How Horror Cinematography Taps Into Our Primal Fears

The best kind of horror films are the ones that haunt an audience long after leaving their seats. Horror films keep us up at night because we hear the eerie music playing over and again in our minds. But the movies that especially get our adrenaline pumping and deliver the most significant impact are the ones offering unsettling images, mood and

In a short video essay from No Film School, edited together by Nelson Carvajal, the images from iconic horror films are spliced together. Memorable moments are splayed throughout the video essay: the chest-bursting scene from Ridley Scott‘s “Alien“‘ Michael Myers attacking his sister in the opening of John Carpenter‘s 1978 slasher “Halloween“; and starting the video off is the shower scene from Alfred Hitchcock‘s “Psycho.” Different elements, conventional or otherwise, are warped for the explicit goal to heighten the audience’s fear.

It is the combination of effects, editing, and especially camerawork that move audiences through hallways in long shots, and follow killers as they stalk their victims. Sometimes, the camerawork allows us to see what the characters cannot, building the anticipation and anxiety for what could happen. In other instances, it is the close up of the victim or the perspective shot of the killer. Without the extraordinary Directors of Photography behind the cameras on these films, these images may not hold the weight in horror history.

These are the grotesque, bloody, and mutilated images that keep us up at night. Audiences love a good scare, and while Halloween is gone, we can’t help, but revisit some of these dazzling and terrifying moving pictures.

What are some of your favorite scenes, or images, from the horror genre? Let us know.