by Stephen Kerr-Robinson

Created on: May 15, 2009   Last Updated: May 16, 2009

To truly define what makes a scary movie really scary it goes beyond specific criteria. Not to say that characters and plot don't play a part in a scary movie because they do, but for a movie to truly be scary it goes beyond that. There are a multitude of reasons that can make a scary movie scary; the first I believe is personal experience. We have all had those moments in our life that have terrified us to the point where we believe we are in deep trouble. It can be simplest of things, but dramatised on the big screen can make us feel deep genuine fear. This may not be scary to others, because they haven't experienced what we have so they wouldn't find it scary. But, for a director and a film maker they really have to dwell into the mind of the people and find out what scares them the most, for most of us we tend to have the same fears. Being able to orchestrate our similar fears on the big screen is what can scare us.

The two primary examples of Directors doing this I believe are the Friday The 13th film and Nightmare on Elm Street films. The directors of both these films were very clever in being able to put the main characters in this film in a situation that would terrify us. In the Friday The 13th films the characters are put in a desolate woods being chased by a mad man, that scares us because there is no way out of that situation basically, if that was placed in a town or city I wouldn't be as scary because there is a sense of hope. But, in an unfamiliar wood where you don't know where you have been or are going scares us.

Whilst with Nightmare on Elm Street the thing that scares us is that we have no control over it. He comes in your dreams and kills you there, it makes it look as if you have no control over what he is doing because in a lot of the murders he creates impossible obstacles for his victims, and that scares us because having no control over what may happen to you strikes fear into our hearts.

Another way that a scary movie can be made scary is if it is a depiction of true events. A way this scares us is that we hear its based on true events we immediately think that there is people like that out there. It frightens us, because they aren't just a figure of someone's imagination made for financial gain, but they are a real person, and it becomes more real to the audience. They are in anticipation for what this person does in the film, the way though that the film makers scare us is through dramatized events of the story to make

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