Research: The importance of sound in horror films

Sound has a big role to play in horror movies, with out sound a horror movie wouldn't have any affect on the audience when trying to scare them.

Sound is used two ways in horror films. this is both before the scare and during the scare. The sound before the scare is generally less intense and has a slow build up to the event that is going to take place. The music during the build up lets the audience know that something is going to take place and will often change their emotions and can affect the visual field. A classic film example of this is Jaws. In the movie when there was going to be an attack music was played which indicated to the audience something was about to happen which builds the tension within the audience. If there was no sound before the attack the audience would just think someone was swimming in the sea.

Before sound was used in movies, horror films weren't as scary as there was nothing to build the tension up and change the emotion of the audience. The only sense used was eye sight so everything would just come as more of a surprise without sound where as with sound you are expecting things to happen so the film immediatley becomes more intense. Sound also enables jump scares which is a major convention in horror movies and make a horror movie up and more enjoyable or worth while to watch.