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Most people, especially when young, enjoy being scared. How else can you possibly explain the popularity of rollercoaster rides, extreme sports and, of course, horror movies? What, though, is the essence of the scare? What makes a scary movie scary?

The answer, of course, is whatever scares you.

OK, that's trite, but it is also true. I can watch a film like JOHN CARPENTER'S THE THING with all kinds of gory happenings and not be scared once whilst THE VANISHING with its theme of being buried alive will send me out into the night in a state of panic. My sister will run screaming from any theatre showing ANACONDA not because it's so awful, but because she is terrified of snakes.

A horror film, though, can't check what each audience member finds personally scary before it is made, so what are the constants of scary movies?

PAIN - Nobody likes pain and yet we will pay millions of dollars to see it inflicted on others. We're not normally sadistic so what is it about pain that drives horror movie sales? The relative failure of recent gorefests such as HOSTEL 2 and SAW 3 and CAPTIVITY suggest that it is not the inflicting of pain that is so scary, but the fear of pain. It is the fear of pain that makes a scary movie scary. The graphic infliction of pain is only effective when it precedes the promise of future, worse pain and thus makes the fear of that pain all the greater. The longer that fear can be drawn out whilst the likelihood of pain grows ever nearer the more effective and scarier a horror movie will be. Films in which the infliction of pain is the be all and end all just become horrible.

IDENTIFICATION - There is an invisible barrier between the audience and the cast of a movie, that of the cinema screen. We, the viewers, are not there, running from the nameless dark, but we can be made to feel like we are, or could be. It is the goal of the film-maker to make us identify with those on the screen. The victims of horror movies are rarely superheroes or demon hunters any more because we, the audience, don't identify with that. Ordinary people are now the key, often teens because that is the core audience, but in any case the more time that is spent making the characters seem not only real, but just like ordinary folk, then the more invested we will be in the character and the more we will fear for them.

HOPE - Modern horror films seemed to have done away with this, thus becoming trips through the lowest levels of humanity. The serial killer has almost become the hero (on TV in DEXTER, quite literally) and that is why the modern bloodfests are failing. We cannot, and don't want to, identify with the slashers, but there is often little hope of the hero/ine getting away. No failure is greater than that which takes place in the sight of victory.

PSYCHOLOGY - The most successful horror movies are the ones that mess with your head. Think about THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, a film in which nothing actually happens and yet which scared a good proportion of the world. This is the art of tapping into what frightens the audience. If you don't know, then shroud your terror in the shadows, in the dark, in that glimpse out of the corner of the eye and the viewer will fill in their own personal pet fear right out of their imaginations. And there is yet to be anything more frightening than what's in the human mind.

The films (and film-makers) that can best manipulate these factors will be the ones that you remember as being the scariest.

Learn more about this author, Darren Humphries.
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