Atlas Obscura: One of the most iconic moments in Brian De Palma’s 1976 movie Carrie comes right before the credits roll. By now the titular Carrie is dead, having massacred her high school bullies, stabbed her abusive mother, and destroyed her family home with herself inside. After the dust settles, we cut to a dream sequence with the sole survivor of this killing spree, a teenager named Sue.
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I’m glad that the horror genre is expanding! I think it’s a great thing that major studios can churn out a new sequel to Scream and Halloween every year while smaller, more experimental studios can subvert expectations with movies like Skinamarink and In a Violent Nature. People are becoming a lot more open to horror as a medium for storytelling and not just cheap shock value. That being said, what’s wrong with cheap shock value? I was talking to my friend about Smile 2 last week and she expressed to me that she wished it was more elevated like some of the A24 horror movies (Midsommar, Hereditary, etc.). I’ve felt that sentiment a lot lately and it makes no sense to me. People don’t go to a high school production of The Wizard of Oz and leave wishing they had seen a Pinter play. There’s a novelty in a scary movie that KNOWS it’s a scary movie, and you lose a lot of the fun if you go into them expecting emotional catharsis (or something like that). Sometimes you want to yell at the screen and tell the teenagers not to go into the basement, and even though you know they’re going to (and probably going to die) it’s fun to go along for the ride. Bring back low-budget, over-the-top scary movies!
The history and evolution of the jump scare in horror cinema reveal much about our psychological responses to fear and shock, and its connection to broader cultural and emotional experiences. When I consider early cinematic scares, like the one in Carrie, I see how they aim to jolt the viewer out of a false sense of security, creating a shared moment of intense shock that has become a staple in horror. This technique has evolved from its roots in Victorian ghost stories and stage illusions, where live audiences were captivated through slower, tension-building moments.In modern cinema, jump scares often seem like a "cheap thrill," but recent “elevated horror” films like Hereditary and Get Out show that they can be used for more than just a fleeting shock. These films leverage the jump scare not only as a physical jolt but as an emotional climax with lasting effects on the narrative. This deeper approach mirrors techniques in literature and theater, where moments of surprise or climax are meticulously built to maximize emotional impact. Understanding the artistry behind these tactics gives me a greater appreciation for horror as a genre that probes human psychology and our instinctive responses to fear.
This article was really interesting and kind of felt like it hit on a bunch of cool related topics – it talks about horror in cinema, horror in theater, why humans enjoy scary movies, and more all in one article. I hadn’t thought about it before, but the difference in pace between a scary scene on a screen vs a stage is interesting. The start of the article mentions the jump scare at the end of the movie Carrie, which got me thinking about the musical Carrie, which I got to Technical Direct a year or so ago. I have a lot of thoughts about the musical (and the movie, and the book) but thinking back to my highlights in the show, they are all scary moments that are pretty drawn out or take a lot of time to build to their full scare value. We had windows that slammed on their own when Carrie flings her arm towards them (as if she is telekinesis-moving them), chairs that all slid across the stage on her telekinesis-command, and low-hanging lightbulbs hanging in the locker room scene that go out and explode on their own. All of these moments were set up with a lot of emotional build up (a tense scene with her mother, bullying in the locker room, etc) and then they have a big breaking point of the scary or surprising thing. SImilarly, the scene where Carrie destroys the entire school was a series of controlled and carefully-orchestrated events that, one after another, build and build to climactic moments like the bucket-drop of stage blood or Carrie slowly walking through the mass of her peers dead and dying on the ground. There’s nothing fast or jump-scare-y about these moments, but they still accomplish the scariness in a different way, as this article suggests. You can’t have different shots or camera angles or quick zoom/pan to help you with scares on the stage, so you need to use different tactics than you’d use on the screen to give the audience the scares that they want.
I’ve never been a huge horror fan, but I find this history of the jump scare and the evolution of horror movies fascinating. The comment about live theatre horror being about building tension with the audience and performer makes a lot of sense. Thinking of something as popular as Sweeney Todd, there’s a sense of, ‘Is he going to do it? Is he going to do it?’ building up to Sweeney’s first attempt at killing the Judge. I wonder why that slow build of tension doesn’t work as well in movies, although the fast jump scare is just as effective as eliciting a reaction. I wonder if it's because, in live theatre, that is the only thing vying for the audience’s attention, so they become more invested in it. Perhaps movies can’t build the same kind of tension because the environment it's being watched in isn’t as here-and-now, there are many other things vying for the attention of the viewer.
I am, personally, ecstatic about this new shift in the horror genre. As a diehard horror fan, I love an new innovation in the genre, and in all honesty, I have always been averse to the campy, jump-scare filled horror films, as I do find them cheap and lacking intrigue. I'm not entirely anti jump-scare, as I absolutely adored the reveal of Ulf wearing Mark's face in the temple in Midsommar, and the famous insidious demon, but I find the constant, almost mandatory nature of them to be tedious. That isn't to say that jump scares are going away, or that I think they should. The horror genre is famous for its innovative nature. More than any other genre, it drives creators to push the limits of the human mind to expand the notions of what audiences can handle, whether that be creating the next perfectly timed jump scare, or dreaming up a concept so f--ked up that it restructures a person's entire world view. At the moment, a proportion of the audience's tastes are veering toward psychological and conceptual horror, searching for a stronger narrative base in oppose to gore and complex effects, which I think is a good thing. It takes us out of the trend of formulaic, effects based films and back to a more creative place. While Skinamarink was a wholly unpleasant experience for me, it added far more to the genre than Halloween Resurrection did. I am excited, and terrified, to see what this new phase of the horror genre has to offer, and more than that, I am excited to see which boundaries are going to be pushed next.
This was me
I have never really found much pleasure or enjoyment in horror movie jump scares. They always just felt so predictable to me and felt like they didn’t really have any weight on the narrative. The classic horror slasher movie has never been my vibe. I am a huge fan of psychological thrillers though. The slasher jump scare genre just feels meaningless to me– like they are just trying to do it for the shock factor. After reading this article I gained insight on this. It makes total sense that movies loaded up with blood, gore, and murder after censorship laws were loosened in the 1970s. It was an expression of art and the evils of humankind at the time– something new and exciting. While I have found appreciation for this method, I am glad to see that newer movies– ones that will hopefully become our children’s very own “cult-classics”– are leaning away from this and beginning to build more on plot and emotion.
Jump scares are such an interesting part of entertainment because of its hypocritical tendencies. People love to see a jump scare even though it induces fear and more specifically adrenaline. It was interesting to learn about some of the first theatrical and movie jump scares. The theatrical jump scare was specifically interesting because peppers ghost is also thought of as one of the first representations of Video Media design on a theatrical stage. This example shows the interconnectedness of jump scares the movie entertainment industry. They also mentioned the idea that in the theatrical world a jump scare is often uneffective because it can be missed by the audience. Whereas the movie industry is able to have those quick moments accompanied by specific framing and elevated sound effects come across more effectively. The jump scare has now become a bit of a cliche but its effectiveness in both developing the plot and instilling fear into the audience allows it to be used far and wide.
This was interesting to read. Just about every horror movie today involves in some way a jump scare. Watching what they call the “first cinematic jump scare” made me realize how mild horror movies used to be, and just how far the jump scare has evolved. I never thought about how a properly good jump scare needs to be carefully composed, as Cognetti mentions. At its surface it seems like a simple, easy element but it takes skill to be effective. It’s intriguing to think that, while movies can effectively use jump scares, theater “scares” need to be slower to be more effective. Of course, mechanically a jump scare in theater has to be different simply because things in theater can’t move as fast as things in movies. It reminds me of the Passage jump scare; it wasn’t slow at all for theater, but I think it would’ve been faster if it were a movie.
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