So what REALLY scares us?

This is a thought that I have been thinking a lot about recently when thinking of ideas and directions to take my script in. What really makes us sit on the edge of our seats? what makes us jump out of them? The more I thought about it the more it became apparent that its sound design. With out it, we would be looking blankly at the screen not really all to bothered as to who is being mutilated or who is being chased.

From looking at a number of scary films recently as research I found that the tension was always built by this ticking clock Zam referred too. It's that dripping of tap water in a darkened room combined with the unsettling score that makes us feel so uneasy. Its that moment during the night when you hear a door creak open that terrifies us, we suddenly start thinking what was that? What caused that? its the not knowing that really gets to us.

I looked back on a number of films on how they created tension, and I undoubtably looked at 'Saving Private Ryan' That stair well scene were the two soldiers are fighting it away up the stairs and we cut to the lone scared soldier which is his only salvation too scared to move. A lot of different things makes this scene unsettling to watch, but when I looked closer what made it unsettling when we cut to the stair well was again sound. It was hearing them scuffling about up the stairs, those raw human sounds of distress. Again it occurred to me, it's what we were hearing that was making us as an audience sit on the edge of our seats.

It has never until now that I have looked back on horror movies that it doesn't really matter if its a bunch of 'cute aliens' such as in 'Encounters from a Third Kind' You can make almost anything terrifying if you just get the eery sound design and not show the audience for aslong as possible what is lurking in the dark. Its this making the audience suffer for aslong as possible that really does make classic horror pieces.

To look at a more modern example, we must only look as far as the cinema. Paranormal Activity which is sitting at number one in the box office in America. Something that clearly scares the vast amount of people who go an watch it, I know this more than any as I see it from working in the cinema. It was really interesting to sit back and watch the audience and see what scared them. It was clear that it was the unbearable tension of waiting for something to happen, that making the audience suffer for aslong as possible then suddenly throw in that bang. This is what scared people, a slamming door isn't scary in the slightest. Yet because they were forced to wait for it, because they knew something was coming, because it made them wait for aslong as possible this is what scared them.

As essentially this film is just made up of sound design we never see the monster. Every director and screenwriter should take notes from this film, as soon as you show the audience what they are supposed to me afraid of you instantly loose the vast amount of tension you can build.

As until recently I have really shunned sound as a profession, I still don't want to do it...ever. But I have gained so much respect for sound design recently. By sitting back and really thinking why something scares me in a movie, 95% of the time it was that principle of waiting for something to happen combined with the sound design that did it at the end.

This is why I feel horror sequels just don't work, we have been shown what we are supposed to be afraid off, and as soon as we can sit back and say 'I know whats in the dark' it suddenly looses its edge. This is why Aliens and the like of 'The Decent part two' just don't work as horror pieces.

From all this I will really sit back and take heed of sound and tension whilst writing my script for Richard. It's not so much the dark that scares us, as I assume we all sleep in the dark. It's those little sounds during the blanket of night time that terrifies us in the end.