Little Scary Sound Experiment

In my review of Mama, I mentioned, for a horror movie, it wasn’t that scary because of strange, distracting choices. I previously made a video entitled “How to close a scary closet door” which highlights one such situation.

Before this shot, Annabel approaches the closet door and one of the girls says, “Don’t open it.” “Why? What’s in the closet?” After a pause, the little girl responds with a quiet, “Nothing.” We all know the monster is in the closet. If Annabel opens it, two things could happen: the monster won’t be there or the monster will appear suddenly and scare everyone. But Annabel has no reason other than curiosity to open it and up to this point she hasn’t been characterized as inquisitive. She came into the room to close the door and tuck the kids into bed so I had no reason to suspect that she would open it. If we expect her to close the door, what could possibly happen? The monster wouldn’t come out. 

Why then does the movie include the scary music? I feel like it would’ve been more effective to play the music with her opening the door to see an empty closet. Granted, this has been done before but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be effective

Here is another more minor example of timing. Consider this clip where Annabel wakes up from a dream to be startled by the child. The first clip is from the movie, the second clip was the result of a slight edit of mine. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t have that much film making experience but I feel like the second one is slightly scarier. Let me explain.

The idea of this scene is pretty basic; Annabel opens her eyes and jumps when she sees the creepy kid staring at her. The stab (the sudden sound) is, of course, the most important part. It wasn’t until this scene in Mama that I considered the significance of the placement of this sound.

In the first clip, the actions are ordered like this: Annabel opens her eyes, the stab starts, cut other camera, the stab fades, Annabel jumps. The stab itself lasts for about a second, partially when Annabel opens her eyes and mostly when we see the child. The suspense is, in part, ‘what is she looking at?’

In the second clip, I removed the bit where she opens her eyes. Why? It was a question of timing and movement. Her eyes opening broke the ice in terms of movement. The stab occurred and I linked it more closely with her eyes because that was the initial point of interest. Annabel’s recoil feels slightly too late to match the cut to the girl and for the stab. We don’t need to actually see her eyes opening to understand why she jumps. She is jumping with us which, I argue, gets the audience more involved.

One might say that both clips are equally scary but to are geared towards different audiences. The first clip is suspenseful because she opens her eyes, we hear the sound and then wonder,” What is she looking at?!” The second clip puts the emphasis on the cut and surprise of seeing the creepy kid standing there. If you don’t find the kid creepy, then it won't work.

Which do you think is scarier? I mean “scarier” in a loose sense. Neither clips are actually scary per se, especially if you expect them to be but, hypothetically, if you were to see them in a movie theater, which do you think would be most effective? Please do leave a comment because I’d love to hear what you think. Thanks for reading and watching!