The New Classics: The Descent

Michael Cusumano here to discuss the movie scene that scared me more than any other in my adult life.

There are some tried and true rules of horror filmmaking that get trotted out whenever the topic is discussed. There is The Hitchcock Rule about the difference between suspense and surprise, and The Jaws Rule about withholding the monster from view until absolutely necessary. I propose adding a new rule to the list of horror maxims: The Descent Rule, named after Neil Marshall’s 2005 terrifying excursion into the caves of Appalachia: Structure your story so that it’s scary even if the main threat never arrived. 

Scene: The Tunnel
The Descent didn’t invent this principle, of course...

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Team Top 10: Horror Films AFTER "The Exorcist"

It's Amir here, bringing you the second episode of this month's Team Top Ten. Last week we looked at the best horror films made before The Exorcist. This week it's time for everything that came after that seminal classic. Moreso than in the previous list, Team Experience members have agreed on canonical titles, barring an exception or two. This isn't to say there weren't any surprises. We decided against compiling a preliminary list of eligible titles before voting - precisely to avoid total agreement on our choices - and lo and behold, differences in opinion over what is considered horror lead to some major eyebrow-raisers; I'm already anticipating your comments about the absence of Jaws. But that's the fun in list-making.

Without further ado join us for the haunted house, serial killers, and terrifying isolation of...

The Top Ten Best
Post-Exorcist Horror Films

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Burning Questions: Are Jump Scares Ever Not Awful?

Michael C here. I recently caught up with Andres Muschietti’s Mama and found it to be a decent little chiller with one particularly irksome habit. It is packed end-to-end with cheap jump scares. It’s as if the studio insisted the director include a quota of brainless “Boo!” moments amid all the creepy suspense stuff that takes actual filmmaking skill. 

Savvy filmgoers understand that jump scares are the worst. Apart from the fact that it requires roughly the same level of craft to startle someone with a loud noise as it does to zap them with a seat buzzer, they have the added drawback of creating distance between the audience and the film. They release tension, rather than build it. This explains their popularity among teenagers who see horror movies as a carnival ride, doling out empty “scares” with mechanical timing.

So finding a minefield of these cheap shots in another otherwise capable spook story like Mama got me thinking. Are there any defensible examples of the jump scare? Or is it an artistic sin every time it’s trotted out?

jump scares after, um, the jump.

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