Tension/Dread
Tension and/or dread are the most effective ways to put an audience on-edge. This is the “suspense” part of that Hitchcock quote mentioned above.
One classic example of mounting dread is the build-up to the bucket of blood being poured on top of Carrie White’s (Sissy Spacek) head at her prom. If you had read Stephen King’s novel before seeing the movie, you knew it was coming, but you still couldn’t help but be nervous for the duration of the prom. As soon as Pino Donaggio’s “Bucket of Blood” piece of music begins, the film grips you and doesn’t let go.
It’s only two and a half minutes of buildup, but De Palma’s direction and Donaggio’s score evoke so many emotions while you are watching the scene. It makes you think just for a split second that Sue (Amy Irving) will catch Billy (John Travolta) and Chris (Nancy Allen). Before you know it, the blood has fallen and you’re taken on an entirely new horrifying ride.
Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs is filled with suspense throughout its entirety, but the climax of the film that proves to be the most suspenseful is that in which Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) is being stalked by Jame Gumb (Ted Levine) in his pitch-black basement. He is wearing night vision goggles. She isn’t. Rather than just have the screen go black for the scene, Demme puts the audience in Gumb’s POV, as we stalk Clarice with him.
Seeing this scene in a movie theater is probably the best way to view it, but it’s still suspenseful watching it in the safety of your own living room. Putting the audience in the killer’s POV had been done before (Peeping Tom, Halloween, Friday the 13th), but Demme gave it a unique twist with the night-vision goggles.
Lastly, I have to mention Alien again. Ridley Scott does everything he can to make Alien a terrifying experience (thought I still know some people who don’t find it scary at all). The scene in question is the one in which Dallas (Tom Skerritt) goes into the air ducts and gets Marion Crane’d by the titular villain (Skerritt was the biggest name in the cast at the time of Alien’s release, so the fact that he dies second came as a surprise to many audience members). Again, sound design is used to excellent effect here, with the simple beeping of the motion tracker creating all of the suspense for the scene.
You’ll notice that Scott also use a jump scare when Dallas finally comes face to face with the alien. Alien has several jump scares, but they are used minimally and spaced out throughout the film’s two-hour runtime. Each one is effective and doesn’t come off as cheap.
Suspense is something that is taken for granted in the horror genre nowadays. This is partly due to the fact that many horror fans view suspense as a completely separate genre of film. While this may be true to an extent, that does not mean that horror films cannot contain suspense. Pigeonholing horror into just one list of traits does a disservice to the genre, which our own Jonathan Barkan already mentioned a few months ago in this piece.
Tension and dread aid in the building of suspense, and it is an integral part of any horror film.
