One of the Earliest Jump Scares Is Still Influencing Horror Movies Today – Armessa Movie News

Ah, the jump scare, a pedigree of horror tropes and a surefire way to skyrocket the heart rate of your audience in seconds flat. Many of the biggest scares in horror are of this breed, from Insidious to Friday the 13th. It’s a primal instinct, getting past all nuance and implication and digging right into the furthest corners of your brain. However, as the years went by many took advantage of the element of surprise, believing it to be an easy scare in a lesser movie. This, unfortunately, gave jump scares a bad name, it’s now considered a cheap, overused, and tired cliché; it became a bad term, a phrase that meant low effort, the mark of a low-quality film. There are undeserved jump scares in bad horror films, ones that give us a little jolt and then we move on. Lesser filmmakers forget that you can’t just randomly pop out from a corner and yell “Boo!” for a jump scare to work; tension and atmosphere have to be built to make the audience lean in. To either lower or heighten their defenses, make them empathize with the character on screen being just as frightened as you, that is what makes a great jump scare, and they can be seen at the very beginnings of cinema history.

Many attribute the very first jump scare to the famed Lewton Bus scene from Cat People in 1942. In the scene, a woman with the impression she’s being followed attempts to walk home at night; a bus comes screeching down the road, causing the audience to jolt in fear, despite the bus being harmless. It was loud, it was a surprise, so the effect remains the same. But was this truly the very first jump scare? False scare, absolutely, but go back another 20 years, and you find an even more effective jump scare.

1925’s ‘Phantom of the Opera’ Features One of the First Real Jump Scares

The Phantom of the Opera, released in 1925 and starring the legendary Lon Chaney, is the original Universal Monster movie — for us who know in our hearts that 1923’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame doesn’t count. It is also one of the greatest silent films of all time. The most accurate adaptation of the original novel so far, it blends the high drama of German Expressionism with Universal polish. While there is much to be said about The Phantom of the Opera as a whole and why it works, in this article, I want to look at this silent adaptation’s most iconic scene, and most importantly, the earliest example we have of a jump scare: The unmasking.

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This scene is one of the big turning points of the narrative; seen at some point, in some way, in every adaptation. Opera singer Christine (Mary Philbin) ends up in the lair of her mysterious singing tutor, he has his back turned to her, playing the organ. She’s thinking what we’re all thinking of course, what’s underneath the mask? She comes closer, hesitates, but her curiosity gets the better of her, and she rips off the mask, showing her his hauntingly disfigured face. There has always been talk about the strong reactions of audiences at the time, the screaming, fainting, and running out of the theater. Sure, it’s pretty tame and expected by now, but most silent horror films are appreciated more now for their artistry than their ability to evoke terror.

This scene is artful on so many levels, which is why it stands as one of the most famous singular scenes in horror cinema. First, you have that famous deformity, the death’s head crafted by Chaney himself. All of his makeup work is incredible, but this is his best, and the closest to what’s described in the book. You have great physical and expressive acting from him underneath it all, and from Philbin as well whose fear is palpable on the screen, as we’re able to hear her shriek in terror with no sound. Then there’s the shot of the mask flipping off, and the face is front and center. You may not really think about it, but this single jump scare is extremely influential, being one of the very first of a very specific kind of jump scare we see all the time; the perfect example of build-up and payoff.

‘The Phantom of the Opera’ Proves the Effectiveness of Masked Killers

When you think of masked killers, dozens appear in your head. The horror genre thrives on monsters who conceal themselves, their identities, appearances, and innermost thoughts. Three of the big four slashers are masked — Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, and Leatherface — and it always leaves you questioning what’s underneath it. Sometimes, the horror comes from never knowing, like in the case of Halloween or The Strangers, but when the mask is ripped off to show either an effective twist or an even more frightening face, it finally gives a release of tension that was there since the audience first saw the mask. There are various effective examples of this: When the mysterious figure in red finally turns around and reveals themselves in Don’t Look Now; Jason’s face becomes more and more horrid with each passing installment of Friday the 13th and the titular character in Predator is revealed to be one ugly mother… Well, you know the rest.

Not to mention, when that mask is removed, it tends to make the killer mad, and therefore much more of a threat to the protagonist. It’s about giving into a morbid temptation; you know when someone is wearing a mask, taking it off is probably a bad idea. But you just keep thinking about it, wondering about the face underneath. It’s the job of the horror protagonist to follow that call of the void and then reap the consequences. This is something every film should have, cause and effect, and jump scares are really no different. The reason why bad jump scares fail to fester in the mind of the audience is that no effort was put into creating an atmosphere, either one where anything could happen or giving you a false sense that nothing is going to happen. Horror is like comedy, it thrives on build-up and release, and the jump scare is the most concentrated version of that.

How fitting it is, then, that the earliest jump scare be an unmasking scene. The Phantom of the Opera shows us the perfect breakdown of why they work when they do. The context of a masked man, the build-up of the temptation to remove it, the slow approach, and that one perfect scare at the end, all finished off with a chaotic aftermath. That’s how a real jump scare is done.