie is trying to get in the door while Michael Myers is stalking her down still makes me go "Hurry up!" Also a lot of none horrors have the same effect, Die Hard 2, where McClane has his leg caught under the manhole cover and the planes wheel is coming towards him. No matter how many times I've seen that film that bit still makes me uncomfortable.

I'm getting pretty bored of directors capitalising on the innocence of children though, "Ooh, I have black hair and talk to other kids that my parents cannot see, because they're dead." (The kids, not the parents)

Children. Be they crazy, possessed or just plain evil.

Originally posted by Dr Mystery
I just have. Totally agree with you on the impending doom factor, that scene where Jamie is trying to get in the door while Michael Myers is stalking her down still makes me go "Hurry up!" Also a lot of none horrors have the same effect, Die Hard 2, where McClane has his leg caught under the manhole cover and the planes wheel is coming towards him. No matter how many times I've seen that film that bit still makes me uncomfortable.

I'm getting pretty bored of directors capitalising on the innocence of children though, "Ooh, I have black hair and talk to other kids that my parents cannot see, because they're dead." (The kids, not the parents) You're a kind soul.

Originally posted by chipper7777
the only horror film that actually scared me is Exorcist.

everything went downhill from there


Yeah right! Exorcist is one of the scariest movie I've ever watched. I can't imagine that it will happen in real life. Oh God!

Horror movies never really scared me, per se, but suspenseful pacing (best examples, IMO, The Birds, and Paranormal Activity) does a good job of keeping me at the proverbial edge of my seat.

Also, possessed dolls always came close to creeping me out (best eg: the warrior doll in "Trilogy of Terror" with Karen Black).

Often I find that what's supposed to pass for horror is more just gore, which will either disgust me or fascinate me.

it's all silent...and then a demon jumps out of your closet...HOLY SHIT!!!

Originally posted by Mindship
Horror movies never really scared me, per se, but suspenseful pacing (best examples, IMO, The Birds, and Paranormal Activity) does a good job of keeping me at the proverbial edge of my seat.

Also, possessed dolls always came close to creeping me out (best eg: the warrior doll in "Trilogy of Terror" with Karen Black).

Often I find that what's supposed to pass for horror is more just gore, which will either disgust me or fascinate me.

Paranormal activity...lol how lame. Possessed dolls lol.... well then dont watch puppets that kill.

http://www.freewebs.com/september-java/puppet%20master.JPG

horror movies dont scare me anymore, its really the stupidity of them. I often wonder why the victim never fights back, its like they just stand there and wait for the monster or villian to kill them. They also dont have consider running really fast, using anything as a weapon logic...?? It makes me wonder if people suffer from the shock of the moment sorta thing to they deserve it in the first place.

Originally posted by rudester
horror movies dont scare me anymore, its really the stupidity of them.

You apparently aren't watching the right horror movies, then. Watch Antichrist... if you dare (seriously, it scarred me for life). Also John Carpenter's The Thing is pretty genuinely creepy.

Originally posted by Patient_Leech
You apparently aren't watching the right horror movies, then. Watch Antichrist... if you dare (seriously, it scarred me for life). Also John Carpenter's The Thing is pretty genuinely creepy.

Your ON!!!!

But you have to watch, the heart break club and not another gay movie. Ok?

I'll make no such promise to watch that... lol

The reality-based movies. Fantasy horror has nothing on what people did to one another for real

Originally posted by Pandemoniac
The reality-based movies. Fantasy horror has nothing on what people did to one another for real

I think I can agree with that. Horror is usually more horrific when it is grounded and real. Which is why I thought Antichrist was so disturbing. It makes you completely identify with the characters and feel for them and then shit hits the fan in a relatively grounded and realistic way.

It scares me how dumb the characters are in most of them. "Is that danger? Let's go investigate."

ghosts scares me so any well made ghost film will definitely get a reaction from me lol.

Originally posted by rudester
horror movies dont scare me anymore, its really the stupidity of them. I often wonder why the victim never fights back, its like they just stand there and wait for the monster or villian to kill them. They also dont have consider running really fast, using anything as a weapon logic...?? It makes me wonder if people suffer from the shock of the moment sorta thing to they deserve it in the first place.

Not aiming at you, because I know you have good taste in film but your point took my interest.

The trick of watching a Horror movie is to invest yourself into it. Not to challenge it.

Sure there are plenty of crap Horror films out there and no suspension of disbelief is possible.

My point is, when watching a good horror film for the first time don't take the mindset of "lets see if this film can scare me" but take the "I wanna feel creeped out, Oh shit here it comes" view.

There is nothing worse than listening to people say "I watched that movie, I sucked! It didn't scare me at all."

It's like having a bunch of friends jump into a cold pool and having that one douchbag get out saying "It wasn't cold" whilst everybody else is too busy having a good time.

Things that you don't get to see. Like the witch in Blair Witch Project or the demon in Paranormal activity.