The first thing I thought of was Carnivale. I wish I had an actual gif for this shot, but those of you who are familiar with the show will get it, I think. It gets me every time.
Pretty cool site!
I think of a scene like when Amanda suddenly turns demonic near the end of Saint Maud as an extremely effective jump-scare. It’s totally incongruous to what I was expecting in that scene, and it creeped me right the fuck out.
(I would post it, but oddly, I can’t find a clip of just that scene…)
This one is so hackneyed that, at this point, most (decent) filmmakers use it as the punchline to a visual joke. If you see the “medicine cabinet jumpscare” in a movie, you can use that as a cue that you might be watching a bad movie.
Which ones? I’m not even sure I remember what I picked for the podcast 3x3 (for some reason, the only one I remember is a movie I barely remember in which Jim Sturgess does some Angelhearting or something).
Not a jump scare at all. I will die on this hill! If it’s just a matter of realizing something has been in the frame all along, that’s not a jump scare. That’s just good filmmaking. Jump scares violate the rules of audience omniscience and third person perspective for the sake of a cheap “thrill”. Not seeing Toni Colette is just you not looking hard enough. :)
Well, yes, but I feel like you’re helping me make my point! The whole sequence is a misdirect that everything is fine and they’re all out of danger, and it’s directed by a young auteur at the top of his game. The growing sense of unease is great! I love that bit! But why waste it all on a cheap gimmick to startle the audience. That’s certainly an effective jump scare – as effective as any other! – but the horrors in the house could have just as easily visited themselves on our heroic family without the whole elaborate process of the clown doll carefully sneaking onto the mattress while the little boy was looking under the bed.
Why did it happen this way? Not because of anything internal to the narrative! But because he (Spielberg and the clown, who are one and the same at this point, unless you’re one of those weirdos who advocates for Tobe Hooper, who I will gladly compare to a clown) decided to do it that way specifically to startle the audience. Spielberg and the evil clown doll have left the narrative conceit of the movie to break through the fourth wall, just to fuck with the people sitting in the theaters.
BTW, tell your wife me and her are going to form a club. We’ll consider letting you join, but you’re going to have to roll out some better examples of “good” jump scares first. :)
Damn, that’s good. I hope I brought that up on the 3x3. Anyway, turns out your your wife is the President of the club. I’m only treasurer.
-Tom
Pshaw, this isn’t Twitter. The conversations will hang out and wait for you!
Well put, but why not just use the term “being startled” if you’re looking to avoid “jump scare”? Because I do agree with you that “jump scare” has a pejorative or at least dismissive connotation. But “sudden fright” sounds like you’re trying to avoid the reality of what we’re discussing by using a term that could just as well apply to an abrupt emotional or tonal change.
For instance, the scene in Jaws when they’re all singing after having compared their scars. They’re drunk and raucous and Brody finally feels included. But then as soon as he realizes the banging he’s hearing isn’t the tipsy drumming of Quint and Hooper, he experiences “sudden fright” and now the scene is about him fumbling around in the dark, at sea, terrified that the shark is after them and that the boat is falling apart. That’s what comes to mind when I think “sudden fright”: something like a tonal shift from merriment to fear that doesn’t have to involve being startled. It’s very very different from Ben Gardner’s head popping out of a hole or the (nameless!) shark lunging out of the water while Brody’s slinging chum. Those are “jump scares” accompanied by loud sound cues that startle the audience, and calling them “sudden fright” strikes me as too broad.
It’s semantics, but a lot of good discussions have to roll around in semantics. :)
Oh man, I really want to hear more because I think I couldn’t disagree more. But I also think I understand what you’re implying and I’d love to hear about it at some point. I think it might even be relevant to our differing opinions on jump scares (which I freely acknowledge is a subjective thing, so thanks to everyone for being a good sport about my deliberately provocative thread title).
-Tom
Okay, you’re making me never want to watch Carnivale. Her face is going to abruptly shift into some CG monstrosity with a gaping mouth, right? And she’s going to lunge at the camera and there will be a sudden noise, right? Right? C’mon, just tell me already. I just know it. I already hate it. Get it away from me!
-Tom
Yeah, I like your Saint Maud example, because I feel like the movie in general and director Rose Glass did a lot of work getting to that point and carefully bringing me along without being overtly manipulative or cheap. So I can hardly blame Saint Maud for wanting to have a little fun before her finale. I’ll grant it. :)
Ultimately, a lot of this gets at the very good point a few of you have made. Good filmmaking is good filmmaking, and despite my own personal objections, that good filmmaking will sometimes deliberately startle me. But I still don’t like being startled!
-Tom
So, if you define a jump scare in this way, then, no, there are no good jump scares. It’s kind of a self-answering question, defined that way.
However, perhaps the better question is “are there good scenes involving the sudden use of fright?” and I think there are many.
Defined that way, your definition of jump scare is a “bad use of sudden fright” as opposed to “good uses” (such as Hereditary, as you mention.)
Basically, I think the issue here is definitional, rather than cinematic.
Edit: after seeing your subsequent post, I do think there is yet more defining to do. When I talk about “sudden fright” I’m actually talking about something a bit more specific than just a tonal shift.
Bottom line, the kind of narrowly defined “jump scare” you mean is pretty much a terrible and overused tactic. However, there is still plenty of room for use of sudden frights, and sudden shifts in tone more generally, in good cinema. And, IMO, better when it’s not obviously telegraphed.
The “character gets pancaked by an offscreen car/bus” trick works for me, if it’s a situation where the victim plausibly wouldn’t have seen it coming.
Yeah, I think you’ve put your finger on the inherent dumbness right there! Unless you can explain to me how a bus manages to sneak up on somebody.
I dunno, I feel like I see someone pretty much step into traffic totally oblivious at least a few times a week driving through Seattle…
The Final Destination scene is especially goofy because they show an earth mover blocking the intersection a few seconds beforehand.
I remember that the one in Meet Joe Black worked on me really well, but I may not have seen it done very many times at that age.
I’m overdue for a rewatch of Carnivale, but I’m pretty sure that does not happen.
(Am I wrong? I don’t recall the specific scene in question, but that doesn’t seem like a very Carnivale-esque thing to do.)
If you’re a fan of Clancy Brown - and I mean come on, who isn’t? - then you should check out Carnivale for sure.
And Michael J. Anderson’s best role that involves speaking forward!
She’s Brother Justin’s maid and during one scene where she’s cleaning up they start making eyes at each other and I think she ends up going down on him. Cut to Justin’s sister Iris hearing all of these demonic yells and screams from upstairs in what is obviously Justin basically devil-raping her. Later, Iris finds the girl huddled on the floor in her bedroom facing away from the camera. Her quick turn to the camera is that face. I swear it’s slightly sped up because it makes me jump every damn time.
EDIT: Just found the establishing scene. Slightly different than I described. God, I love this show. Might have to break out the DVDs.
Okay, yes, I do remember that now.
I wish they’d release the set on Blu-Ray. The show looks fantastic.
Here’s a fun game to play while watching Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness: drink every time there’s a jump scare or startle shot immediately followed by a Dutch angle.
(Please do not actually do this: you will be dead of alcohol poisoning by the time the movie ends.)
There seem to be arbitrary assumptions here about rules to be followed and what’s a legitimate scare. Many good horror movies work (at least for me) by pulling the audience from detached observers into the character’s subjective experience.
And anyway, I don’t see any problem with violating audience omniscience, or basic physics for that matter.
