Techniques Movies Use To Terrify You

Making movies is a complex art form. From drama to comedy, romance to horror, each genre has its methods and techniques used in order to create the masterpieces that we all know and love. Some of these techniques are more obvious, like good makeup and costumes or expertly-composed scores and well-written lines. Others are on the subtler end of things, like effective settings, striking cinematography, or inspired casting.

When it comes to creating the elements of fear and terror, in particular, there are several of these tools that stand out as common techniques used by movies across the board in order to do one thing: terrify you. Whether you're watching a tense scene in a drama like Braveheart (who can forget that ending?) or you're making your way through that endless string of horror classics that cycle through the cable carousel every October, many of the same tools are being used to keep you on the edge of your seat.

Music isn't the only way movies scare you with audio. Let's talk about sudden noises. You know, the jump scare tactics that make us so frustrated as we sit in their wake with popcorn and soda freshly spilled all over our laps. And yet, after we finish cleaning ourselves off, we come back for more. Why? Because those sudden noises really do drive home the terror of a scary scene with appalling effectiveness.

It might be an antagonist suddenly striking from behind, or a creature jumping out of the darkness. Sometimes, filmmakers even diffuse a previously tense sequence with the sudden, unexpected arrival of a friendly face, accompanied with a sudden trick sound. At any rate, the insertion of an abrupt, silence-rending noise is a foolproof way to get the audience to jump right out of their skins. It may be a little bit of a cheap shot compared to the eloquence of a well-composed score, but a timely sudden noise is certainly a fearsome weapon in a director's terror toolkit.

Eerie music, surprising noises, and subtle ambiance can combine to make a terrifying soundscape, but they're all made more effective by the occasional lack of any of them. The silent sequence is one of the oldest tricks in the book, and yet it continues to be one of the most effective. Consider, for example, the fact that the best jump scares are usually preceded by some level of comparative silence. And we're not talking about things "calming down" for a second—we're talking about utter, unnatural silence. It's the kind of surreal absence of sound where only certain, carefully chosen sounds break through, like a character's footsteps as they walk down a dim, dank tunnel or their heavy breathing as they search through the woods at night.

For example, The Walking Dead has used this tactic to great effect numerous times, with shuffling zombies somehow growing impossibly silent just moments before they show up inches from a victim's face. Sure, you can hear the incessantly gurgling antagonists from a mile off in most scenes, but that doesn't stop the directors from occasionally creating that unreal moment of stillness, signaling that a scare is just around the corner. Often the simple dearth of sound in a scene can be as good as an entire orchestra.

This next one is a hallmark of the "cheap shot" kind of terror that makes up the bread and butter of so many classic horror flicks. Some teen hero makes a boneheaded decision to go see what that sound is or check out that gloomy basement...because good things always happen in dark corners, right? These characters always fall victim to the impending danger moments later. To the alert, genre-savvy viewer, this technique often falls flat on its face, as they can see things coming from a mile away.

But whenever a quality movie manages to suck you in far enough with other things (like the music or the acting) to feel genuinely invested in the fate of the protagonists, it's easy to ignore a laughably bad string of decision-making and watch in a state of suspended disbelief as you feel your gut flip over in dreaded anticipation. This sort of unrealistic unawareness, as hokey as it can be at times, most definitely has the potential to get us all worked up in a lather of terror when executed properly.

You don't have to be a horror movie fan to fall victim to this technique. We've all seen horrifying contraptions on screen in one place or another that we just can't seem to get out of our heads. Even something as harmless as Star Wars has its moments. Who can't forget that unnerving Han Solo torture scene?

Perhaps the best example of contraptions in action, though, can be found right in the heart of the horror genre after all. The Saw franchise is rife with all sorts of terrorizing doohickeys and other apparatuses designed purely to make your heart skip a beat as you fear for each trapped victim. From bear traps to barbed wire, chains to needles, and an endless procession of other run-of-the-mill objects turned gruesome, the creators of Saw found every way possible to keep the audience petrified for a seemingly endless procession of movies. The longevity of the series only reinforces the success of the technique. Jigsaw recently revived the franchise (to the delight of fans, if not critics), proving that creepy contraptions can always be counted on to bring the fear.

While some movies toy with your mind, others go straight for your soul. For centuries, people have explained away scary things as the actions of demons, monsters, goblins, imps, and other creatures of darkness. It's the whole reason why Lore became such a popular podcast and then got turned into a show by Amazon. These spiritual, often fanciful, elements have not just gone away in the scientific age either, and still find a welcome reception on the silver screen time and time again. From glowing red eyes to creepy bodily contortions, the actions of spiritual creatures are a classic technique to get your heart pounding.

Just look at how many movies have the word "exorcism" in the title. The thought of demons and monsters on the loose harassing humanity plays with something deeper and darker than we can understand, something that is out of our realm of experience. There are few things more unsettling to the human psyche than that which we don't understand and cannot control.

Let's end this romp through the terror-ific world of scares with one of the most powerful yet challenging techniques in cinema: leaving horror to the imagination. We already saw how shows like The Walking Dead can sometimes oversell gore to the point where it isn't scary anymore. On the flip side, though, if you don't utilize at least some of these techniques, the scary stuff will pass right by without ever being noticed.

Capturing the imagination of an audience can be a very hard line to walk, but the true sign of a masterfully terrorizing flick is when you walk away with your skin crawling, but you don't remember seeing the thing that actually made you feel that way. After all, our own brains know how to scare us better than anything on a screen. That moment before the attack, that glimpse of a torture device waiting to be used, or the fearful testimony of a victim can be the most dreadfully terror-inducing moments of them all.

To bring things full circle, let's dissect (pun intended) that ending scene in Braveheart a little bit further. William Wallace (Mel Gibson) is literally being drawn and quartered, his guts getting torn out while he's still alive...but we never really see it. We see a close-up of Gibson's face, we hear sound effects and well-timed music, and we're left with our imagination to do the rest.