Journal #23 Scary Stories

When I watch scary movies or hear scary stories, there are many elements I pick out that make them scary. First of all in movies, the suspense building up to a scary part makes the movie scary. When people "pop up" out of nowhere and stuff like that, it makes the movie scarier. Also, the mood and lighting makes a movie scary. Usually scary movies are really dark and create a creepier feeling. Also when you listen to scary movies, you are usually sitting around a campfire, which is dark, or sitting in a dark room. So really, the overall mood makes a movie or story scary. Then there is aspects like the music. The music in a scary movie sets the mood too. The scarier music helps indicate when something bad is about to happen in the movie. It builds up suspense too, so when you are watching, you do not really know what to expect. Like in paranormal activity 1, 2, and 3, when the lights go out when they go to bed, that is when the paranormal stuff really happens. The lights went off, the music built up, and then the scary parts happened. What makes a movie a lot scarier is when the claim it is based on a true even because then people believe that it could happen and while they watch the movie, they get more freaked out. For example, the Haunting in Connecticut claims to be based on a true story. So when people watch that movie, they realize that maybe they could be haunted too; that it is possible in real life like it is in the movie. Also what can make a scary movie scary is violence. There is usually some kind of violence or blood that builds suspense in the movie. For example, in saw, people are tortured in various different ways. That kind of violence makes the scarier even though it is mainly just gory. Mainly things that are just unexpected in the movie make it scary. Like the fact that a monkey is being hung on a tree in the background during the Wizard of Oz. Those kinds of things are just unexpected and give the movie a more eerie feeling.