It is possible to be scared by something you never see?
- Thread starter ReservoirAngel
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It's always, ALWAYS scarier if you don't see it. Your imagination will always exaggerate the horror of something it can't see, filling in something that you're afraid of to make the subject matter all the scarier. It's always worse not knowing.
To be fair though, some of the fear in Blair Witch was contributed by the forrest they were wandering through. And that dilapidated concrete house near the end could be seen as a "reveal" shot. The moment I saw that house I seriously got the willies.Hero in a half shell said:
I guess it goes to show just a powerful the right environment can be in invoking fear.
Sort of like the fear of darkness, i think most people are more afraid of whats in it more than anything because it is something practically impossible to remove all together anything could be come from it. Probably unrelated quote - The Thrill is in the chase, never in the capture.
Yes, very much so.
But you don't have to have a monster, it could be a malign presence or something that has no form.
A good example was a film from a couple of years back involving writer who rates "haunted" hotels and such, only to end up in a truly haunted room that mercilessly fucks with him.
1408 was the film.
But you don't have to have a monster, it could be a malign presence or something that has no form.
A good example was a film from a couple of years back involving writer who rates "haunted" hotels and such, only to end up in a truly haunted room that mercilessly fucks with him.
1408 was the film.
My main problem with horror movies is exactly this. seeing the monster, no matter how much make-up or special effects it may have, almost always ruins my immersion completely. for example, cloverfield was brilliant, up until you saw that big alien, then i stopped caring. creep was actually not that bad, until i saw the thing and realised how awful it was. descent even had potential, until i saw the abomination that i was meant to fear.
even in games we can see this, silent hill builds up atmosphere, and you become petrified when there is nothing coming after you. even FEARs first level, with no enemies at all, was petrifying to me.
my only exception is if the monster/villian becomes a key figure, an icon if you would. for example the emotionless michael myers (only in Halloween 1) or the just plain creepy freddy krueger (again, the original).
in short, yes, and if done well, it will surpass almost every horror film where you see the monster. do it well and you'll probably have a better movie than the ones on high-end budgets.
even in games we can see this, silent hill builds up atmosphere, and you become petrified when there is nothing coming after you. even FEARs first level, with no enemies at all, was petrifying to me.
my only exception is if the monster/villian becomes a key figure, an icon if you would. for example the emotionless michael myers (only in Halloween 1) or the just plain creepy freddy krueger (again, the original).
in short, yes, and if done well, it will surpass almost every horror film where you see the monster. do it well and you'll probably have a better movie than the ones on high-end budgets.
Well, a lot of the scare factor of Amnesia is based upon the fact that you can't look at the creatures. I suppose that makes it a yes.
Yes, you can be scared of something you never see.
But here's a thing, Slender Man has become an internet icon, yet, most of the time in fiction, you do get to see him. (Usually a man in a black suit with no face.) So why is he so scary?
Because he have god-like powers, he can teleport and appear behind you at any moment, he can cover all his tracks so nobody ever know he even existed, and in fact, he's probably doing all that stuff just to fuck with you.
The more things the monster does that the audience can't even begin to understand HOW he did it, or better yet, WHY he did it, the scarier the monster is.
Also you can see the monster in Amnesia, but by the time you see his face close enough to realize what he is, you probably don't have a face anymore.
But here's a thing, Slender Man has become an internet icon, yet, most of the time in fiction, you do get to see him. (Usually a man in a black suit with no face.) So why is he so scary?
Because he have god-like powers, he can teleport and appear behind you at any moment, he can cover all his tracks so nobody ever know he even existed, and in fact, he's probably doing all that stuff just to fuck with you.
The more things the monster does that the audience can't even begin to understand HOW he did it, or better yet, WHY he did it, the scarier the monster is.
Also you can see the monster in Amnesia, but by the time you see his face close enough to realize what he is, you probably don't have a face anymore.
Any horror movie that can scare you without showing you anything scary... is a fucking great horror movie. Your imagination can do terrifying things, no monster CGI or FX needed.
yes, that is how suspense works anyway.
Also, who says your 'monster' has to look like a monstrosity? I recently watched inception and I was amazed and impressed with how the character Mal could go from looking lovely to coldly demonic in an instant. *Spoiler* A perfect example is the scene in which Ariadne sneaks into the part of Cobb's dream where he is talking to a projection of his wife(Mal). In an instant Mal knows she is there, looks directly at her and her eyes turn dark. While I and friend were watching the movie, I told them to watch the screen for the upcoming scene and they almost jumped out of their chair.
So if you can't afford a monster, try doing an uncanny atmosphere with human characters. This challenges you to maximize on your creative ability in writing and directing instead of trying to pour money into an awesome looking costume. Just a suggestion.
Also, who says your 'monster' has to look like a monstrosity? I recently watched inception and I was amazed and impressed with how the character Mal could go from looking lovely to coldly demonic in an instant. *Spoiler* A perfect example is the scene in which Ariadne sneaks into the part of Cobb's dream where he is talking to a projection of his wife(Mal). In an instant Mal knows she is there, looks directly at her and her eyes turn dark. While I and friend were watching the movie, I told them to watch the screen for the upcoming scene and they almost jumped out of their chair.
So if you can't afford a monster, try doing an uncanny atmosphere with human characters. This challenges you to maximize on your creative ability in writing and directing instead of trying to pour money into an awesome looking costume. Just a suggestion.
Absolutely. In Amnesia, while I did get killed several times just to look at the
(Enemies),
(A certain enemy) you never get to see, and it's one of the scariest. In the beginning, I was constantly expecting some creature to come out, and when it finally did, it probably wasn't as scary. Actually, that's a lie, they're terrifying, but the sum of the fear I gave myself when there was nothing to fear was greater.
Guardians
The fish...thing
Even as a kid I could tell you the unseen is creepier than some giant lizard monster, because my scariest nightmare as a kid was me sat in a room, I heard footsteps and a darth vader like voice whispered "I can see you, but you can't see meeeeeeee....". that nightmare has stayed with me since I was 5-6 (22).
Absolutely, even in books. The scariest goddamned thing I ever read was part of The Shining, and unfortunately the sequence didn't make it into the movie the way it was in the book. I'm going to quote the whole thing, in fact.
Jack Torrance has taken a job as the winter caretaker for a huge Colorado hotel way, way out in the wilderness. He, his wife Wendy, and his son Danny are the only people for miles around until the spring thaw--all the staff have left, and there are no guests.
Earlier in the book, Danny, who's been roaming around the hotel, claims to have been assaulted by a woman who was in the bathtub in room 217. (Room 217 is the where a female guest killed herself many years before.) Wendy accuses Jack of doing something to Danny (there's a prior history of Jack losing his temper), and an angry Jack goes to check the room out. He's in the bathroom looking in the tub.
Earlier in the book, Danny, who's been roaming around the hotel, claims to have been assaulted by a woman who was in the bathtub in room 217. (Room 217 is the where a female guest killed herself many years before.) Wendy accuses Jack of doing something to Danny (there's a prior history of Jack losing his temper), and an angry Jack goes to check the room out. He's in the bathroom looking in the tub.
He bent down and ran his fingertips along the bottom of the tub. Dry as a bone. Not even a hint of moisture. The boy had been either hallucinating or outright lying. He felt angry again. That was when the bathmat on the floor caught his attention. He frowned down at it. What was a bathmat doing in here? It should be down in the linen cupboard at the end of the wing with the rest of the sheets and towels and pillow slips. All the linen was supposed to be there. Not even the beds were really made up in these guest rooms; the mattresses had been zipped into clear plastic and then covered with bedspreads. He supposed Danny might have gone down and gotten it--the passkey would open the linen cupboard--but why? He brushed the tips of his fingers back and forth across it. The bathmat was bone dry.
He went back to the bathroom door and stood in it. Everything was all right. The boy had been dreaming. There was not a thing out of place. It was a little puzzling about the bathmat, granted, but the logical explanation was that some chambermaid, hurrying like mad on the last day of the season, had just forgotten to pick it up. Other than that, everything was--
His nostrils flared a little. Disinfectant, that self-righteous smell, cleaner-than-thou. And--
Soap?
Surely not. But once the smell had been identified, it was too clear to dismiss. Soap. And not one of those postcard-size bars of Ivory they provide you with in hotels and motels, either. This scent was light and perfumed, a lady's soap. It had a pink sort of smell. Camay or Lowila, the brand that Wendy had always used in Stovington.
(It's nothing. It's your imagination.)
(yes like the hedges nevertheless they did move)
(They did not move!)
He crossed jerkily to the door which gave on the hall, feeling the irregular thump of a headache beginning at his temples. Too much had happened today, too much by far. He wouldn't spank the boy or shake him, just talk to him, but by God, he wasn't going to add Room 217 to his problems. Not on the basis of a dry bathmat and a faint smell of Lowila soap. He--
There was a sudden rattling, metallic sound behind him. It came just as his hand closed around the doorknob, and an observer might have thought the brushed steel of the knob carried an electric charge. He jerked convulsively, eyes widening, other facial features drawing in, grimacing.
Then he had control of himself, a little, anyway, and he let go of the doorknob and turned carefully around. His joints creaked. He began to walk back to the bathroom door, step by leaden step.
The shower curtain, which he had pushed back to look into the tub, was now drawn. The metallic rattle, which had sounded to him like a stir of bones in a crypt, had been the curtain rings on the overhead bar. Jack stared at the curtain. His face felt as if it had been heavily waxed, all dead skin on the outside, live, hot rivulets of fear on the inside. The way he had felt on the playground.
There was something behind the pink plastic shower curtain. There was something in the tub.
He could see it, ill defined and obscure through the plastic, a nearly amorphous shape. It could have been anything. A trick of the light. The shadow of the shower attachment. A woman long dead and reclining in her bath, a bar of Lowila in one stiffening hand as she waited patiently for whatever lover might come.
Jack told himself to step forward boldly and rake the shower curtain back. To expose whatever might be there. Instead he turned with jerky, marionette strides, his heart whamming frightfully in his chest, and went back into the bed/sitting room.
The door to the hall was shut.
He stared at it for a long, immobile second. He could taste his terror now. It was in the back of his throat like a taste of gone-over cherries.
He walked to the door with that same jerky stride and forced his fingers to curl around the knob.
(It won't open.)
But it did.
He turned off the light with a fumbling gesture, stepped out into the hall, and pulled the door shut without looking back. From inside, he seemed to hear an odd wet thumping sound, far off, dim, as if something had just scrambled belatedly out of the tub, as if to greet a caller, as if it had realized the caller was leaving before the social amenities had been completed and so it was now rushing to the door, all purple and grinning, to invite the caller back inside. Perhaps forever.
Footsteps approaching the door or only the heartbeat in his ears?
He fumbled at the passkey. It seemed sludgy, unwilling to turn in the lock. He attacked the passkey. The tumblers suddenly fell and he stepped back against the corridor's far wall, a little groan of relief escaping him. He closed his eyes and all the old phrases began to parade through his mind, it seemed there must be hundreds of them,
(cracking up not playing with a full deck lost ya marbles guy just went loony
tunes he went up and over the high side went bananas lost his football crackers
nuts half a seabag)
all meaning the same thing: losing your mind.
"No," he whimpered, hardly aware that he had been reduced to this, whimpering with his eyes shut like a child. "Oh no, God. Please, God, no."
But below the tumble of his chaotic thoughts, below the triphammer beat of his heart, he could hear the soft and futile sound of the doorknob being turned to and fro as something locked in tried helplessly to get out, something that wanted to meet him, something that would like to be introduced to his family as the storm shrieked around them and white daylight became black night. If he opened his eyes and saw that doorknob moving he would go mad. So he kept them shut, and after an unknowable time, there was stillness.
Jack forced himself to open his eyes, half-convinced that when he did, she would be standing before him. But the hall was empty.
He felt watched just the same.
He went back to the bathroom door and stood in it. Everything was all right. The boy had been dreaming. There was not a thing out of place. It was a little puzzling about the bathmat, granted, but the logical explanation was that some chambermaid, hurrying like mad on the last day of the season, had just forgotten to pick it up. Other than that, everything was--
His nostrils flared a little. Disinfectant, that self-righteous smell, cleaner-than-thou. And--
Soap?
Surely not. But once the smell had been identified, it was too clear to dismiss. Soap. And not one of those postcard-size bars of Ivory they provide you with in hotels and motels, either. This scent was light and perfumed, a lady's soap. It had a pink sort of smell. Camay or Lowila, the brand that Wendy had always used in Stovington.
(It's nothing. It's your imagination.)
(yes like the hedges nevertheless they did move)
(They did not move!)
He crossed jerkily to the door which gave on the hall, feeling the irregular thump of a headache beginning at his temples. Too much had happened today, too much by far. He wouldn't spank the boy or shake him, just talk to him, but by God, he wasn't going to add Room 217 to his problems. Not on the basis of a dry bathmat and a faint smell of Lowila soap. He--
There was a sudden rattling, metallic sound behind him. It came just as his hand closed around the doorknob, and an observer might have thought the brushed steel of the knob carried an electric charge. He jerked convulsively, eyes widening, other facial features drawing in, grimacing.
Then he had control of himself, a little, anyway, and he let go of the doorknob and turned carefully around. His joints creaked. He began to walk back to the bathroom door, step by leaden step.
The shower curtain, which he had pushed back to look into the tub, was now drawn. The metallic rattle, which had sounded to him like a stir of bones in a crypt, had been the curtain rings on the overhead bar. Jack stared at the curtain. His face felt as if it had been heavily waxed, all dead skin on the outside, live, hot rivulets of fear on the inside. The way he had felt on the playground.
There was something behind the pink plastic shower curtain. There was something in the tub.
He could see it, ill defined and obscure through the plastic, a nearly amorphous shape. It could have been anything. A trick of the light. The shadow of the shower attachment. A woman long dead and reclining in her bath, a bar of Lowila in one stiffening hand as she waited patiently for whatever lover might come.
Jack told himself to step forward boldly and rake the shower curtain back. To expose whatever might be there. Instead he turned with jerky, marionette strides, his heart whamming frightfully in his chest, and went back into the bed/sitting room.
The door to the hall was shut.
He stared at it for a long, immobile second. He could taste his terror now. It was in the back of his throat like a taste of gone-over cherries.
He walked to the door with that same jerky stride and forced his fingers to curl around the knob.
(It won't open.)
But it did.
He turned off the light with a fumbling gesture, stepped out into the hall, and pulled the door shut without looking back. From inside, he seemed to hear an odd wet thumping sound, far off, dim, as if something had just scrambled belatedly out of the tub, as if to greet a caller, as if it had realized the caller was leaving before the social amenities had been completed and so it was now rushing to the door, all purple and grinning, to invite the caller back inside. Perhaps forever.
Footsteps approaching the door or only the heartbeat in his ears?
He fumbled at the passkey. It seemed sludgy, unwilling to turn in the lock. He attacked the passkey. The tumblers suddenly fell and he stepped back against the corridor's far wall, a little groan of relief escaping him. He closed his eyes and all the old phrases began to parade through his mind, it seemed there must be hundreds of them,
(cracking up not playing with a full deck lost ya marbles guy just went loony
tunes he went up and over the high side went bananas lost his football crackers
nuts half a seabag)
all meaning the same thing: losing your mind.
"No," he whimpered, hardly aware that he had been reduced to this, whimpering with his eyes shut like a child. "Oh no, God. Please, God, no."
But below the tumble of his chaotic thoughts, below the triphammer beat of his heart, he could hear the soft and futile sound of the doorknob being turned to and fro as something locked in tried helplessly to get out, something that wanted to meet him, something that would like to be introduced to his family as the storm shrieked around them and white daylight became black night. If he opened his eyes and saw that doorknob moving he would go mad. So he kept them shut, and after an unknowable time, there was stillness.
Jack forced himself to open his eyes, half-convinced that when he did, she would be standing before him. But the hall was empty.
He felt watched just the same.
