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I just watched The Descent and while it had a fuckload of rather predictable jumpscares, they were superbly enhanced by the great tension and dread created by the movie.
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Jul 27, 2015 07:02
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| # ? Apr 18, 2024 23:54 |
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Jump scares are good. They are a normal thing that happens in real life. I think the difference between a good and bad jump scare is you shouldn't see a jump scare coming from a mile away. If you see it coming and it doesn't make you jump, then it takes you out of the movie. If you see it coming and it does make you jump, then it was probably just LOUD NOISE and getting jerked around by random timing. In that case it feels like a low-hanging fruit movie trick.
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Aug 23, 2015 15:49
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Zombies' Downfall posted:I've seen this movie ten times like everybody else on Earth. I love horror and am not easily frightened or startled by it these days. I rewatched it this past winter and that loving scene made me jump again. I don't know what makes that scene particularly effective, but I was watching it with an ex-gf which is a massive horror buff and that scene made her lose it, full blown screaming. First time I had seen an horror movie do that to her, and we are talking about a person which usually watched horror movies with me just to see how scared I would get, because she appeared to be completely desensitized. I think it has something to do with the idyllic way the shot is framed, the evil is gone, the big bad has been defeated and suddenly BAM.
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Aug 23, 2015 20:39
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Baldbeard posted:Jump scares are good. They are a normal thing that happens in real life. Yeah, the ones that happen in real life typically aren't accompanied by a much louder than normal random musical sting.
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Aug 23, 2015 23:52
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I think the best case for jump scares as a filmmaking tool can be made by the repeating car accident flashbacks in Enter the Void. In what is essentially not a horror film, the director subjects the audience to an extremely unpleasant and startling car accident scare repeatedly throughout the movie in between visions and dreams that the dying protagonist is having. The jump scare will get you every single time despite the fact that it is always preempted by a memory of some sort of profound moment he experienced with his sister, the only other survivor of the crash. It sounds corny but it really hammers home the idea that while trauma occurred only once, its effects linger in his mind and come crashing back into his reality with the same devastating force that it did on that day, even in death. Watching a film is an empathetic experience. You're observing, but also experiencing the emotions that the characters are experiencing. So if films are allowed to make you laugh or cry, then filmmakers are totally entitled to startle or terrify you once in a while.
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Sep 1, 2015 04:47
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One of my most favorite subversions of the jump scare comes in, of all places, Tobe Hooper's "The Toolbox Murders". It's a cheesy rear end movie being more like a re-imagining of his own The Funhouse than any sort of connection with the original film. Anyways, Angela Bettis thinks she's beaten the satan-worshiping monster killing people in her building with power tools. We know better due to the runtime. She's going through her medicine cabinet for aspirin while the music builds up and up in a way we're all intimately familiar with. She closes the mirror to a deafening sting...and nothing happens. She starts walking out of the room and 10 seconds later the monster crashes in through the window at her with ZERO musical support. Despite being a terrible movie, it's a really remarkably fun and clever moment.
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Sep 7, 2015 01:55
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The great thing about the Signs birthday party scene is that it's a well-done jump scare the first time you see it, and then the second time you see it you realize that the alien is perfectly visible the entire time, so it's the Hitchcock clock-in-frame scene as well.
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Sep 7, 2015 10:21
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Also that the startle, really, is Joaquin's reaction.
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Sep 7, 2015 19:29
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I love that jump scare but also think the hand under the pantry door is built up quite well too.
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Sep 7, 2015 19:32
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I remember thinking that the hand in the basement was much scarier, but I just rewatched it and it is telegraphed so much. For some reason I thought it was just there for the entire scene but you didn't notice, but it's only on screen for a few seconds and they build up to something being there.
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Sep 7, 2015 19:32
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| # ? Apr 18, 2024 23:54 |
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It's a moment or a scene that is suddenly bone-chilling and sticks with you rather than someone yelling, "boo!" In Signs we are left to wonder if they're jumping at shadows or if there really are aliens. Then, we see one on the news and the threat becomes alarmingly real to the characters.
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Sep 8, 2015 02:34
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