15 Ways You Didn't Even Realize Horror Movies Are Manipulating You Into Fear

Jacob Shelton
Updated September 10, 2022 96.7K views

Despite being essentially ghettoized by film critics and the mainstream film press, horror movies (the good ones, at least) are some of the most inventive, captivating pieces of pure cinema that exist. It may seem like a crew can toss of a horror movie in a weekend, but truly scaring an audience isn’t easy, and the tricks horror movies use to scare you are a combination of technological know-how and an understanding of human psychology and physiology. Classic horror movie devices like the jump scare may seem old hat, but that’s because these techniques work time and time again to send a shiver through the audience. Whether you’re a master of horror, or you’d just like to know how you’re manipulated by your favorite directors, this list will help you discover truly terrifying horror movie tricks.

Of the techniques horror movies use to scare you, a few work every time they’re used. Others require other elements to be firing in tandem, such as the script and performances. Thing is, everyone has buttons that are pushed by a horror film; even if you don’t react when something crab-walks across a room, you might get anxious when you see a mirror in a shot. Horror films utilize as many of these techniques as possible to manipulate you into a puddle of fear. Most of these techniques are so pervasive, it’s rare you would see a horror movie that doesn’t use them. 

  • Liberal Use Of Negative Space

    In cinema, negative space is everything in the frame that's not the subject of your focus. It's meant to give your eyes a place to rest, and it can literally be anything: a wall, a refrigerator, or just plain ol' underexposed black space. Non-genre films usually try to create a perfect balance of negative and positive space because, when there's too much negative space, the audience feels uncomfortable.

    You've been conditioned to watch a films in which characters exist in a visually balanced frame, so when ratios are off, the audience grows tense, waiting for something to happen. There are a myriad variations on this theme in the horror genre. Some of the best examples from the 2010s can be found in films like It Follows, Insidious, and The Pact

  • Subversion Of Classic Horror Tropes

    By now, even people who don't love horror movies are aware of the tropes of the genre: the monster in the mirror, the final girl, the slasher waiting in the woods, etc. A new trope has risen from the ashes left by eye-rolling, smarty-pants audiences - subversion. The most obvious version of this is when a character looks in a bathroom mirror, opens the mirror, closes the mirror, and nothing happens.

    Horror films have conditioned audiences to wait for the jump scare when the mirror closes and there's a spook, specter, or maybe even a ghoul waiting for its prey. When a film begins this small narrative arc and refuses to complete it, the audience is left hanging, which makes them uncomfortable. Because you know something is coming, but now you don't know when to expect it. And that's exactly what you want out of a horror film. 

  • Nonlinear Sounds

    Nonlinear Sounds
    Photo: Produzioni Atlas Consorziate

    Sound plays a huge role in the efficacy of horror films, yet its importance is often overlooked. Frightening visuals and a spooky atmosphere are great, but they're nothing without a soundscape to bring everything together. One of the greatest tricks for creating unease in a horror film is the use of nonlinear sounds. Distressed animals, people screaming, the sounds of a clunking oil rig, all of these have been used to create tension and a general sense of unease amongst viewers.

    According to researchers, humans are instinctively meant to feel danger when they hear a high pitched squeal, and this kind of sound design is exactly why films like The Shining and Suspiria are so unsettling. 

  • Infrasound

    Infrasound
    Video: YouTube

    What is infrasound and why is it so scary? Well, kids, infrasound is a tone that exists at 19 Hz or any lower frequency. Such sounds can't be heard by human ears, but can be felt by the body. Infrasound is a naturally occurring phenomenon created by wind, earthquakes, avalanches, and anything that's rumbly. This kind of low frequency sound naturally unsettles humans, especially when it's heard over a lengthy duration.

    So in which films have you heard infrasound? Gaspar Noe used sound that registered at 27 Hz for the first 30 minutes of his 2002 film Irreversible, a movie that would be stressful enough without the creepy audio. With the added low frequency noise it's a truly unsettling movie (which is an understatement, to say the least). The sound was so off-putting it made some movie-goers nauseous and disoriented, and they left the theater. 

    David Lynch uses infrasound in literally everything he releases except for The Straight Story, and Paranormal Activity used the below-20-Hz frequency to freak audiences out while they looked at empty doorways and oscillating fans. 

  • Subliminal Images

    Subliminal Images
    Video: YouTube

    The biggest misconception about subliminal images is they'll drive you to marry a crow or buy a new wardrobe after seeing them, but on the whole, subliminal images tend to make people upset, and in some cases viscerally ill. William Friedkin, director of The Exorcist, used subliminal messages to completely unnerve audiences who went into the film blind, specifically by including shots of Captain Howdy, one of the demons who inhabits Regan's body, for an eighth of a second at three different points during the film.

    In 2012, Friedkin said he lamented that the film was now available in a digital format. “You couldn’t catch it before VHS,” he said “And now you can stop the DVD and stare at it.”

  • Tight Framing

    Tight frames aren't inherently frightening. They're used for close ups, punching in on a joke, or, in the case of a three camera sitcom, to build an entire scene when you may not have all of the actors present. But in the context of a horror film, tight frames can be terrifying.

    Tight frames are used in horror to induce anxiety in the viewer by not allowing them to see what's directly around the protagonist. It could be nothing, it could be a hockey-mask clad psychopath carrying a machete. In a tight frame, it's impossible to know. The Babadook uses tight framing excellently, in the scene in which Samuel screams at an unknown entity while his mother drives. The scene is unnerving and, thanks to the tight shots on his yelping face, it's impossible not to feel a tingle of fear. 

  • Jump Scares

    Jump scares may be the most maligned trick in the magic bag of a horror filmmaker, but when a jump scare is done well, it can be incredibly effective. Christian Grillon, PhD, a psychophysiologist who studies fear and anxiety at the National Institute of Mental Health, notes that when you're watching a horror film you're already hyper-vigilant, thus more susceptible to a jump scare.

    "If a startle-eliciting stimulus comes, then the startle will be much larger than in a non-anxious state. In my lab, when I make subjects anxious and then I startle them, the startle reflex can be increased by 100 to 300 percent."

    That explains why a jump scare executed by a director who knows how to make "cheap" scares count, such as the sudden appearance of a witch in The Conjuring (which is followed by a very '70s camera push) works so much better than Jason popping out of the woods in any Friday the 13th

  • Irregular Movement

    Irregular Movement
    Video: YouTube

    This may be a specific, personally unsettling trope, but when something or someone moves in an any way that's not normal, it's incredibly unsettling. Javier Botet, an actor born with Marfan syndrome, which gives him elongated features and a bunch of double joints, has made a career out of walking in ways humans aren't supposed to walk. His most terrifying work appears in Mama, in which he plays a ghost with an animalistic gait. While Botet's work is spectacular and frightening, and the horror movie crab walk is a real thing, the Japanese really have this technique on lockdown. 

    Ringu is likely the film most viewers think of when "irregular ghost walking" comes up, but Pulse is the film that will make you never want to watch someone walk like a weirdo again.

  • Reflections And Mirrors

    Mirrors are one of the great cinematic tools. When used well, they can illuminate a film's subtext while also providing visual depth. In horror, mirrors are a perfect way to ratchet up tension. Even if a horror movie has nothing to do with said mirror and there's no chance of a jump scare or a shard of glass being used to slash someone to ribbons, audiences have been trained to fear the mirror.

    Mirrors aren't just props to fear in film; in the dream logic of horror, mirrors act as a tool to illustrate the "real" world to the audience and reflect the duality of characters. When you see someone looking in a mirror in a horror film, you know something creepy might happen, and you don't know what, which makes you anxious. Oculus used the evil mirror trope to the extreme by having characters fear a mirror that showed them things that weren't happening, which would cause them to act out what they say, thus making them real.

    Even when mirrors and reflections aren't pushing characters to the brink of sanity, they're used to illustrate that all is not right in the world of the film. 

  • Abrupt Color Changes

    In non-genre films, the rule is usually to keep your color pallet as normal as possible to give the film some semblance of realism, but in horror films, you can change a film's color, throw on gels, or just turn on a strobe light and go nuts when you want to set a particular mood.

    Julia Ducournau's Raw, about a vegetarian who eats raw meat at college then goes full cannibal, made liberal use of color changes and essentially redefined what a director can do in a scene. Rather than stick to a pallet of reds, or neutral tones, Ducournau uses harsh reds and pinks in a scene that's particularly gross despite a lack of cannibalism (can you say "eye licking?"). In another memorable moment, she mixes blue and yellow to create a surreal collection of frames that have been rumored to make some audiences sick.

  • Fluctuating Mise-En-Scene

    Fluctuating Mise-En-Scene
    Video: YouTube

    Mise-en-scene, the representation of space in a film, is arguably the most important thing in a movie. It gives the audience notions of the depth, proximity, size, and proportions of the places and objects in a film. When you change that in the middle of a scene, it's upsetting at best, and terrifying when done with masterful control of the camera.

    This technique has been redefined by James Wan, a populist horror director who knows how to twist the knife and throw the audience for a loop when they least expect it. You can see him doing this in both of his Insidious films by placing characters and props directly in the frame but refusing to reveal them until it's time for a nice little scare. 

  • Underexposure

    If you don't know, a camera's exposure basically determines how bright an image is. By underexposing an image, you can create a mysterious feeling, accentuating shadows. This is effective when you're trying to hide things from the viewer, or give them an overwhelming sense of dread by keeping them from seeing everything in the frame.

    You see this technique in a lot of gothic horror. One non sexy-ghost-in-a-castle movie that does amazing things with underexposure is Karyn Kusama's The Invitation

  • Scenes That Are Longer Than They Need To Be

    Scenes That Are Longer Than They Need To Be
    Video: YouTube

    Even if you're not a film studies major, you've watched enough films in your life to have an idea of how long a scene should last. Your brain naturally understands the beginning, middle, and end of conversations, or a scene of someone tying shoes. When a scene continues for longer than it should, you grow anxious. Maybe you wonder "Why is this scene still happening? What's going to happen?"

    When horror directors use this technique well, they can make something as mundane as a hallway, or an abandoned building, terrifying. It Follows uses this technique pretty much constantly. It's most effective in an early scene, in which where Maika Monroe's Jamie is tied to a chair and forced to watch as a spooky monster follows her from the background of the frame to the foreground. David Lynch used this technique in one of the creepiest scenes in Twin Peaks, in which Bob enters the frame in the background and slowly climbs down the barrel of the camera. 

    Outside horror, this technique uses a seemingly innocuous lingering shot to build a body of evidence for a twist or highlight the significance of a mundane object. Thrillers such as The Drop and Prisoners do this especially well. 

  • Jarring Editing Techniques

    Jarring Editing Techniques
    Video: YouTube

    You might argue editing is the most important part of a film. It creates a coherent whole from all of the nonsense you've been shooting. How does horror film editing differ from other editing? They aren't necessarily all that different. Many horror films follow the standard method of linear editing, but if you want to make a case for using jump cuts to mess with the audience, you can't go wrong with watching one of the most famous scenes in cinema history: the shower scene from Psycho.

    This very short scene manipulates you into seeing what you never actually see. The knife is never shown stabbing Marion, but you think it does. The same thing can be said for the infamous meat hook scene in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Thanks to a quick cut, you never see the hook jam through a young woman's chest, but you probably have a vivid memory of that exact thing happening. 

  • Anticip... ation

    Anticip... ation
    Video: YouTube

    There's nothing more stressful watching a horror film just. knowing. something. is. going. to. happen. For instance, in The Conjuring 2, when one of the kid is playing and there's something in tent at the opposite end of the hall he decides to check out. The scene takes almost a full excruciating minute before the creepy ghost man pops out to provide some catharsis. In the scene above, from You're Next, it takes longer than a minute for the audience to fully understand what's going on, which builds tension and dread. 

    These scenes, and others like them, seem like an answer to so many smarty pants horror fans who say things like "I knew how that would end," or "You could see that coming." Of course you can. It's a horror film and there are only so many ways these things can play out, but by making the audience stew in anticipation for the scare ratchets up the tension to almost unbearable degrees if done right.