One of the most effective ways to evoke fear into the masses is to use their own imaginations against them. What is more terrifying, sound or the complete absence of it? Once your mind buys into whatever you’re watching or listening to, it’s going be a bumpy ride from then on. Paramount Pictures has a potential gamechanger on their hands with the seemingly terrifying new movie, A Quiet Place (watch the latest trailer here), in theaters April 6. John Krasinski directs and stars, alongside Emily Blunt, in the horror thriller about a family that is forced to live in silence while hiding from creatures that hunt by sound.
Horror movies love to build the tension of impending peril with pulse pounding music or sounds that are meant to give a totally immersive experience in to what it’s like to be sucked into whatever is going on in front of the audience. Pulling in as many senses as possible tends to make these frightful experiences feel as though they are real experiences, thus creating a greater bond. It’s not always about what you see. What you hear or don’t hear in some cases, is just as unsettling. Enjoy this short featurette of movies that will make you fear your ear. What are some other movies that give you auditory anxiety?
Paranormal Activity (2007)
The Paranormal Activity is definity built upon slowly building anxiety. If you truly breakdown any of the movies in the franchise, there’s not a lot going on. Still, somehow you get sucked into the eerie silence and then suddenly…WHAM! Everything is turned up to an intensity level of 200%. Time to get paranormally panicked. The audio cues to let you know that something is about to happen is as effective as they come.
Jaws (1975)
I remember watching Jaws as a kid and thinking, “Nope, I’ll stick to pools from here on out.” There was no worse sound than the two note ominous sound that someone was about to be FINished. Unfortunately this franchise sank faster than a boat anchor in the middle of the Pacific Ocean but people are still bothered by those musical notes.
Hush (2016)
Putting yourself in the mindset of a person who lives in a world devoid of sound is just something that puts most on edge. Imagine at any given moment someone could be standing right behind you and you wouldn’t have the faintest idea that they were there. The thought of that is absolutely frightful and that is the why this movie is so effective. Hush makes the most of its low budget, under the radar production.
Friday the 13th (1980)
And yet another movie franchise that shaped my childhood. We’ve already established that open water activities are closed for business. Friday the 13th chopped down any ideas of woods wandering in the immediate future. Jason Voorhees was a mama’s boy that you prey you’d never encounter. He could walk faster than most could run and was master at playing hide and seek and slay. Once you hear that familiar “chi chi chi ha ha ha” jingle, you usually can kiss whatever unlucky soul that’s on the screen goodbye. Even with its predictability and far-fetched sequels, there have been eight movies and a remake (with another possibly in the works). I guess killing Jason truly is harder than one might think!
Aliens (1986)
There haven’t been any remakes in this franchise yet. The first two movies of the Alien franchise set the bar at unattainable heights and the rest kinda fizzed out. There’s no way to remake this classic so 20th Century Fox did the next logical thing, they went the prequel route. Still though, 1986’s Aliens became the gold standard of this franchise. The proximity alert that beeped as the Xenomorph approached spelled certain doom the nearest human. As tense audience members, all we could do was grip the armrest and hope that the scene would be over soon. My heart still skips a beat when I reminisce on those frightful moments.
Don’t Breathe (2016)
Don’t Breathe is another of those movies that have its audiences exhausted after sitting through the entirety of the movie. Again, this is another where the absence of sound is what’s gut-wrenching. A blind psychopath with heightened remaining senses will have viewers feeling the effects of impending peril. You will find yourself actually NOT breathing on more than one occasion as you go through this absolutely scary ordeal with the other characters. Being hypersensitive to every sound that you make is enough to exhaust you while watching this one.
Predator (1987)
Not being able to see something in the woods that is hunting you is very frightening. This camouflage could cause cardiac arrest because you could literally be looking right at one of these alien hunters and you wouldn’t even know. When you heard their clicking sound you knew that it was almost over for you (or possibly it was just an overzealous woodpecker having its way with an oak tree). In addition to the Predator trilogy, two spinoff movies featuring the aforementioned Xenomorph gave us a symphony of spooky sounds. It’ll be interesting to see where the franchise goes next later this year when The Predator (2018) is released in September. I’m sure our ears will be running for cover yet again.
