Ep. 2: REMIXED - A New Dimension in Terror: Tropes and Techniques

On the first episode of this podcast, we discussed the etymology of horror, its meaning, and the science behind the genre, including who is its vast and varied audience and why. In this episode, we’re going to examine, not only the various tropes of horror films, but also the techniques behind this genre of film, and how it is distinctive from other similar genres.

But as horror films, by their nature, create suspense and thrills, how do we differentiate them from genres of a similar nature, such as thrillers? What criteria creates horror? Are there narrative, visual, and/or auditory cues that help define the genre? According to Dr. Bruce Kawin in his book, Horror and the Horror Film, “Image and sound can charge the darkness that hides a horror object with the fear of the unknown or the dreaded, and both the atmosphere and the threat— which both are crucial—lend themselves to being shown in whatever light is available or hidden in the visually tangible darkness.” (Kawin, 2012)

That film, by its nature, allows for the manipulation of light and shadow, the control of what the viewer sees, the creation of atmosphere through its use of light and angles, without any dialogue having been spoken, makes it uniquely suited for horror. Suspense can be created simply by the suggestion of something lurking in a shadow. Death can be suggested or shown in graphic detail. The camera can probe and linger on uncomfortable images. While the jump scare, which was first used in 1942’s Cat People and works by activating our startle reflex, may be overused now in horror, it is still effective at startling and cannot be replicated in any other medium. And while there are numerous frightening literary figures, most of us do not literally jump when reading a book as we might when watching a film.

The main goals of the composition of shots, the edits made, and the sounds and music used, are to create an uneasy feeling—to unsettle the audience and make us feel threatened. The more uneasy we are throughout a film, and the more we are primed to expect threats, the more tension is built and the bigger the scare.

Quick Cuts

An image of the demon Pazuzu from the film The Exorcist. Image via Haunted MTL.

In the 1973 film, The Exorcist, director William Friedkin used a subliminal image to further the audience’s sense of threat. During a dream sequence about 45 minutes into the film, the image of a white face, which was that of star Linda Blair’s stand-in, was shown for only 1/8 of a second, less than the time it takes to blink an eye—a short enough time that we can consciously perceive the image, but not completely register it. It’s just enough time for the viewer to become aware of some type of threat and for the viewers’ sense of fear to increase. Once we are primed to see a threat, we become more aware of and faster at identifying other threats. We are alert and tense and on the edge of our seats. According to Entertainment Weekly’s reporting on a 2012 interview, director William Friedkin states about the subliminal image: “You couldn’t catch it before VHS. And now you can stop the DVD and stare at it. … I didn't like the makeup for the demon, but viewed as a quick cut, it's very frightening.” (Breznican, 2022)

Depth of Field

Another visual way filmmakers can suggest a threat by hiding information from the audience is using shallow focus. Shallow focus is a technique that allows one part of an image to remain in focus, while the remaining areas of the image are out of focus, isolating the subject from the other planes. It is accomplished by utilizing a shallow depth of field, which involves widening the aperture or increasing the focal length of the lens to narrow the range of acceptable sharpness in which the subject is placed. The wider one’s aperture, the shallower the depth of field. Shallow focus means that the subject will remain crisp and sharp, while the area in front of and behind the subject will be blurred. It is this blurring of the foreground and background around the subject, while keeping the subject itself sharp, that allows filmmakers to hide information of what is happening within the scene and suggest the possibility of a lurking threat. (Maio, 2019); (MasterClass, 2021)

Perspective

Hiding information from the audience can also be accomplished by using first-person perspective. By allowing the audience to see only what the killer or the potential victim sees, the film is limiting the range of information in the scene that the audience is given. For example, in the 1975 film, Jaws, the camera places us in the water, watching legs kick in the ocean. We know she’s being watched, hunted. And, as we are powerless to help, we become complicit. But who’s hunting her? This first-person perspective of the killer allows the killer to be hidden from our sight.

Often, when we see things from the first-person perspective of the victim, our view of what is happening in the scene is again limited, often by shaky camera work meant to mimic the shaky running of the victim, such as in The Blair Witch Project. The victim may also be distracted by panic-induced events or phobias, which allows the filmmaker to further distract and hide information from the audience. For example, as James Stewart is running up the stairs to the top of the mission’s bell tower in the 1958 film, Vertigo, he is slowed down by the vertigo he experiences during his climb. This not only slows him down and limits what he is able to see, but, because we are experiencing Stewart’s vertigo with him, it serves to disorient and hide information from us, so that what has transpired at the top of the bell tower is not revealed to us, or Stewart, until the climax of the film.

Another perspective is that of the voyeur, where we, as the audience, are watching a crime being committed, but from a distance. A wide shot, with the crime we are watching surrounded by negative space, can create a feeling of voyeurism and detachment. Much like James Stewart watching Grace Kelly being assaulted by Raymond Burr in Rear Window, we are powerless and unable to interfere with what we are watching transpire.

Negative Space

But what is negative space? Negative space is the empty space surrounding the subject. It can serve not only to help focus our eyes on the subject, but to isolate, contrast with, or engulf the subject. Wide shots or extreme wide shots composed mostly of negative space often function in horror films to illustrate isolation and/or vulnerability of the subject. For example, there is a famous shot of Danny playing in the hallway of the isolated hotel in the 1980 film, The Shining. In the shot, Danny is in the foreground, while the mysterious room 237 is in the background. The composition of the shot, the lines created by the doors in the hallway, and the way the hallway leads to room 237, means that our eyes are drawn to the door looming over Danny. Meanwhile, Danny is surrounded by the negative space created by the patterned carpet. The pattern on the carpet is large and maze-like and seems to engulf Danny. This shot serves not only to isolate Danny through its use of negative space, while drawing the audience’s attention to the door looming over him, but to also foreshadow, using the patterned carpet, the maze in which Danny and his mother will find themselves running through when trying to escape Jack Nicholson’s character.

A still from The Shining. Image via Arch Daily.

Camera Angles

Messing with the rules of composition, utilizing unbalanced frames and/or Dutch angles, such as those famously used in the 1949 film, The Third Man, can often confuse and/or disorient the audience. For example, lead room is the negative space in front of a subject in the direction that the subject is facing or moving. By removing this lead room, filmmakers can confuse and/or hide information from the audience. Additionally, by ignoring the rules for balance within a shot, such as with extreme closeups, filmmakers can disorient the audience by creating sensory overload.

Extreme close-ups can also serve to hide information from the audience. Such tight shots can create a sense of claustrophobia, of being trapped and helpless. Often extreme close-ups in horror films are used to show the horror on the victim’s face or the frenzy on the face of the killer. A famous example of the use of extreme closeups is the shower scene in the 1960 film, Psycho. The fast cutting of extreme closeups functions not only to obscure the killer, but also serves to enhance the victim’s terror, her sense of ambush and of her being cornered, with a lack of means to escape. Fast cutting, an editing technique where several consecutive shots are each shown briefly, can disorient the viewer and cause confusion and, in this scene, it mimics the quick slashing of Norman Bates’ knife. I can’t imagine being more defenseless than when bathing—cornered in a small, enclosed space; you can’t see around you; you cannot be alert to your surroundings; you can’t hear because of the water; you’re utterly defenseless, naked, and vulnerable. Hitchcock can use these simple surroundings to enhance the horror and murder of the victim.

Sound

Sound

Just as important as these visual manipulations is the use of sound. Sound is used to create atmosphere, suspense, and fear. Sound that exists within the world of the film is referred to as diegetic sound: the hoot of an owl and screech of a small animal that you know has met its death, though nothing has been shown. The bark of a dog to alert you to some unseen presence. A heartbeat. Footsteps. The breaking of bones. The sound of an individual struggling for breath. All these auditory cues/elements create and build anxiety.

Non-diegetic film is sound that exists outside of the world of the film, for example, narration or the score of a film. Both diegetic and non-diegetic sounds are tools used to enhance the atmosphere and message of the scene—for example, the use of violins playing in a screeching staccato, correspond to Norman Bates’ stabbing actions in the 1960 film, Psycho, with the pulsating violin building from one note into dissonant chords with each subsequent stab. 

According to G. Neil Martin, “Research suggests that different styles of music can affect the emotional perception of what is seen in film, regardless of the content (Bullerjahn and Guldenring, 1994), and this accompaniment allows us to interpret what we see in the context of this music (Gorbman, 1987). … Discordant music has been associated with activity in different brain regions to those found when listening to harmonic or pleasant music; these regions include the right Para hippocampal gyrus and precuneus and bilateral orbitofrontal cortex (Blood et al., 1999) and may suggest that these regions are involved in mediating our auditory response to some aspects of horror film.” (Martin, 2019)

The Devil’s Tritone is often utilized in horror music, from the beginning of Saint-Saëns' 1874 composition “Dance Macabre” to the soundtrack of 1993 film, Hocus Pocus. A tritone is an interval made up of three adjacent whole steps or 6 semitones. In a C major scale, this would mean from the F to the above B, which is also known as an augmented fourth. Reasons for it being called the Latin, diabolus in musica, or devil in music, range from it going against what was, in the early middle ages, proper musical form—by containing an augmented fourth or a diminished fifth instead of a perfect fifth, (Longdon, 2018) to it simply being too complicated to sing. (DeVoto, 2013)

Regardless, the dissonance created by the tritone enhances our discomfort and therefore, perfectly accompanies horror. According to Professor of Music Psychology, John Sloboda, of Guildhall School of Music and Drama: “When we hear something dissonant, it gives you a little bit of an emotional frisson, because it's strange and unexpected. The emotional result of hearing a tritone, might not be too different from the one experienced at the bottom of a staircase that failed to mention it’s missing its last step.” (Longdon, 2018)

Additionally, according to Gerald Moshell, Professor of Music at Tritnity College: "The reason it's unsettling is that it's ambiguous, unresolved. It wants to go somewhere. It wants to settle either here, or [there]. You don't know where it'll go, but it can't stop where it is.” (Kogan, 2017)

Other sounds that enhance the audience’s feelings of discomfort include nonlinear sounds and infrasound. According to the Nevada Film Office: “Non-linear sounds are sounds that are too loud for the normal musical range of an instrument or an animal’s vocal chords. Examples of non-linear sounds include the distress calls of wild animals, a child’s cry, and sudden and unpredictable frequency changes of acoustic instruments….In [a] study conducted by UCLA evolutionary biologist Daniel Blumstein (with the help of film score composer Peter Kaye and communications professor Greg Bryant), participants were asked to listen to two groups of original music. One contained emotionally neutral film scores and the other contained nonlinear sounds. The results of the study showed that the music that contained nonlinear sounds evoked the highest level of emotional stimulation as well as the most negative feeling.

However, in a separate experiment, participants were asked to not only listen to the music but also watch neutral videos at the same time (like someone drinking coffee or turning pages of a book). When paired with the neutral videos, the music with nonlinear elements did not elicit the same level of emotional stimulation, thereby illustrating that the visual elements of a scene need to be just as powerful as the audio in order for filmmakers to get the desired effect.” (Nevada Film Office, 2018)

Also used in horror is sub-bass and infrasound. Sub-bass are the low pitches between the frequencies of 70 Hz and 20 Hz. Sound below the frequency of 20 Hz is referred to as infrasound. According to Dr. Geoff Leventhall, a consultant in noise vibrations and acoustics, “The popular concept that sound below 20 Hz is inaudible is not correct. Infrasound, in its popular definition as sound below a frequency of 20 Hz, is clearly audible, the hearing threshold having been measured down to 1.5 Hz. Sources of infrasound are in the range from very low-frequency atmospheric fluctuations up into the lower audio frequencies.” Dr. Leventhall states that complaints about low levels of infrasound are overblown and exaggerated by the media. (Leventhall, 2007) Nonetheless, that infrasound can be generated by dangerous events, such as ruptures caused by earthquakes producing acoustic waves in the earth’s atmosphere (Bohan & Tripathy-Lang, 2022), probably induces an instinctive biological response to and awareness of danger—again, heightening the sense of fear the audience feels when used in horror films.

Basically, as horror films go, whatever sounds make us uncomfortable is an opportunity and a possibility for the filmmaker. For example, director William Friedkin even utilized the sound of bees and industrial sounds when creating the sounds used for 1973 film, The Exorcist. (Breznican, 2022) 

WARNING: The following video contains instances of course language.

Themes of Horror

Of course, genres have specific characteristics and/or themes that help define and differentiate them; though, as Dr. G. Neil Martin concedes: “These boundaries … can be fuzzy.” (Martin, 2019) Horror utilizes themes of the supernatural, darkness, the strange, the unknown, the vulnerable, the disfigured, and the grotesque. It can involve chaos, murder, mutation, mutilation, gore, torture, death, and/or physical violations, including sexual. The goals of the use of these themes are to frighten, alarm, and to cause discomfort and/or disgust.

One characteristic that has been often utilized in horror is the duality within our own nature. Some victims of such duality are not only responsible for their own transformation into a monster, but the monster is largely representative of their true self. In Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella, the serum that Dr. Henry Jekyll creates is meant to mask the brutal and lascivious side of himself of which he is already aware, as he has already indulged in unspecified vices. And, yes, I believe it to be pronounced Jee-kyl, not Jekyll. It is pronounced as Jee-kyl by Frederic March in the 1931 classic film adaptation, which is also the Scottish pronunciation of the name. Robert Louis Stevenson was Scottish, having been born in Edinburg. Additionally, it is thought that Stevenson based the name on the family name of famed horticulturalist Gertrude Jekyll, as he was friends with her brother, Walter, and Stevenson lived in Bournemouth at the same time as the Jekyll family. According to the official website of the Jekyll Estate, “The family name in England is pronounced Jeekyll with a long e.” (Jekyll, n.d.)

In other cases of duality, the victim of the duality and transformation is neither responsible for their transformation, nor is it representative of their nature. In the 1942 film, Cat People, the Serbian-born protagonist, Irena, played by Simone Simon, is afraid that she is descended from the legendary cat people, which are based on folklore from her native Serbia. She is not a wicked person, but when her passion is aroused, by sex or jealousy, as when she is made to be jealous by her cheating husband, she turns into a killer panther. She is a literal representation of the animalistic passions inside us all—of the loss of control that can happen when passion overwhelms. As I noted earlier, this was the first film to utilize the jump scare.

He's not so scary, after all. Evelyn Ankers gives Lon Chaney, Jr. a trim in a publicity photo from 1941's The Wolfman. Image via Doctor Macro.

One horror film involving transformation that I think is fascinating in terms of horror transformations is the 1941 film, The Wolfman. The protagonist, played by Lon Chaney, Jr., is really a victim and a tragic hero. Unlike Jekyll or Claude Rains as the eponymous invisible man from the 1933 film, Chaney’s character does nothing to cause his transformation. He is heroically attempting to save a woman from what he thinks is a wolf, but is, in reality, a wolfman, when he is bitten. Once he realizes what he has become, he attempts to contain himself, so that he cannot again harm anyone.

Julie Harris is driven to madness in the 1963 film The Haunting. Image via Flickering Myth.

Another aspect of horror is obsession. Obsession and mental illness in horror films frequently straddles the boundary of delusion, illusion, and reality—often leaving it to the audience to decide which is which. The obsession may manifest as a desire to discover the truth, as in the 1961 film, The Innocents, based on The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. In this film, the protagonist, played by Deborah Kerr, grows obsessed with discovering the truth about the children for whom she is a nanny—but is the truth about the children related to ghosts, or is it in her mind? In the 1963 film, The Haunting, Julie Harris becomes obsessed with Hill House, a place where many tragedies transpired. The 1980 film, The Shining, also features an obsession with a building, though this time it is a hotel with a tragic past. Indeed, in some stories, the characters and a house seem to be deeply connected, as in The Fall of the House of Usher. Obsession may also be murderous, as in Norman Bates’ obsession with and jealousy regarding his mother in the film Psycho, or in the 1990 film, Misery, about the obsessive fan of a novelist. As the obsessed, possibly schizophrenic protagonist of Poe’s short story, “Berenice”, states: “How is it that from beauty I have derived a type of unloveliness?—from the covenant of peace a simile of sorrow? But as, in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born.”

Some horror films utilize the tragic death of a character to hang over the film, as a catalyst for the events of the film and to shape the characters. The death of one who is tragically young and beautiful when having died was often used by Edgar Allen Poe; for example, the eponymous Ligeia or Lenore from the poem, “The Raven”. It was also used in the 1944 film, The Uninvited. Adversely, it could be the death of who is evil, as in 1963’s The Haunting, or one who is innocent and was murdered and is now a vengeful spirit, as in the 1961 film, The Pit and the Pendulum. And sometimes it is the tragedy of suffering systemic oppression that colors the world of the horror film, as in 2017’s Get Out and the 1943 film, I Walked With a Zombie.

I Walked With a Zombie takes place on an island in the Caribbean. The zombies featured in this film are not like those in Night of the Living Dead; instead, they are almost lobotomized-type figures—able to move around, but seemingly unconscious. This film uses voodoo and the Caribbean culture as both a narrative device and to create a haunted, supernatural atmosphere. Non-Christian religions are often used to create strange environments for the usually white and Christian protagonist to enter. These religions are usually presented as “other”. The voodoo in I Walked With a Zombie is not portrayed in a negative way, only as strange and foreign; but Non-Christian religions are often utilized in films to create an atmosphere of ritual and human sacrifice. The 1973 film, The Wicker Man, involves a pagan Celtic religion. Both The Wicker Man and I Walked With a Zombie feature small populations on remote islands who have retained their relationships with their native folk beliefs.

Other times, black magic and/or satanic cults are the religion of the film, which creates a perfect canvas for horrific events to occur, usually involving curses, torture, human sacrifice—or perhaps the birth of the antichrist. Two of my favorite films to feature this characteristic are the 1957 film, Night of the Demon, and the 1934 film, The Black Cat.

Revenge is another catalyst for horror. In the 1849 short story “Hop-Frog”, by Edgar Allen Poe, a disabled little person called Hop-Frog and his beautiful friend, Trippetta, who is also a little person, are slaves of a king who abuses and humiliates them. Hop-Frog is used by the king as a jester and a fool. Through his cleverness, Hop-Frog tricks the king and the members of his council into dressing as beasts for a masquerade, using tar and flax to mimic fur for their costumes. At the masquerade, in front of a full audience, Hop-Frog lights the king and his council on fire, proclaiming to the crowd before his and Trippetta’s escape that “this is my last jest”.

Examples of revenge used in horror films include an abused high school girl in the 1976 film, Carrie, and the supposed freaks in the 1932 film, Freaks, in which those featured in the carnival sideshow are not the actual monsters, as the true monster is instead the beautiful Cleopatra. However, the actions at the end of these films are ugly and monstrous. Being treated like monsters has caused them to become monsters or, at least, caused them to commit monstrous acts. Carrie violently murders everyone, even the teacher who was kind to her. And the end of Freaks is an early example of the now popular body horror, as the beautiful Cleopatra has been made into a human duck, with her tongue having been removed, an eye gouged out, her legs amputated, her hands melted to resemble a duck’s feet, and her torso tarred and feathered.

A lobby card for the film Freaks (1932). Image via Horror Film History.

Some horror is not supernatural or murderous but based on more practical human fears—being buried alive. There may be no ill intent involved in such a burial; simply the victim appearing deceased. This happened as recently as 2020, when, according to The New York Times, a Michigan woman was found to be alive by funeral workers who were readying to embalm her. (Callahan, 2020)

Poe used this motif in the short stories “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Premature Burial”, and it is subsequently used in the Roger Corman-directed film adaptations of these stories. Other films which feature premature burial are Kill Bill: Vol. 2; the 1988 Dutch/French film, The Vanishing; and its 1993 American remake, and two notable television episodes: a 1964 episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour and a 1961 episode of Thriller. (King, 2010)

Some horror films feature an actual monster. The monster could be an unknown spectral presence, from a ghost with possibly sinister intentions, as in 1944’s The Uninvited, to a full-blown demonic possession, as in 1973’s The Exorcist. Maybe it’s our adopted child, as in the 1976 film, The Omen, or the biological child growing inside of us, as in the 1968 film, Rosemary’s Baby. It could be an actual, real-world predator, like a wolf. It could be a lizard or ants affected by radiation from an atomic bomb, such as in the 1954 films Them! and Godzilla. At times, the monster can be nature itself, without reason, as in the birds in the 1963 film, The Birds.

The famous twist ending of the 1979 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Image via Split Tooth Media.

When we became advanced enough to travel to space, many monsters began to take the shape of aliens. The aliens in the 1979 film Alien and its sequels are visually horrifying, while the aliens in the 1986 musical film, Little Shop of Horrors, are seemingly benign plants, and the aliens in both the 1956 and 1978 films, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, are all the more frightening because they look like us.

Some monsters don’t look like monsters—they look like us and are able to charm us because of this. Witches and vampires can seduce us with their charms. Their ability to bewitch, bother, and bewilder makes them especially dangerous.

Additionally, a desire to control science and play God also leads to disastrous results, but wonderful works of horror. In the 1958 film, The Fly, a scientist plays with nature and finds himself caught in a web. In the 1931 film, Frankenstein, Dr. Frankenstein plays with science and creates life from death. In the process, he makes himself more of a monster than the monster he creates. And in its sequel, The Bride of Frankenstein, it is the arrogant Dr. Pretorius who wants to play with nature and play God, while Frankenstein’s monster has become the tragic hero.

And some horror villains are just evil, psychologically disturbed killers. These types of villains are usually serial killers, with no underlying motives for the murders they commit. They can be supernatural killers, like the ghost of Freddy Kreuger invading the dreams of his victims in 1984’s A Nightmare on Elm Street. Or murderous children, such as Michael Myers from the 1978 film, Halloween, and Rhoda Penmark from 1956’s The Bad Seed.

The famous Jason mask from the Friday the13th franchise. Image via Pocket-lint.

Sometimes the victims simply find themselves at the wrong place at the wrong time, such as in 1972’s Deliverance, and 1975’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And at times, the assumed murderer is dead throughout the film, having drowned as a child, and it’s his vengeful mother doing the killing, as in 1980 film, Friday the 13. The burlap-sack-wearing Jason Voorhees was not resurrected to become a killer himself until the sequel. Apparently, having been a neglected and unpopular kid, he decided to just hang out at the campground unseen for 23 years, from the ages of 11 to 34. Was he that traumatized by the promiscuous teenage camp counselors having sex instead of supervising him? His motive for starting to kill was ostensibly to seek revenge for the killing of his mother, who was the villain of the first film, though I believe the real motive was purely box-office related.

Friday the 13th Part III, having a larger budget than the previous two films, allowed Jason to finally upgrade his mask to the famous hockey mask with which we are all now familiar. As the tagline for this 3-D film stated, it was “a new dimension in terror”.

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