Episode 190 - The History of Jump Scares in Horror

Why do audiences jump in horror movies? What are some of the greatest jump scares in cinema history? In this episode of Lunatics Radio Hour, Abby and Alan explore the history of the jump scare, from early suspense filmmaking and the famous “Lewton Bus” scene in Cat People to the modern era of loud, fast-paced horror shocks. We break down how jump scares evolved, why they work psychologically, and the films that helped define the technique across horror history.

Get Lunatics Merch here. Join the discussion on Discord. Check out Abby's book Horror Stories. Available in eBook and paperback. Music by Michaela Papa, Alan Kudan & Jordan Moser. Poster Art by Pilar Keprta @pilar.kep.

Sources

• Collider Article: A Brief History of The Jump Scare by Samantha Graves 
• Inverse Article: The Unexpected Psychology of Jump Scares by Ben Guarino 
• An article from The Lineup by Kelsey Christine McConnell: The Hair Raising History of The Jump Scare
• An Atlas Obscura Article by Gavia Baker-Whitelaw: The Startling History of The Jump Scare

Transcript

Hokum And Jump Scare Fatigue

SPEAKER_01 0:18

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Lunatics Radio Hour Podcast. My name is Abby Brinker, and I am sitting here with Alan Kudin.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Hello.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

And this week I went to see a new horror movie in the theaters that I personally thought had way too many jump scares. And so today let's talk about the history of jump scares in horror movies.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Hang on, what what movie did you see?

SPEAKER_01 0:43

I saw a film called Hokum that stars Adam Scott.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

Was it good?

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Well, there were parts of it that I liked, but generally No. I thought it suffered from kind of this like incessant jump scare barrage. And listen, I think this is this is a controversial take. I think jump scares are polarizing. Some people love horror films, and I acknowledge that, and that's totally great and good. That have a ton of scares. That's why they go to see them. I am not one of those people, and that's again, it's all good and relative. It's just not my thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

I think that the majority of people that say they don't like horror movies really mean are really trying to say that they don't like jump scares. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Yeah, I think that's fair. And listen, I like a few really well-placed, thoughtful jump scares that getcha and add to the plot and are, you know, I I love that. I think that is great in horror, but I don't need one every 30 seconds for an hour and a half.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

No, of course not. It's a powerful tool. It's like using a vertigo shot. You know, it's it can be incredibly impactful when done sparingly. And especially when it's done full of like misdirection. As soon as we started talking about jump scares, I my mind immediately went to Jaws.

SPEAKER_01 2:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

Which is like such a great example of how to do a jump scare correctly. Um, I'm thinking of the time when they're they're diving down to the the wreck and like you know, it's the Jaws music building, you know exactly when it's gonna happen, and the cameras creeping in, and then it's not even the shark, it's it's it's it's a dead body. Yeah, it's a it is a jump scare, but it's not the kind you're expecting. It makes it so impactful.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

Absolutely, and there's a formula for jump scares that obviously filmmakers have figured out, right? And part of that is dipping the audio right before, but now the problem is that audience members have figured it out, and we're gonna talk about this. And so I think if you're not doing something that's a really relevant to the plot or surprising or additive, like when I sat in this theater and watched this movie, I knew exactly when every scare was about to happen. And I just sort of diverted my eyes a little bit, not because the effects were particularly scary, but I knew there was going to be a loud audio blast.

SPEAKER_00 3:00

Yep.

Why Modern Movies Feel Too Loud

SPEAKER_01 3:01

And I just knew I was gonna like jump a little bit, even though I knew it was coming. So I just kind of mentally prepared for each one and like looked away from the screen, which is not what the filmmakers I think really want, but that's how I sat and watched that movie for 90 minutes.

SPEAKER_00 3:14

One of my biggest pet peeves about movies today is they're too loud.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:18

Which makes me feel like I'm a thousand years old, but that's fine.

SPEAKER_01 3:21

Well, you are a sound uh expert. That's your job.

SPEAKER_00 3:24

That's very kind. More of a sound enthusiast.

SPEAKER_01 3:27

Your your job is literally you're a sound mixer.

SPEAKER_00 3:30

There's there's been a bunch of great articles uh written up on like why movies are so loud and dialogue is so hard to understand, and there's all this like psychology behind it, and I and I I hate all of it. One of the reasons why movies are so loud, they want a really, really loud dynamic range. So what that means is that the the quiet sounds are quiet, the loud sounds are loud, and they they want to have like a very large difference between the loudest and the quietest. But that said, like you're not allowed to have anything quiet in a movie theater. It's it's now illegal. So uh what do you mean? I'm I'm making a joke.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

Uh uh.

SPEAKER_00 4:07

Thanks for the pity laugh.

SPEAKER_01 4:08

No, I thought it was like an accessibility thing.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

No, uh it's I'm sure it's all just like studio executives doing market testing, being like, well, you know what? They're having trouble understanding the dialogue. Let's make the whole thing louder.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:22

Okay, cool. Now the dialogue is at a reasonable level. Should we bring the explosions down? Like, no, why would we bring the explosions down? They're an explosion. Okay. Uh, and now it's just like ear splittingly loud. And and we as a society decided that's that's acceptable. So now you just have everything louder. It's it's it's the equivalent of power creep, but for sound.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

Yeah, I actually had this experience, and and I totally agree. And there's certain I love going to see movies in the theater for many reasons, but one of them is because I have such a bad attention span that it's a great way for me to actually like be immersed and pay attention. But a few years ago, I went to a film festival in LA and I went to see this like amazing screening of the exorcist, like a you know, 70 millimeter. I was so excited to go. It was at the Chinese theater in LA. It was like this big cool thing, and I ended up having to walk out because it was so loud that, and I've seen the exorcist a billion times, I don't find it to be particularly scary, but something about how loud everything was mixed was making me super anxious.

SPEAKER_00 5:24

It's just mean, really.

SPEAKER_01 5:25

Yeah, and like seeing certain films in like a theater, like an IMAX theater, where you're kind of like blocked in because there's so many people and it's so loud, it's just not enjoyable for me.

SPEAKER_00 5:34

That that that's my secret. So being in a theater is really confining. You know, you are stuck with a whole bunch of s randos, it's incredibly loud, it's very oppressive. You're your all of your senses are saturated. If I'm committed to seeing a movie in a theater, specifically one in IMAX, and you know, we we are blessed to live in New York City, home to the biggest screen in the Western Hemisphere. That's right, which is the Lincoln Center IMAX. But the secret is I sit in the very last row in the center. First off, the you know, the the there's all the the all the little aisles, it's just like blocks of three seats. So you can s you can get in and out if you have to. The screen is so big that in the very last row it fills your peripheral vision perfectly without having to turn your head. But the most importantly, you can just sneak out and there's the little sneaky bathroom in the back of the theater.

The Best And Worst Theater Crowds

SPEAKER_01 6:26

Yeah, I mean, I also just get a lot of anxiety being in any kind of place where there's a ton of people, so I like to be on an aisle. The other thing is, and I totally agree, and there's a lot of like phone usage and stuff in theaters right now that sucks. But the thing that sometimes happens still, and this is why another reason why I love going to a theater, is there is this community, especially when you're watching horror. And now people shouldn't be like, you know, quipping with each other in their seats, but I remember one of my best theater experiences that I ever had was watching the film get out in a theater. Because by the end, everybody in that theater was like, holy shit! Like they were standing, they were cheering, like we were like in this journey together. It felt like euphoric to kind of have that experience. I mean, conversely, there's been some other really cool experiences like that. I went to see Climax, which is like a French dance horror film a few years ago when it came out and it was playing very um sparingly. And so I had to sneak out in the middle of the workday to go see it, which meant that there was only like two or three other people there. And it was so intense that like afterwards these two or three other people and myself like just like talked about it for a few minutes. It's like cool because we were like all there alone and we were like, holy shit, like what did we just watch? Even the other day I saw the drama, which was so intense, and it was another situation where there wasn't a lot of people there, but there was a little bit, and I'm not gonna give away anything about the drama because I think it's worth going in pretty blind, but it's so intense that sometimes there was like a little bit of laughter, like a little bit of giggling, and it really helped to ground me and to be like, okay, it's okay to laugh at this, like this is a dark comedy, it's okay to like exhale. So I personally enjoy being in like a community when you're going through something like an intense horror movie, but to your point, like now it's kind of it can be hard when it's just like the theater's full of jerks on their phones or you know, whatever.

SPEAKER_00 8:22

I mean, yeah, device use aside. If you are really invested in the film, and that's that's one of the beauties about going to the theater, like it's a lot easier to get very invested in the movie.

SPEAKER_01 8:34

Yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_00 8:35

If you're really invested and others are not, yeah, that can be just the worst.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:40

I remember it was one of the modern Godzilla releases. I'm getting a little emotional. This was not Godzilla minus one. Okay, and others are just like laughing, and it's not funny, it's emotional. And they're not taking it seriously, they're not treating it with the appropriate reverence. And I'm I'm I'm I'm appalled.

SPEAKER_01 8:59

You should have handed out your card to them after, Godzilla Expert. And I'll explain to you why this is so meaningful.

SPEAKER_00 9:08

Okay, but w we digress. So we're talking about jump scares.

SPEAKER_01 9:12

Today we're talking about jump scares.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

Jump scares are particularly impactful in a theater because you you're locked in and the screen is so big and it's so loud. And the whole thing about a jump scare is that it's a sensory overload and you're in a sensory overload situation already. So it's really intense.

Defining Jump Scares And Favorite Picks

SPEAKER_01 9:29

Yeah. And they can again, I don't want to sound like a hater. I love a well-timed, amazing jump scare. You kind of get this like giddy feeling after it. You know, it's like a roller, it's like an adrenaline burst. I love it. I just don't love films that are reliant on it because I don't like to live in a state of uh fear for an hour and a half. But let's get into it. Let's talk about our sources. There's a collider article, A Brief History of the Jump Scare by Samantha Graves, an inverse article, The Unexpected Psychology of Jump Scares by Ben Garino, an article from the lineup by Kelsey Christine McConnell, The Hair-Raising History of the Jump Scare, and finally an Atlas Obscure article by Gavia Baker Whitelaw, The Startling History of the Jump Scare.

SPEAKER_00 10:13

Okay, good.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

Yeah, tell me.

SPEAKER_00 10:15

Do you have a favorite jump scare?

SPEAKER_01 10:17

I do.

SPEAKER_00 10:18

Actually, let me rephrase.

SPEAKER_01 10:20

Most memorable for me is when a stranger calls, and favorite is Carrie. I don't remember either of those. Well, we're gonna talk about it. Tell me yours though. What film?

SPEAKER_00 10:29

The face in the closet in the ring.

Cat People And The Luton Bus

SPEAKER_01 10:32

Oh. There's actually two moments in the ring that I want to talk about with you, so I'm glad that you brought that up. We're gonna get back to it. A jump scare is a horror technique designed to startle an audience by building tension and then suddenly interrupting it with a loud sound, sudden movement, or unexpected visual. It typically relies on surprise rather than explanation, triggering a quick physical reaction such as flinching or jumping, or in some cases, screaming. The first jump scare in cinema is often thought to be from the 1942 horror film Cat People. Cat People? It's a really masterful scene. It's on YouTube. If you if you just type in like cat people jump scare, it's fun. I watched it obviously in uh preparation for this.

SPEAKER_00 11:16

This is one of the first movies we watched together.

SPEAKER_01 11:18

Yeah, I fell asleep. So I don't think I got to this point when we watched it together.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

I don't remember this being a scary movie.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

Well, it's from 1942, so I think like take it with a grain of salt. It's definitely an aged jump scare by today's standards, but at the time it made the audience like jump in their seat.

SPEAKER_00 11:36

Kind of like the great train robbery, everyone jumped out of their seats.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

Yeah, exactly. So a woman is walking home at night and she realizes that somebody is following her. So we kind of cut back and forth between the pursued and the pursuer as the tension builds. The characters keep sort of disappearing and reappearing as they pass through streetlights. And just when we think she's about to kind of turn around and face her pursuer, and everything builds, she turns and sees nothing. But seconds later, a bus like barrels up to where she's standing, and with this very loud noise. Yonk yonk. That's you know, that is the scare.

SPEAKER_00 12:15

That was the sound, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:16

There's a formula we're gonna talk about a lot today with jump scares where typically there's you know kind of like a building soundtrack, building noise, and then there's a beat of silence right before something loud, right, to kind of make that thing feel louder.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

I will say that jump scares have become so ubiquitous in everything. Yeah. In e horror movies, but any movie that just like honestly like wants a treat cheap thrill. Yeah. Uh that audiences a hundred percent expect them now. And now you're seeing it more and more of people subverting that formula just to make people even more unsettled. And I love it. One thing that I notice all the time is when there's negative space on screen because there's enough space for the character to enter.

SPEAKER_01 13:03

Oh, I'm I'm looking through my fingers if there's negative space on screen.

SPEAKER_00 13:07

And I love that well, it I mean, there's simultaneously the push uh of cinematographers to just, you know, be more wacky and wild and do unconventional framing. Yeah. And so often things are just being framed weird, but sometimes they're just framing it deliberately as if the thing is gonna jump out there and it just doesn't happen.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:27

I don't know, that's kind of cool.

SPEAKER_01 13:28

I agree. It's like okay, stick with me with this. But Survivor, right? The show Survivor.

SPEAKER_00 13:34

Do you with Jeff Probst?

SPEAKER_01 13:36

Exactly. So Survivor, when it first started, was so simple, right? And it was like literally, how do we survive?

SPEAKER_00 13:41

Yeah, Richard won season one.

SPEAKER_01 13:43

And then it's become now so like metagamey, like because everybody has grown up watching Survivor, and there's all these extra mini-games and idols and whatever, and all this stuff, and it's become so complicated that now I feel like the game makers are trying to figure out how to surprise the game players because they're all such like masters of Survivor. I feel like that's kind of the same thing here. It's like horror fans are so rabid that it's like, how can horror filmmakers technically, with with sound and with visuals specifically, subvert and surprise people still when we all know the formulas so well?

SPEAKER_00 14:18

You know, it I was thinking about this yesterday because you and I were working on a new script. Yes. And I kept thinking about like, well, if we do this, you know, that's too similar to this thing, or this doesn't really push these boundaries. And then I realized it doesn't matter at all. Like, even if you keep it the same, keep the same formula, use the same stuff, just shuffle the order around a little bit. It's still really fun. All you have to do is make it your own in some way. Yeah, you don't have to make every single thing different.

SPEAKER_01 14:50

I think that's totally right. It's like you want it's like more about the feeling you want the audience to have while they're watching the thing you're making. Yep. And if you can feel confident about the feeling it's gonna evoke in some ways, then I think that's then you've won.

SPEAKER_00 15:05

And I mean, I know this is like a really foreign concept to you know most Hollywood executives, but you don't need your movie to be super gimmicky if you just have good writing.

SPEAKER_01 15:17

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 15:17

Some good characters, some good dialogue. Even if the plot is a bit predictable, yeah. If you're emotionally invested, everyone's there with you.

SPEAKER_01 15:26

And that's kind of how I feel. I'm not gonna give any spoilers about Hokum because it's so new, but that's kind of like my general takeaway is that I feel like it had good bones and there was plot elements that could have been fleshed out to be really interesting, and the characters could have been made much more sympathetic. But because I feel like so much relied on the scares and so much honestly, just like screen time went into these scares that it didn't leave enough time for us to fall in love with the story at all, or to at least be interested that much in the story. Where I think there was some really good scares and some really good plot points, it just needed to like the the it just needed to to win us over a little bit more first. But anyway, back to cat people from 1942. So reportedly audiences at the time jumped, they were super surprised by this loud noise of the bus. I'm gonna quote from the Collider article by Samantha Graves, quote, This specific type of jump scare is known as the Luton bus and is named after the film's producer, Val Lutin. A Luton bus scare is when viewers are scared by something completely harmless, such as a cat jumping out of a cupboard, or in the case of cat people, a bus coming screeching into the frame. It isn't just the Luton bus that is a branch of the jump scare, though. There's also the mirror effect. The mirror effect is used when someone or something shows up behind a character in a mirror and was first used in the 1965 film Repulsion, end quote.

SPEAKER_00 16:55

I mean, I was gonna bring up the mirror earlier. Like that is probably the most overused jump scare in the history of jump scares. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:03

We we've used it even.

SPEAKER_00 17:04

Yeah, we we are responsible.

Early Precursors Before Modern Horror

SPEAKER_01 17:08

And the great news is that because the movie is in the public domain, cat people that is, we can release the clip on social media so you can see the jump scare we're talking about. So I'm actually really excited because I've had so much fun kind of thinking through my brain of all of my favorite jump scares. So we have um some cool lists coming out on social media this week. And I'm gonna release the clip. Uh, there might be more that are in the public domain, but at least the cat people clip, so you guys can watch it there really easily. If you don't follow us, follow us on the Lunatics Project anywhere on social media. There are a few films that predate cat people that are relevant to talk about. And while I wouldn't call these moments specifically jump scares, I think they're sort of precursors. First, the Phantom of the Opera from 1925 is a silent movie. So the scares relied entirely on visuals, right? So that's interesting. A jump scare from the silent era.

SPEAKER_00 17:59

Most people don't know this, but Phantom of the Opera, the 1925 Phantom the Opera was not an original work. It was based on an Iron Maiden song.

SPEAKER_01 18:07

That's right. Good job, Alan. The funny thing is the history of the Phantom of the Opera, because it's based on some real events, is our number one listened to episode on this podcast.

SPEAKER_00 18:16

Why?

SPEAKER_01 18:17

Because I made a social video on it and it went viral.

SPEAKER_00 18:19

Yeah, but you make social videos on like all this garbage.

SPEAKER_01 18:22

Yeah, sometimes lightning strikes the bottle, as they say.

SPEAKER_00 18:25

As they say.

SPEAKER_01 18:27

So the sudden reveal of the Phantom's face shocked audiences at the time and reportedly even caused some viewers to faint. Unlike the later 2004 adaptation starring Gerard Butler, which showed a less severe facial disfigurement, the 1925 version revealed a much more disturbing appearance.

SPEAKER_00 18:46

There's a 2004 Phantom of the Opera.

SPEAKER_01 18:49

There are so many Phantom of the Opera movies.

SPEAKER_00 18:52

There are endless. Isn't Gerard Butler the guy from 300?

SPEAKER_01 18:57

He is, yes.

SPEAKER_00 18:57

So King Leonidas played this deformed guy.

SPEAKER_01 19:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:01

Wow. It's exciting. He's an actor. He's got range. I mean, if anyone has range, it's Gerard Butler.

SPEAKER_01 19:07

Actor Lon Cheney created the makeup in the 1925 version and designed it himself, giving the Phantom a skeletal and heavily deformed look that became one of the most famous images in early horror cinema.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

Lon Cheney was a very versed guy.

SPEAKER_01 19:22

It's like Lon Cheney, Bella Lagosi, and Boris Karloff are kind of like the three guys of early like monster. And they did, I think, in and maybe this is worth doing more of an episode on someday, but I think they did a lot of their own effects and makeup their self.

SPEAKER_00 19:36

Which I mean, honestly, it's it's really impressive. It's it's not uncommon for a director to also be the cinematographer or something like that. Yeah. But like the main actor to also be in charge of the special effects at such a tier is really impressive.

SPEAKER_01 19:50

Yeah, that's like a lunatic's budget movie.

SPEAKER_00 19:52

Yeah, I mean, I don't think they shot their entire movie in one afternoon for the price of pizza. That's that's right.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Another early example of a jump scare is from Citizen Kane. While it was not designed as a horror scare, Citizen Kane includes a sudden transition near the end of the movie featuring a loud screeching cockatoo. Director Orson Wells later explained that the moment was included to surprise audience members and wake up anyone who may have been losing attention near the end of the movie.

SPEAKER_00 20:21

It's so dumb.

SPEAKER_01 20:22

Have you seen you do you know the moment?

SPEAKER_00 20:24

Of course. It's so dumb. It makes no sense.

SPEAKER_01 20:27

Yeah, I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 20:28

There are few moments where I'm like, you know what? I think a studio exec should have stepped in and said, Hey, Mr. Crazy Director, I don't think this is the right call. And in fact, I'm gonna shut it down. But instead, no.

SPEAKER_01 20:41

Wow, you really didn't like it that much.

SPEAKER_00 20:43

No, it's dumb. It makes no sense. And everyone's like, What? Why? Why did that happen? And the whole reason is like Orson Wells, like, here comes here, got him.

SPEAKER_01 20:52

I mean, that's what all of horror is, right? It's like the filmmakers playing with the audience.

SPEAKER_00 20:58

No. I mean, yes, but Citizen Kane is not a horror movie. Sure. The jump scare is the most out-of-place thing imaginable.

SPEAKER_01 21:06

You're just mad because it woke you up at NYU while you were sleeping in the back of the screening.

SPEAKER_00 21:11

It's like the early 2000s internet videos where the the volume on the clip would be like super low, so you crank the volume like crazy, and then all of a sudden, like the the big scary face of from the exorcist.

SPEAKER_01 21:23

Don't do you know there's a name for those? I learned that.

SPEAKER_00 21:25

No, what is it?

SPEAKER_01 21:26

I also learned while I was researching this that this happened to me one time.

SPEAKER_00 21:30

The hell you that makes no sense.

SPEAKER_01 21:32

I was in a Zoom call. I was like presenting in a Zoom call. Somebody joined and had like this weird, it was like a jigsaw like sort of or jigsaw's puppet, whatever, Billy the puppet, like image, because it was like an open, you know, meetup thing for and it had this loud noise associated with it. And I at the time I didn't know what it was, and now I know it was this thing. It was like this troll.

SPEAKER_00 21:55

And that was the start of adding passwords to Zoom calls.

Psycho And The Rise Of Stings

SPEAKER_01 21:58

That's right. Another classic. Classic example is the scene from The Thing from Another World from 1951. So this is a film we talked about a lot in our snow horror series because it's a precursor for the thing. There's a famous scene where the men are searching for the monster and open up a door to reveal him. Again, another example of an early jump scare that jolted audiences in their seats. During the 1960s, filmmakers experimented with jump scares. Alfred Hitchcock helped make the technique popular with Psycho. The movie includes several famous scare scenes, including the shower murder and the reveal of Mrs. Bates, but one of the most effective examples in Psycho is a jump scare around the death of Detective Arbagost. As he walks through the Bates house, the scene stays calm and quiet until he suddenly reaches the top of the stairs, and there's this kind of like beautiful overhead shot, and Norman Bates appears with a knife. The sudden camera change and the loud music make the moment especially shocking for audiences. And of course, the the music in Psycho does so much to evoke scares from the audience because it's so like loud and bursty, you know?

SPEAKER_00 23:03

Also, spoiler alert about it being Norman Bates.

Carrie And The End Credit Punch

SPEAKER_01 23:07

Yeah, listen, there's a lot of these movies are from like 80 years ago, 60 years ago. Okay, we're gonna talk about them. Other films in the 1960s also introduced new types of jump scares. Repulsion, which we talked about, helped popularize the mirror scene, where a character unexpectedly appears in a reflection behind someone. A technique that has been replicated in countless horror movies. Some of my favorite include A Nightmare on Elm Street, Candyman, and Oculus. Wait Until Dawn used darkness and limited visibility to increase tension. These techniques worked because audiences naturally feel more uneasy when characters can't clearly see what's around them, making sudden scares more intense. But now we're gonna talk about this is one that we referenced at the beginning, one of my favorite jump scares of all time. And I'm gonna preface talking about this by saying this is a film from the 70s. I've watched it in uh like a sort of a theater setting because I watched it as part of a a class I took uh in in film school about Brian DePama's filmmaking. And so I did sort of see this in a big enough screen with a loud enough speaker system that it got me.

SPEAKER_00 24:16

What movie?

SPEAKER_01 24:16

Brian DePama's Carrie was released in 1976, and with it came the mainstream use of the jump scare. What I love about this is that this is like the last shot in the movie, and there's no other jump scares. So it's near the end of Carrie. Sue slowly approaches Carrie's grave and leaves flowers at the grave in what seems like this a very calm, peaceful, healing closing scene. Without warning, Carrie's blood-covered hand suddenly shoots out of the ground and grabs her. The movie then cuts to Sue waking up screaming from the nightmare. The scene became one of the most influential jump scares in horror because it hit audiences after the story appeared to be over. Its success helped inspire later horror filmmakers such as Toby Hooper, Sam Raimi, and George A. Romero to use bigger and more intense shock moments in their own movies. And of course, the rise of the slasher subgenre brought with it a steep incline in jump scares. The 1979 film When a Stranger Calls, which we just talked about quite a bit in a recent episode, uses a jump scare technique where the antagonist's location is suddenly revealed to both the main character and the audience.

SPEAKER_00 25:30

He's in the house.

SPEAKER_01 25:32

Film writer William Chang describes this moment as removing the sense of safety around the protagonist, which makes the threat feel closer and more immediate to the viewer as well. The 1980 film The Shining uses what are often described as misplaced jump scares, where ordinary or routine moments are paired with sudden intense music cues, sometimes called stings. Kubrick uses this technique to break expectations so that simple events feel tense or alarming because of the audio buildup and abrupt sound crash. Examples include a title card that simply says Tuesday and a moment where Jack Torrance removes a page from a typewriter, both emphasized by sudden musical stings that create surprise without a traditional horror effect, right? It's not like you're seeing a ghost, it's just that he's kind of scaring you in the mundane to put you on edge. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:23

And it does, it makes you unsettled.

SPEAKER_01 26:25

It does. And so when creepy shit starts happening later, you're kind of um, and we're gonna talk in a little bit about the psychology of all of this, but you're kind of more prone to being freaked out by it because you know something is coming.

SPEAKER_00 26:37

Yeah, you already, your body's already flooded with cortisol.

SPEAKER_01 26:39

Yeah, you're tense. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, slashers like Halloween, Friday the 13th, and a nightmare on Elm Street, the big three as I like to call them, began building entire sequences around suspense and payoff. Directors stretched tension through stalking scenes, point of view shots, silence, and fake outs before delivering sudden attacks, musical stings, or the abrupt appearance of the killer. Filmmakers wanted to scare audiences. That was the point. That's why people were coming to see these types of movies. Right? And so this I think it's an interesting kind of moment to pause on because there's when we say horror, it's such a blanket term, right? In this episode, we are talking about everything from psycho and Alfred Hitchcock to cat people to Halloween to you know candy man. Like there's such a range of style within all of those films.

SPEAKER_00 27:30

Do you remember Critters?

SPEAKER_01 27:32

Vaguely, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:33

The little aliens, yeah. That would roll around and then get bigger and dangerous. Yeah. Yeah, that was a good movie.

SPEAKER_01 27:39

Yeah. Why are you talking about it?

SPEAKER_00 27:41

I was just thinking about it.

Slashers To Scream To Supernatural

The Ring And The Closet Reveal

SPEAKER_01 27:42

Yeah, sure. But anyway, the point is by this point, when slashers are becoming so popular in the late 70s and 80s, people are going to those types of horror movies for different reasons than they're going to like an Alfred Hitchcock movie, right? It's a different sort of type of horror. And so I think there's an expectation in a lot of these slasher films to be scarier, to be over the top, which I love. I love that, but it's a different thing. Viewers knew something terrible was coming. They didn't know exactly when. They liked the game of anticipation, and they still do. As the slasher boom grew, jump scares became faster, louder, and more technically refined. Films in the 90s like Scream played with audiences' expectations by parodying and reinventing the formula, while 2000's supernatural horror films like The Ring and Insidious pushed jump scares into a more atmospheric style built around silence and visual unease. So there's two moments in the ring to talk about. Alan, I want you to talk about the closet scene first.

SPEAKER_00 28:45

The music builds as the character slowly moves into the closet and they reveal the guy on the floor whose face is all twisted uh because he got spooked to death.

SPEAKER_01 28:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:56

This is that I again we've talked about this, but I still don't have an answer of how she kills people. You say she just like grabs them and does stuff.

SPEAKER_01 29:05

Do I say that? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:06

You say that all the time. And I'm like, how? You say, no, no, she has psychic powers. And I'm like, that's crazy. She's a little girl. Just hit her.

SPEAKER_01 29:17

She terrorizes people. I think she like in some a lot of cases, people I think die of like fright or heart attack as she's coming up to them.

SPEAKER_00 29:25

Yeah, but she's got a physical presence. You just hit her with a chair and you win.

SPEAKER_01 29:32

So I'm on Reddit right now. It looks like there's differences between the books, the Japanese films, and the American films. In the American films, Samara ha uses psychic powers essentially to drive people around her crazy, right? In the Japanese films, the girl Sudaku had like psychic ability to kind of target people and kill them psychically. And then in the books, Sudaku is able to kind of cause heart attacks, it seems. Maybe we should do a deep dive at some point into the world of Ring Gu and the Ring, because they're so I don't know. It's like it was such a big moment when we grew up.

SPEAKER_00 30:08

I agree. Um you might you might be right. Maybe she does have all these psychic powers that you just don't really see on screen.

SPEAKER_01 30:15

Cause it because it usually, like in the ring, I'm just thinking about the ring, you find the victims or it cuts before like it's not like you're usually seeing the death, right? I mean, I haven't seen this movie in all of that. You never see the death. Right, so we don't know.

SPEAKER_00 30:27

But that's the thing. Like, if you know she's coming in seven days, yeah, you wait patiently by the TV, you know exactly when it's gonna happen. And then just to the side of the TV is your buddy standing there with a metal folding chair. She comes out of the TV, bonk. You're safe.

SPEAKER_01 30:44

I think to your point, if you know she's coming in seven days and you know she kills by fear, just like take some deep breaths, you know? Like meditate.

SPEAKER_00 30:52

She always comes out of the TV. Go on a retreat. G you know, go to the go to the woods. Get away from TVs.

SPEAKER_01 31:00

She'll find you. She'll come out of the nearest TV and crawl her way through the woods.

SPEAKER_00 31:03

Yeah, but if you're in the woods and there's no TV nearby, just take longer. Yeah, she's gonna be crawling for a very long time.

SPEAKER_01 31:09

Well, maybe she comes out quicker.

SPEAKER_00 31:11

If you're at the end of a long driveway, you can just wait with all of your buddies, and they all have metal folding chairs.

SPEAKER_01 31:16

That's a pretty good idea.

SPEAKER_00 31:18

Yeah, that that's like, you know, cluster bonk.

SPEAKER_01 31:20

Cluster bonk. Oh man. The other move the other s uh the other scene in the ring that I want to talk about isn't really like a jump scare, but it was maybe I don't know, there's something about it that was really horrifying, which is the moment for the first time that you realize that she comes out of the TV. And I think that like there was something about that that was so hugely impactful because you weren't sure where it was going. And when she takes that, like first her hand comes through. I just feel like it's it's like kind of this iconic horror moment.

SPEAKER_00 31:52

Very much so.

SPEAKER_01 31:53

There is a shot in When a Stranger Calls from 2010 that I vividly remember made me scream out loud in the theater when I saw that movie. That was the other uh movie that or the other jump scare that was really memorable for me because I was in a theater with my friends and I was so embarrassed after that I had screamed out loud.

SPEAKER_00 32:10

I I would be too.

The Startle Reflex And Anxiety

SPEAKER_01 32:12

Modern horror often combines both approaches: the slasher's tension and release structure with psychological horror's lingering dread. What began as a simple shock technique evolved into one of horror's most recognizable tools, shaping how audiences physically experience fear in theaters. So there's actually a lot of psychology around how different audience members react to jump scares. Quoting from the inverse article by Ben Gorino, quote, the jump scare doesn't seem like it should work. Horror movie watchers know that someone is going to jump out. That's why they watch horror movies. But still, neural circuitry is undeniable, and the pleasure and pain of the involuntary flinch is all but unavoidable. The startle reflex is an evolutionary holdover that we share with virtually all mammals, including lab mice. What makes a jump scare work at its core is pretty simple. Set up a tense, lingering scene and then break that in half with a sudden burst of motion or sound. Anything that ever evolved to avoid being eaten will flinch. End quote. Generally, filmmakers use a loud noise coupled with a scary visual to startle the audience. This tends to happen right after a period of silence or quiet sound design, and generally while tension is really high. Even when the audience knows something is coming, it doesn't mean they won't flinch when a sudden noise blasts out of nowhere. Research on the startle reflex shows that people react more intensely to sudden stimuli when they are already anxious. In laboratory settings, heightened anxiety can dramatically increase the body's startle response, sometimes by several hundred percent. A silly example of this is like one time I ended up having to have a heart monitor for a month because every time I would go to the doctor, I was so anxious and I would get my blood pressure taken, and they were like, whoa, something's up here. So I the point really of all this psychology is to say, like, even when you know that it's coming, or even if you look away, your body's still gonna react to it. And knowing that something is coming doesn't assuage your fears at all. It actually makes those fears and those flinches bigger. And so that's what filmmakers are playing with.

SPEAKER_00 34:19

I mean, a a simpler example is when someone just comes up and says, Hey, and you fucking jump and you know, have a huge reaction, and the response is like, sorry, I'm I'm just really on edge.

SPEAKER_01 34:32

Yeah, sure. Yeah, totally. Conditions like post-traumatic stress can also keep people in a constant state of alertness, making them more likely to react strongly to unexpected sounds or movements, even when those triggers are not directly connected to a past traumatic event. Scientists describe the startle reflex as an extremely fast and basic survival response, because the pathway between sensory input and physical reaction involves very few neural connections. The body can respond almost instantly. In humans, the process takes only about 20 milliseconds. Bracing for the jump scare only makes it worse. When you brace for the upcoming fear, you activate your amygdala. Do you remember the conjuring, Alan? The original?

SPEAKER_00 35:17

No, because they're all so boring. Well, there's a scene So, so boring.

Modern Scares That Still Land

SPEAKER_01 35:22

In the first conjuring movie, which I think is 2013, where they're playing this clap game, and that is a jump scare that gets me even at home, which I think is worth noting. Like sometimes jump scares can be lost when you're watching it on a TV versus when you're watching in a theater, and especially to your point earlier. Like when we're watching horror movies here, we're we're quipping, we're chatting, we're making comments, and I think it takes you out of the immersion of it. So jump scares are harder to land, but that's one that gets me no matter what.

SPEAKER_00 35:52

Yeah, that's that's a really dumb one.

SPEAKER_01 35:54

One of one movie that I forgive, or I guess I'm really into despite my stance on jump scares, is paranormal activity. I really had fun, uh have fun when I watched paranormal activity, even though the whole thing is just like a jump scare plot.

SPEAKER_00 36:10

I've only seen the first one and only seen it once. Like when it came out? No, we watched it. Why did we watch paranormal activity? Maybe it was for the found footage episode, but I I had never seen paranormal activity. So we watch it. It was pretty good.

SPEAKER_01 36:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:23

I was surprised. I I thought it was gonna be like very silly and kind of like for kids.

SPEAKER_01 36:29

No. But it's it was good. Yeah, I remember seeing it in theaters with my friend and my parents in college while my parents were visiting, and it was such a crazy theater experience. It was so scary, and everybody in the theater was so scared. But it was that's it's like one of those community moments, you know. And I don't know, I like going into paranormal activity for some reason. I'm more interested and okay with it than other types of movies that I'm more critical of, I guess, that rely on jump scares. The descent is a really good one for jump scares when when the the creatures are like right behind them. Like there's so many, like suddenly the lights come on and they're right there. You know, they've they light a match or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 37:07

Oh, sure.

SPEAKER_01 37:08

I don't know, Alan, if you're gonna remember this or if you had this experience, but another one that got me at a home feeder, home TV setting is hereditary.

SPEAKER_00 37:17

Is this the big naked man running?

SPEAKER_01 37:18

Well, I don't know. There's just there's so many different jump scares where she's in the corner of the room, and this one is also a film that plays a lot with like dark and light. And so sometimes there's shots where you could almost barely make out the character in the corner of the room, and that makes it so much scarier because you might miss it the first time.

SPEAKER_00 37:35

I love when that happens in movies.

SPEAKER_01 37:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:38

Especially like when they never draw attention to it.

SPEAKER_01 37:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:42

A great example is in the movie Insidious.

SPEAKER_01 37:45

I would love yeah, I'd love to talk about this because I have actually never seen it.

SPEAKER_00 37:48

It's either insidious or sinister. I always confuse the two movies. But, anyways, there's one tracking shot that goes like you're you're just following a character through the house. Yeah. Like nothing scary is happening. Uh sorry, maybe there's like some tension, but like it's not a a a hor a big horrific moment.

SPEAKER_01 38:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:08

And I happen to catch it, but like again, there's no attention drawn to that. There's like the creepy boy standing in this in the corner in the shadows. Yeah. And like that's it. You're just you move on. It's the type of thing where like if you re-watch the movie and you know the mythos, you know that like the hauntings are escalating, and so there's gonna be more spooky stuff. And it's like on a rewatch and you're just like watching all the shadows and finding all the Easter eggs. Yeah, it's like I think that's so, so cool. It's not a jump scare, yeah. It's just a hidden in plain sight thing.

SPEAKER_01 38:40

Well, the TV show version that came out, I don't know, recent like you know, within the last decade for Haunting on Hill House does that too. And I think sometimes it can be a jump scare because if you're not expecting it and suddenly you see like you're like, oh shit, you know, but it does, it's not, it doesn't have to be.

SPEAKER_00 38:57

Yeah, right. You gift your own jump scare.

SPEAKER_01 38:59

Yeah. It follows is interesting because I think this film relies, it's exactly what we're talking about here, where it relies less on like musical stings and more on these super wide shots where suddenly somebody in the background, you know, in the premise is like the thing follows. So suddenly someone in the background is walking and there's a bunch of people walking, but like maybe one person kind of draws the eye, and it's like this gradual, it's like what we're talking about a little bit, I think, where you might not notice it right away, or people are gonna notice it at different times, and it's not calling attention to itself until suddenly it's like, holy shit, like we gotta run because this thing is right here.

SPEAKER_00 39:36

Yeah, there's there's something really unsettling about you see something at a safe distance, and then all of a sudden it locks onto you and it approaches much faster than it should.

SPEAKER_01 39:48

Yeah, yeah. Sam Raimi is very good at jump scares, especially with Drag Me to Hell.

SPEAKER_00 39:54

Uh, sure. I mean, Sam Raimi in general.

SPEAKER_01 39:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:58

Like, if you want to just I mean, he he he cut his teeth on The Evil Dead, and that whole franchise really plays with the jump scare. Uh, one of my favorite actually comes from the third one, Army of Darkness. So you have like this possessed woman laying on the ground, you can't really see her face at first, and then the camera is like right on her on her face, her eyes are closed, and then like you have this guy reaching in slowly, the music is swelling. You know, the second that he grabs her, that he touches her, you know, the the the witch is gonna burst into life and shit's gonna happen. Right. And then Ash, our protagonist, just stops him right before and says, It's a trap, get an axe.

SPEAKER_01 40:39

Yeah, it's great. I'm also thinking about Send Help, which is Sam Raimi's most recent movie, which isn't really horror, but there's still scares in it. Like that's just like his style, you know, which is fun. You know kind of what you're gonna get going into a Sam Raimi movie for sure. Except for Spider-Man. Sure.

SPEAKER_00 40:57

Like, what a departure. At first, I I just re-watched the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies. And first off, what a trip. It's so fun, especially like watching the first one and seeing his clear cinematic style mixed in with like a superhero movie. It's so it at first it makes no sense of why he got given these why he was asked to direct these movies. But it they're they're so good. And he just he blends his own horror filmmaking techniques into this like you know, feel good superhero movie, and it works perfectly.

SPEAKER_01 41:33

Yeah. Yeah, he I love uh someone who like a filmmaker that's very stylistic and has a certain language, and I think he's a great example of that.

SPEAKER_00 41:43

Yeah, but he's not a genre director, which is amazing.

SPEAKER_01 41:46

Yeah. But jump scares predate movies entirely. In theater, haunted attractions, magic shows, and even in literature. Artists and writers have been using sudden shock after tension long before movies even existed. While these early examples did not use modern film editing or sound design, they relied on the same basic idea of anticipation followed by surprise. Ancient Greek theater sometimes used sudden reveals involving masks, unexpected appearances by gods through stage machinery, or abrupt acts of violence meant to shock the audience. Centuries later, Elizabethan revenge tragedies, such as Titus Andronicus, used surprise entrances, hidden bodies, and graphic reveals during tense scenes. These productions often emphasized spectacle and sudden violence to provoke strong audience reactions. Victorian horror theater is also worth noting. Stage adaptations of Frankenstein and various ghost stories used trapdoors, blackout effects, hidden performers, and sudden monster appearances to create startling moments. In 19th century, Grand Guignol theater productions in Paris, audiences watched graphic practical effects involving staged mutilations, surprise murders, and other forms of shock horror. These productions are often viewed as an early version of the practical effects horror later seen in film. So these productions used large amounts of fake blood in staged violent scenes, involving decapitations, acid attacks, and kind of like these crazy forms of mutilation. Much like later slasher movies, the theater became known for stories about audience members fainting during performances, with an on-site doctor reportedly available to treat them. However, while Grand Guignol helped shape shock-based horror entertainment, it was not really a direct precursor to the modern cinematic jump scare. According to horror theater expert Richard Hand, surprise works differently in live theater than it does in film. In movies, scares are usually fast and sudden, but on stage, slower tension tends to be more effective because the audience is sharing the same physical space and experience as the performers. If something happens too quickly in a live production, viewers may miss it, so theater often Focuses more on a gradually building unease and anticipation. Outside of traditional theater, haunted attractions in the late 1800s also relied on concealed actors suddenly jumping out at visitors. The structure was very similar to modern day haunted houses, where surprise and anticipation are used to make sudden scares more effective, or perhaps even modern-day immersive theater. And I will say I went to see the Broadway musical uh adaptation of The Lost Boys a few weeks ago.

SPEAKER_00 44:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 44:32

Which is delightful in my opinion. But it was the first time in a long time that I'd seen anything on stage that had jump scares, and it got me. It really did have like a few effective jump scares, which was really fun because, you know, it's it really feels in celebration of the film, which is such an iconic horror film, and it was cool that it was able to pull that off.

SPEAKER_00 44:52

Yeah, I I can't imagine a jump scare in theater, but clearly it's there's a lot of precedent.

SPEAKER_01 44:58

Yeah, yeah. Literature also explored early forms of the jump scare. Writers such as Edgar Allan Poe and M. R. James created scenes built around mounting dread, followed by an abrupt and disturbing revelation. Without visuals or sound, readers often described having strong physical reactions to these moments. In the modern era, there is also a subcategory of a thing called Internet Screamer. And this is what we were talking about before. An Internet Screamer is a type of online image video or game designed to trick users with a normal-looking setup that suddenly switches, typically to a frightening image using a face paired with a loud scream. A well-known example is the Maze, also called Scary Maze Game, created in 2004 by Jeremy Winterroud, where players guide a small square through increasingly narrow paths that force them to focus closely on the screen. Once they reach a certain point, the game suddenly cuts to a terrifying image of Reagan from The Exorcist, along with a loud scream. Another example is Kikia, which begins with simple footage of a boy in different settings before abruptly switching to a ghost image from Fatal Frame with a high-pitched scream. Fatal Frame.

SPEAKER_00 46:08

I've thought about that in a long time.

SPEAKER_01 46:11

Of course, video games also use jump scares all the time. Games like Resident Evil, Until Dawn, The Quarry, Daylight, and of course Five Nights at Freddy's are great examples of this.

SPEAKER_00 46:21

That's uh I was wondering if you're gonna start talking about video games because like it's such a different animal when you know the jump scare is coming, but you still have to be the one to walk through the door.

SPEAKER_01 46:30

Yeah, right. You're kind of like in control, even if it's virtually. In August 2018, a promotional video for the nun showed a phone volume icon dropping to mute right before the title character suddenly appeared with a very loud scream. The advertisement was taken down soon after for breaching YouTube's policy against shocking or misleading content.

SPEAKER_00 46:51

Uh-oh.

VR Horror And Closing Thoughts

SPEAKER_01 46:51

The jump scare has existed in some form for centuries, long before horror films brought it into mainstream popular culture. Starting in ancient theater and expanding with Victorian ghost plays, haunted attractions, and gothic literature. Artists have long understood how tension and sudden surprise can produce a strong emotional reaction. Cinema eventually refined these techniques through editing, sound design, and camera work, turning the jump scare into one of horror's most recognizable devices. Films like The Phantom of the Opera, Cat People, and later slasher films helped establish the modern structure of suspense followed by sudden shock that continues to shape horror today. Psychologically, jump scares are effective because they tap into the body's natural startle reflex, a fast survival response designed to react to a sudden stimuli. Horror films intensify this reaction by placing audiences in a prolonged state of tension and anticipation, making unexpected sounds or images feel even more powerful. While some viewers, like me, criticize jump scares as cheap or overused, their long history and continued popularity show that they remain one of the most direct ways horror can create a physical response from an audience. Okay, so Alan, to close us out here, what do you personally think is the most effective jump scare that you can think of?

SPEAKER_00 48:10

Uh, that's that's that's simple. No. It's in video games, specifically in VR.

SPEAKER_01 48:17

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 48:18

Playing Resident Evil 8. Again, you're in VR, so you are inside the haunted house full of spooky dolls that are constantly looking at you, and then you turn the corner and there's something at the top of the stairs, you're not quite sure. Is it? Is it just a shadow? Is it just an artifact? Because, like, you know, honestly, they they use the limited VR resolution to the benefit sometimes, and then all of a sudden, this massive, massive doll thing crawls down the stairs at like lightning speeds. No, it is and it it's like it cries like a baby while it does it. It is so startling. I ripped off the headset.

SPEAKER_01 49:02

I don't like that at all. There's been so many nights where I've been sleeping, and screams from you and your friends playing Resident Evil have woken me up.

SPEAKER_00 49:09

It's very spooky, but it's okay. We beat it.

SPEAKER_01 49:11

I'm surprised that you say video games because you are somebody who hates haunted houses.

SPEAKER_00 49:17

Yeah, I I mean, right, I just won't do it.

SPEAKER_01 49:20

Well, we did it last hollow Halloween. We went up to uh the upstate Headless Horseman, which was like this vast outdoor haunted house experience.

SPEAKER_00 49:30

Yeah, and I was very brave.

SPEAKER_01 49:32

You were very brave. But it is it you don't like haunted houses because of the jump scares?

SPEAKER_00 49:36

I don't like it for many reasons.

SPEAKER_01 49:38

All right. Well, as always, thank you all so much for being here. It was great to discuss the history of jump scares. Stay spooky, stay safe, and we'll talk to you soon. Bye. Bye.