The cheap art of jump scares

E off, a very happy Halloween to you
all! Assuming that production went
as scheduled and we didn’t totally mess
up this week, these papers should be
on their happy little stands around the
college on Tuesday... meaning today is
October 31.

Even though this might only be
relevant for one day (or half a day,
depending on how long it takes our
Distribution Manager Jacey to get these
distributed, but I have faith in the man)
I figured I'd pen my Lettitor this week
to talk about something that’s always on
my mind when the end of October rolls
around: Jump scares.

Here’s a quick definition from
the always factual and dependable
Urbandictionary.com:

Jump Scare: A tactic used in horror
movies to scare people, the jump scare

is used by unimaginative filmmakers

as a cheap method of frightening the
audience; i.e, making them literally
“jump” out of their seats. This device is
increasingly employed in modern horror
movies, along with gratuitous amounts of
gore, because the directors have forgotten
how to actually scare people.

Having recently walked—and at
one point crawled—my way through
Vancouver’s Dream Horror Haunted
House, I’ve been a recent victim to the
infamous jump scare, and I’ve gotta agree
with the anonymous Urban Dictionary
writer’s criticisms of the technique
(thank you for your written work, brave
soul).

Yeah, it’s fun to feel the adrenaline
jolt through you when someone ina
clown mask pops out at you and yells in
your ear, but the shtick can get old fast,

especially when used in horror movies.

I’ve never been the biggest fan of
the horror genre, and it’s not for lack
of viewing. Good horror movies can be
seriously great, and affect an audience in
ways that no other movie can; if youre
lying in bed awake at night, unable to fall
asleep because the images of whatever
horror you just witnessed are burned into
your retina, then yeah, I’d say that was a
damn good movie.

The thing is, the genre has become
so watered down by movies that use jump
scares as their main bread and butter that
even shelling out Cineplex’s increasingly
ridiculous prices for a horror movie can
often feel like taking a gamble.

It’s an easy thing to dull yourself to,
too, if you know it’s coming. When the
music swells, and the attractive blonde is
walking through the woods with nothing

 

but a broken flashlight as a weapon, it’s
kind of obviously that something scary be
coming this way.

If the movie instead decides to omit
the jump scare, and have her discover
some underground death den of total
creepiness that is apparently owned
by the nice and kind Old Man Jenkins;
well, that could very well steer the
movie away from the lukewarm “kind of
startling” and down the road of “holy shit
terrifying.”

Cheers,

Che. he Wal

Chandler Walter

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