boo

October 23, 2014 1:11 PM

13 classic scenes that explain how horror movies work.
posted by Combustible Edison Lighthouse (11 comments total)

Ah, Edison Lighthouse. One of those great forgotten UK 70s acts like 'Sailor'.

Anyway I wish there was more 'finding terror in silence' in film these days.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 1:16 PM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

Anybody else getting "Content unavailable" for all the clips?
posted by languagehat at 2:16 PM on October 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

Watched it from here in Canada. That was great!
posted by Nevin at 2:24 PM on October 23, 2014

Vox listicles Tony Zhou.
posted by rhizome at 2:49 PM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

Oh, this is very, very good.
posted by Navelgazer at 3:52 PM on October 23, 2014

This reminds me that Brad Anderson's Stonehearst Asylum is coming out tomorrow, which in turn reminds me of Brad Anderson's Session 9, which uses a number of these techniques to great effect.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 4:26 PM on October 23, 2014 [4 favorites]

Alfred Hitchcock explains suspense:

Four people are sitting around a table talking about baseball or whatever you like. Five minutes of it. Very dull. Suddenly, a bomb goes off. Blows the people to smithereens. What does the audience have? Ten seconds of shock. Now take the same scene and tell the audience there is a bomb under that table that will go off in five minutes. The whole emotion of the audience is totally different because you've given them that information. In five minutes time that bomb will go off. Now the conversation about baseball becomes very vital. Because they're saying to you, "Don't be ridiculous. Stop talking about baseball. There's a bomb under there." You've got the audience working.

posted by DirtyOldTown at 5:18 PM on October 23, 2014 [13 favorites]

I watched all the clips but when it came to The Descent I was like nopenopenopenope
posted by fungible at 5:40 PM on October 23, 2014 [4 favorites]

Wow... that was so much fun, even for a film dullard like myself.

I watched all the clips but when it came to The Descent I was like nopenopenopenope

It's amazing how most of the clips lost their "scare" factor for me, what with reading the blurbs first and then listening to the voiceover as I watched, but I was still totally clenched up for the entirety of The Descent scene. Eesh.
posted by sparklemotion at 7:10 PM on October 23, 2014 [3 favorites]

Oh The Descent is such a brilliant horror movie. One of the best of recent years - so underrated in many ways.
posted by chris88 at 8:10 PM on October 23, 2014 [3 favorites]

Oh god, I haven't seen The Descent, but that clip had me anxious and gasping.

From the description in the video and a brief glimpse at a DVD cover once, I'm getting shades of Ted's Caving Page/The Enigma of Amigara Fault/whatever that story was I read as a kid about a lost civilisation of pale goblin-faced humanoids living under a mountain.

And all of those things scared the living shit out of me. No thank you, will not watch, I wish to sleep again sometime this century.
posted by pseudonymph at 12:15 AM on October 24, 2014