10 Clever Tricks You Didn’t Realise Movies Played On You
4. The Exorcist Subtly Puts A Bee In Your Bonnet
To say The Exorcist is a chilling, nerve-shredding experience - particularly on a first watch - is quite the understatement. Not just is this a classic of horror, but the movie is a classic of cinema, period.
While it's pretty well known that this William Friedkin picture utilised subliminal images to help drum up the dread of the movie, a lesser-known fact is that the filmmaker triggered audiences' terror with some subliminal sound work.
As Friedkin has detailed in the subsequent years since The Exorcist's 1973 release, he layered the sound of bees into the audio mix for certain sequences in the early goings of the film. With that sound triggering a sense of fear and dread amongst most people, this was used to make horror hounds uncomfortable without them even realising what was happening.
Similarly, bone-crunching industrial sounds were blended into the audio mix for some of the scenes featuring the possessed Regan. The thought process there, was that the mind would subconsciously pick up on that and create a sense of immediate danger that instinctively made you know that being anywhere near Regan was not a wise idea during those moments.