Why Are Older Movies So Scary?
A deep-dive into what made the classics so eerie.
What’s the scariest horror movie?
It’s the question that pops up around this time of the year — every year — that no one can ever agree on an answer to. If you’re a millennial or part of generation Z, you might say something like The Blair Witch Project (1999), or Hereditary (2018). If you’re a member of gen-X, maybe it’s The Exorcist (1977), or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). Boomer? Perhaps Psycho (1960). Like all art, horror is subjective. But although everyone scares differently, genre conventions like tight framing, negative space and cognitive dissonance are pretty reliable when it comes to unnerving viewers. For most of us, however, there’s nothing scarier than subverting the familiar.
Horror elicits fear in us by tapping into the macabre and the unknown. We fear the unknown because we fear losing control. Space is scary because it’s infinite. Oceans are scary because humans have only explored 5% of them, despite the 6 million years we’ve existed. Assuming you’re a believer, the occult is scary because there’s no scientific explanation for it. In any case, these are all areas we know very little about, meaning there’s no telling what dangers we have left to discover. When horror imagery instills uneasiness upon us, it’s often because the unknown has corrupted something (or someone), otherwise familiar to appear eerie or unnatural — thus, making it macabre.
Although there are obvious exceptions to this rule, older horror media was generally much more dependent on this basic but reliable principle than many contemporary films seem to be. Of course, horror doesn’t need to be scary to be good, and each decade has examples that prove this. The Exorcist is still considered by many to be the scariest movie of all time, thanks to Reagan (Linda Blair)’s corruption by the demon, which gradually transforms her from a normal child into the subject of nightmares. But to anyone for whom the film hasn’t aged well, the lengthy possession sequences remove any and all sense of enigma from the occult, making the demon pretty easy to get used to.
Meanwhile, Hereditary is effective because it relies on classic scare techniques like low key lighting, stilted imagery and abrupt editing, but modern digital effects showcases such as The Conjuring and It franchises leave much less to the imagination. By continuously showing off the wealth of practical and digital effects at their exposal, these films achieve the opposite of making the natural appear corrupted. Instead, they normalize the unnatural, making them less eerie than many classics.
There are many examples of what early and mid-century horror directors were able to accomplish with fewer resources at their disposal, but perhaps none are as prevalent as Herk Harvey’s Carnival of Souls (1962). Now a cult film, Carnival is as famous for its disturbing visuals as it is for its achievement in low-budget filmmaking. In one key scene, Mary (Candace Hilligoss)’s dead stalker appears outside the window of a car she’s driving. With only $33,000 at their disposal, Harvey and his crew were unable to afford rear-projection technology, which was commonly used to film moving backgrounds at the time. They achieved this visual illusion by placing an angled mirror on the far side of the window. It’s just one of many instances of eerie imagery that adds to the film’s sinister atmosphere. Precise blocking and editing techniques are also used for jumpscares throughout Carnival, in which The Man (Harvey) appears unexpectedly, sometimes replacing other characters Mary shares the screen with.
In 1990, Peter Rainer of the LA Times called Carnival a film that “profits from its limitations,” writing that the low production value and amateur acting only contribute to the stiltedness that makes the film so disquieting. There’s certainly a primitive quality to many old photos and videos that the average person would find creepy and jarring today — many of which weren’t necessarily meant to be during the time they were taken.
The striking compositions, exaggerated expressions and high-contrast make-up in Carnival were, of course, inspired by the German Expressionist movement. Fueled by wartime anxieties and reaching its peak in the 1920s, films produced during this time often dealt with mental illness and featured looming threats that simplified then-current events taking place. Many of the bogeymen in these films, from the somnambulist in Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), to the titular monster in F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922), are still downright terrifying to look at, thanks in part to the primitive quality of their craftsmanship.
On a surface level, the exaggerated facial expressions, chiaroscuro lighting and distorted sets seem eerie now because they’re so far removed from much of today’s modern horror — with obvious exceptions like The Babadook (2014), which is frightening precisely because it relies on many of those same visual gimmicks. However, many postmodern, neo-expressionists have gone on to maximize strident and emotion-based visual techniques of the Expressionist period across mediums to create foreboding pieces of art that tap into our darkest sensibilities.
What makes this primitive quality so distressing, then? Regardless, these films were just as scary — if not more so — to audiences during the early half of the 20th century, with accounts of shrieking during showings of Caligari and Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932) being well-documented. Of course, many of these sensibilities seeped into early Hollywood productions as well, with horror classics like Paul Leni’s The Man Who Laughs (1928), containing some of the most frightening close-ups of any monster in motion picture history. The spooky imagery in Swedish director Benjamin Christensen’s documentary Häxan (1922) is also extremely compelling even if the tone of that film is quite different from the standard horrors I’ve mentioned.
So, while I certainly wouldn’t be the first to make the case for age being a contributing factor to the scare-quality of these films, it would be unfair to suggest that classic horror directors didn’t know exactly what they were doing. After all, these were the people who went on to inspire the likes of Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch much later, with films like Psycho (1960) and Eraserhead (1977) drawing thematic and stylistic parallels to them.
The 1970s in particular were something of a turning point for the genre, which began to focus more on social issues while also being daring and ruthless in its depictions of violence. A common trend involved changing the expected roles of characters and using everyday settings rather than the imposing, gothic cities of previous decades — again, corrupting the familiar to appear eerie and unnatural.
Many of these films also used editing and other post-production technicals to jarring effect in order to help with atmosphere. The opening scene of Don’t Look Now (1973) remains one of the most uncomfortable in any horror film. Rather than using smooth cuts to emphasize continuity, director Nicholas Roeg and editor Graeme Clifford created a unique rhythm through jump cuts and montage effects that put viewers on-edge, forcing them to pay attention to important details. Tight close-ups and odd zooms create a sense of lurking danger in this scene, which ends with the protagonist’s daughter dying in a tragic accident right in front of their house.
Throughout the film, shots are held on what seem to be meaningless details that prove to be significant later on, creating an odd imbalance with other shots that are cut much faster. It’s an uncomfortable viewing experience, occurring in a setting you’d otherwise associate with comfort. The editing in Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 classic The Shining emphasizes strange camera movements to similar effect. Both of these as well as Lynch’s Eraserhead famously create discomfort through exaggerated performances reminiscent of the Expressionist era. When Mr. X (Allen Joseph) smiles intensely at Henry (Jack Nance) for a minute and 10 seconds during Eraserhead’s infamous dinner scene, it’s as creepy as any of Lynch’s unnaturally stilted worlds.
Although horror is very much subjective, it’s hard to think of modern genre films that provide the same sense of eeriness many early and mid-century horrors do. Hereditary and The Babadook might. The downright horrifying possession sequences in 2018’s Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum — a South Korean found-footage gem by Jung Bum-shik — also use the corruption principle to maximum effect. Mostly though, today’s most effective horror films seek to disturb rather than to scare in the traditional sense, with films like Pascal Laugier’s Martyrs (2008) using constant transgression to upset viewers, rather than committing to the physiological rush something like The Shining might give. The alternative is often a visual effects showcase like Andy Muschietti’s aforementioned It (2017), which isn’t particularly suspenseful even if its eponymous creature looks impressive.
This isn’t a criticism at all. In fact, one of the best things about this genre is how every country, decade and movement has had something different to contribute to its evolution. My own list of favorites has entries from all over the place. But if anyone ever tries to make the case for classic horror not being “scary enough,” show them a still of 1925’s Phantom of the Opera next to the Gerard Butler one, and see if they still think so.