The Art of Creating Truly Haunting Horror

Judg-ing Dread: What Makes a Good Horror Movie Great?

What is the supreme marker of a good horror movie? Its scare quotient? If yes, then, is a movie with a high scare quotient invariably a good one? Prahlad Srihari writes.

ABOUT TWO-THIRDS OF THE WAY through Smile 2, Naomi Scott’s fresh-out-of-rehab pop star Skye Riley is alone in her apartment at night when the curse haunting her manifests as a dance troupe wearing the eerie expression of the title. Terrified, she legs it, raring to put distance between her and the perceived threat. Each time she looks behind, the camera pans to reveal the smiling dancers gaining on her. The dancers appear to move only when she turns her back in a twisted version of Red Light, Green Light. Before she can escape out the front door, she is tagged, dragged and overpowered, her body under siege from an unruly crowd. The violence takes choreographic form as the confrontational dynamics of a woman grappling with inner demons and the suffocating pressures of fame are incorporated into a danse macabre.

This sequence may not be as gnarly as Skye’s drug dealer repeatedly smashing his own face with a weight plate while smiling under the influence. It may not be as nerve-wracking as Sky and her boyfriend’s close-quarters argument in a car, with the camera whip panning back and forth. But it may be the movie’s most novel scare. Maybe even its defining one. Or at least the one I couldn’t stop thinking about. Not so much because it etched into my nightmares but because it cracked me up a little. Which brings me to this: what is the supreme marker of a good horror movie? Its scare quotient? If yes, then, is a movie with a high scare quotient invariably a good one?

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Consider the case of Alien: Romulus, a soulless nostalgic mix tape of a classic franchise’s greatest hits. Whatever few moments of ingenuity (like the zero-G sequence) writer-director Fede Álvarez engineers do not ultimately redeem the end result. It is a scary enough movie without being a particularly good one. In other words, a movie’s scare quotient is not linked to its artistic merit. Far too often, horror filmmakers resort to cheap tricks to jack up the scare quotient. Jump scares get a bad rap for a good reason. Because it is always startling when there is a sudden, loud intrusion into the frame. The shock is just our reptilian brain reacting. There is nothing remotely guileful about provoking the same response as someone sneaking up behind you and yelling “Boo!”

Jump scares take a shortcut to distress bypassing the true lingering sensation of horror. And all for a fleeting moment. The experience of watching horror movies is rewarding when filmmakers take their time in building an undercurrent of dread and sustaining it till the moment of sweetest release. Nonetheless, a competently staged jump scare can still make an impression. In Oddity, Damian McCarthy employs jump scares to keep the tension mounting. In the prologue, we know something’s coming, as signalled by a motion-sensor camera. But letting us luxuriate in the unknowing makes all the difference.

It’s one of the main reasons why Ridley Scott’s original Alien still haunts us. When a novel idea is executed with a sophisticated edge by a talented emerging director working with an exciting cast, it’s like the planets aligning. But studios get greedy, greenlight a sequel, then another, then a spinoff, before long, it’s a whole franchise looking for continuity and renewal. Catching lightning in a bottle a second or third time isn’t easy. With each entry, the barbed edges get smoothed out, the sense of mystery to its universe slowly disappears. Until all you are left with is a plodding theme park ride. Franchises would do better to quit while ahead than when respectability is in deficit.

Needless to say, when it comes to horror movies, the mileage varies from person to person. As a seasoned gorehound, my stomach for gross-out horror is not as sensitive as it may be for some. But there was one scene from In a Violent Nature that prompted a visceral reaction in me: when the undead masked killer disembowels and contorts a woman doing yoga till she is a human pretzel. The year’s most puffed-up body horror movie, The Substance, had its fair share of stomach-churning moments. But the one that had me particularly anxious was Demi Moore getting ready for a date with an old high-school classmate. Moore’s aging star Elizabeth is so desperate to feel attractive again and find validation that she ends up sabotaging herself. In substance, she is every horror movie character looking to delay the inevitability of fate.

Hype has always shadowed horror movies like a monster in itself. Every year, there is one title that arrives on a tidal wave of grassroots buzz, with preview audiences making premature cases for additions to the hallowed canon. 2024 was not even half over when Longlegs was billed as the year’s scariest. The movie’s American distributor NEON built anticipation around Oz Perkins’ occult mystery through ciphers, posters, teasers, and a whole trail of breadcrumbs. Maika Monroe is in fine form as a socially awkward FBI agent on the hunt for Nicolas Cage’s kooky serial killer/influencer. Perkins constructs a demonic, moody, stylised container for Monroe’s sleuthing and Cage’s hysterics. But for all the formal precision, the film lacks personality where it counts: the horror and the mystery.

ALSO READ | The Year In Horror: Faces Of Fear In 2024

There is ultimately nothing scarier than the unknown and the indefinite. Think of movies that revel in the anxiety of not knowing what will emerge out of the darkness, not knowing what form the monster will take, not knowing the rules of survival, not knowing how to face something that cannot be defeated or explained. Keeping the character’s vision nebulous also keeps the viewer unmoored. Horror movies are most effective when they hook on to that feeling of helplessness for a large part of the runtime. For when it comes to scares, the quotient doesn’t matter as much as the quality.

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