Why Are Some Scary Movies Scarier Than Others?

A horror film is a movie in which the whole goal is to illicit feelings of shock, disgust, or terror from the audiences watching. It has been around ever since the eighteen hundreds and overlap, sometimes, with other genres as well. “Horror”, as a term, can be used in order to describe different movies from ones that involve murderers to ones that are about ghosts. It is also often hard to gage what makes some scary movies scarier than others 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 will scare different types of people but the directors and producers of the early thirties and twenties discovered fairly quickly that suspense, sudden plot twists, eerie sound effects, and other factors were more effective at getting people frightened than scary monsters or bloody guts.

Alfred Hitchcock, a world famous director and writer, is attributed with providing the greatest contributions to the horror genre. He pioneered numerous methods and techniques throughout his successful and long career, many of which are still used in psychological and suspense films even today. Most of Hitchcock’s feature films are considered classics and the director himself is considered to be one of the world’s absolute best.

“Shadow of a Doubt”, one of Alfred’s early films happens to be one of the very first thrillers as well. The movie is so significant culturally that it was picked to be included in the National Registry of Films so that its overlapping characters, criminal behavior plot, and spooky dialogue could be studies and watched by enthusiasts for many decades 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.

Using scary and well placed music is another effective and popular technique. The soundtrack of a film is sometimes the most powerful factor of all when it comes down to shocking people.

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.