10 Genius Suspense Tricks That Made Horror Movies Great
These brilliant filmmaking flourishes made these horror films extra unnerving.
A horror movie can be great for one of many reasons - perhaps it's stylishly directed, cleverly written, brilliantly acted, or in rare cases all of the above.
But at their core, any horror film worth their salt needs to be suspenseful and anxiously tense, to raise the audience's pulse, get them sweating, and create memories they won't ever forget.
There are many, many ways filmmakers can generate suspense, but sometimes smart directors will do something truly left-field and unexpected in the pursuit of unnerving viewers.
This can range from keeping actors apart during shooting, to using their limited resources to their own surprising advantage, or tinkering with the soundscape in order to play with the viewer's own subconscious.
If horror filmmaking is ultimately the art of audience manipulation, then these filmmakers found ingenious ways to leave viewers nervously gripping their seats and unsure of what was coming next.
Above all else, these movies confirm that there's so much more to crafting a dread-induced horror film than merely shooting "something creepy" - sometimes filmmakers need to go that extra mile to create an unmistakably tension-soaked vibe...
10. Never Having The Ghostface Voice Actor Meet The Cast - Scream
Roger L. Jackson is in many respects the MVP of the Scream franchise - in lending such a distinctly unnerving yet bizarrely alluring quality to the voice of the various Ghostface killers, he's the series' most iconic element, even more so than protagonist Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell).
Yet Wes Craven made two key decisions from the very first movie which have informed the series ever since.
Firstly, Craven had Jackson speak with the movie's actors on the phone for real during shooting - rather than having a crew member speak the lines on set and Jackson dub his version later - and secondly, Craven ensured the cast never actually met Jackson.
This guaranteed that the actors could both feel the chilling terror of Jackson's voice while shooting and, by preventing them from putting a face to the voice terrorising their character, it allowed them to more easily immerse themselves in the situation.
In a 2019 interview with Vice, Jackson confirmed that while calling Drew Barrymore in the original movie's opening scene, he was literally crouched outside of her eyeline and watching her, just as Ghostface himself would've been. Jackson added:
"I never met any of the actors in the films, but they all knew I was watching them, hidden somewhere nearby. I guess that added this layer of mystery and voyeurism, and it really freaks them out. Remember, I am their biggest fear come to life. It's why they never introduced me to the rest of the cast when filming. They wanted to keep me away so the other actors didn't have a visual image to associate with this weird voice they were hearing."