WARNING: There are no jump scares in this article… probably.
Nowadays, you don’t see a horror movie without expecting a jump scare. They’re everywhere and it’s pretty obvious it became the main tool with which horror movies try to scare you – and more often than not, the ONLY tool. Everyone quickly grew tired of the gimmick, but instead of trying something different, most horror movies keep coming back to the exact same formula that anyone who has ever seen a movie can predict a mile away. So let’s talk about why this trend is only getting worse, and why we shouldn’t settle for a movie that goes “boo” every ten minutes.
And don’t forget to check our other Halloween articles with plenty of good horror movies to pick from!
- 13 Horror Movies That Will Scare You This Halloween
- 10 Classic Horror Movies to Watch This Halloween
The definition of a jump scare
Before even starting, it’s important to clarify what a jumpscare is, by definition. Common dictionaries don’t have one, but fortunately, Urban Dictionary has the only one we need:
A tactic used in horror movies to scare people, the jump scare is used by unimaginative filmmakers as a cheap method of frightening the audience; i.e, making them literally "jump" out of their seats. This device is being increasingly employed in modern horror movies, along with gratuitous amounts of gore, because the directors have forgotten how to actually scare people. - Urban Dictionary
That’s basically it, but even though I like this cheeky definition, it is very reductive, because there’s nothing especially wrong with jump scares – it’s nothing more than a way of causing an emotional and physical response on a spectator, and that can be used to great effect when done right. A good jump scare will make you feel the same level of fright a character in the movie felt.
The problem is that most directors don’t know how to scare an audience unless they make something jump out on the screen with a sudden shriek on the soundtrack. And strangely, audiences started measuring the effectiveness of a horror movie by counting how many times they jumped on their seats – meaning that a deeply constructed horror movie that favors atmosphere and dark subject matter rather than cheap thrills is immediately called “not-scary” by the public.
But how do we define a cheap scare, and what makes a good one? And how would one benefit the movie, instead of damaging the experience?
The cheap jump scare
You’ve seen the classic jumpscare more than you could possibly count: character is looking into a random noise, gets closer, soundtrack rises, and… it was just a *insert-something-harmless* here. Soundtrack stops, the tension is off, and BAM! The real jumpscare shows its ugly face. It’s an ingenious technique for scaring someone – you create a diversion, make them lower their guard, and then throw the real scare.
The problem is that this particular jump scare has been done literally a billion times. And counting. There are many other cliché jump scares around, but we won’t cover all of them - I’m sure you know the ones I’m talking about.
A jumpscare as a primary means for scaring an audience is tiresome and gets old very quickly, because suddenly, the audience no longer cares about the story and characters, all they can worry about is having a heart-attack.
What defines a proper jumpscare is not just the way it’s presented, but the intent. That’s why we feel so annoyed with the famous “false alarm” scares, when the movie makes us jump for nothing more than a cat or someone the character knows sneaking behind them - all the tension that was built amounts to nothing.
After that, when an actual scare happens, it doesn’t have the desired effect, because earlier we were scared ON THE SAME DEGREE by something that wasn’t even a threat.
Even worse, some filmmakers are so illiterate on horror that they can’t even build tension, so their only scare tactic is an ear-piercing high-pitched jolt that comes out of nowhere - and of course you will jump, because loud noises are startling, but you won’t be scared unless the reason for it was an actual threat.
And having an actual threat is what gets us closer to a proper jump scare.
The proper jump scare
The Conjuring 1 and 2, both directed by James Wan, have really good jump scares - despite the occasional cheapness we’ll discuss later - because the director understands the technique well enough to play around with it. He will often mess up the timing, causing the scare to happen sooner or later than we expected, and from where we were not looking.
One of the main reasons most of them work is because Wan avoids “false alarms” jump scares. All of his jump scares come from an actual threat that can harm or kill the characters, and by understanding that, he tests the audience’s patience by slowly building tension before every jump.
However, as a hired director, Wan has to bend to the studio’s will - and the studio usually follows the trend. This leads to the movie having so many jump scares than even the good ones may feel tired and repetitive because literally every scary scene is building up to one. This only helps solidify the trend that a jump scare is the only way of scaring in a horror movie, and that could not be farther from the truth.
Why you should care
It may seem that all of this is pure nonsense. Of course, a horror movie is going to have jump scares, why wouldn’t it? Why do I care so much that I’m writing over 1000 words about it?
Simply put, filmmaking is one of the most complex art forms in existence. There are so many ways of causing an emotional response on the audience with different combinations of image and audio. And that is exactly why it’s so disappointing to sit through a movie that uses only the most basic and repetitive ways of doing so. Even low-budget horror movies nowadays cost a few million dollars, and we pay our hard earned cash to go see them. We should not settle for the same old tricks.
Next time you see a horror movie whose only trick is cheap, loud, irritating jump scares, remember - that is not horror.
Horror is that creeping feeling you just saw something at the corner of your eye. Horror is that cold chill that raises the hairs on the back of your neck. Horror is being afraid of the unseen. Horror is being confronted with terrible images and ideas that make you reflect on your own humanity.
Long story short: horror is not a loud noise.
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