This particular jump scare became known as a “bus”-a scene of dread that concludes with a startle that turns out to have been a false alarm. As it turns out, the noise comes from an arriving bus, not a homicidal were-panther.
Suddenly, a loud hissing noise tears through the soundscape. In this famous scene, Alice is nervously running away from her unseen stalker. Irena finds out that Alice has a crush on Oliver and follows her home from a distance. She is in a relationship with one Oliver Reed, who is skeptical of her claim. But Baird points to Val Lewton, the producer of the 1942 film Cat People, as the one who “formalized, even institutionalized, the startle for horror and thriller film.”Ĭat People is about a Serbian woman, Irena Dubrovna, who claims that she transforms into a panther when she is in the throes of passion. The film scholar and jump scare expert Robert Baird notes that we can trace the cinematic jump scare back to the earliest days of film, for example with such allegedly startling cinematic experiences as the Lumière brothers’ 1895 depiction of a train moving toward the audience.
#Horror movie effects on brain skin
So, how and why does the horror film jump scare work? And is there anything you can do to avoid being knocked out of your skin by it? But I also could not help but appreciate the artistry, the sheer craftsmanship, of a scene-a particular arrangement of visual and auditory stimuli emanating from a gadget in my living room-that had such an astounding effect. I mean, I have been exposed to hundreds, if not thousands, of jump scares, but this one really caught me off guard and had me panting afterward, like I had been in a brush with death. The sensation was slightly unreal, like a momentary rupture in the fabric of things. My body galvanized itself with a real jolt, like an electrical shock, that seemed to radiate from my center to the extremities, producing a brief but intense pain in my hands and feet. I had been deeply engrossed in the episode, but now it was like my entire being resonated with that horrifying moment. When dead Nell burst into the dark space between the two sisters, my whole family jumped. And the biology and psychology behind the jump scare are fascinating. Jump scares have a bad reputation, probably because they seem too primitive and easy to pull off, but they can be quite artful. Other times it lies there for several seconds before exploding, and all you can do is stare at it anxiously, waiting for it to blow. Sometimes it goes off before you even know what hit you. The jump scare is a cinematic grenade that the horror film lobs right into the nexus of your central nervous system. Jump scares can be intensely unpleasant, and it is almost impossible to shield oneself against them. You know, the monster popping out of the closet or the ghost making a screaming entrance.
By jump scare, I mean the massive shock effect that often provides the climax for dread-drenched horror scenes. People who do not watch horror films often point to the “jump scare” as the main reason for their avoidance of such films. Copyright © 2021 by Mathias Clasen and published by Oxford University Press.
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