What are some of the cheesiest ways film makers try to create suspense?
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She’s being chased, she jumps in the car, turns the key, and the car won’t start.
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Background music of violins playing high notes.
- She’s being chased, and she trips.
It wasn’t cheesy when Bernard Herman did it the first time in Psycho. It was jump-out-of-your-skin scary back then. Nowadays, it only seems cheesy because it’s become so hackneyed.
Having the electricity go out at precisely the worst moment possible, and then having something occur in the dark.
Bonus points if nothing out of the ordinary was happening before the lights went out.
…and then a cat jumps out at the person, and they think they’re safe until…
Some kind of electronic display with big red numbers counting down.
- When someone wakes up from a nightmare, they sit bolt upright in bed and pant heavily, wide-eyed with terror.
Even better, they play the same trick within the next few minutes, making you wonder “Is it a dream, or not?”
The phone doesn’t work.
You’re pretty sure he’s the bad guy… until he turns up dead!
They’re making out, all hot and heavy, and then-- the machete goes right through both of them!
She finally kills the bad guy, he’s dead, she puts down the gun… and he grabs her hand!
Safe and sound, the movie is wrapping up, and she’s relaxing with her boyfriend… so guess who the bad guy really is!
Fog - and lots of it.
Creaky floorboards.
Open window/door banging in the wind.
The heroine runs a bath.
Something bad is chasing someone. It’s coming from the right. The victim hides, watching. The bad thing hears a noise, moves far off to the right and offscreen. Victim sighs with relief and backs up. Bad thing suddenly appears on the left.
People have been disappearing in the basement. Let’s go see what’s up with that.
Something strange is going on. Let’s split up and check it out.
Bomb counters beep on each second at 110 decibels, making them easy to hear over airplane engines and other background noise (ref: The Living Daylights).
Preview, not Submit :smack:
Bad things are happening. The guy in the castle seems to be a vampire/werewolf/other bad thing. Let’s go check him out. No hurry, though, let’s wait until evening/full moon/other best time for bad thing.
Horror flicks are filmed in an alternate universe where the nights are 23 hours long and there’s less than an hour of daylight.
Women in horror flicks are generally helpless.
Oops, looks like I got of onto my “horror movie cliches” list instead of the “cheesy suspense cliches” list.
At the very end of the movie, after the “My, that was close, wasn’t it” bit, the bad guy/corpse/McGuffin is missing, or it moves, or someone else, somewhere else, has it.
I’ve seen enough bad movies to know that splitting up is a Bad Thing™. If you and your buddies split up, you’ll probably never see some of them again, but you might well see their gibblets for the first time ever.
He’s dead. He’s really, really dead. I know it because I just emptied my clip into him. And now I’m out of bullets. So I’m going to get his gun. He’s got that glassy, dead stare, gun lying loosely in his hand (on the bloodspattered cement floor)
Oh, wait. He’s—Noooooo! He’s gonna shoot me! Ayeee!
I’m dead! He’s on his feet. . . I hear sirens . . . but it’s too late . . . he shot me!
And I thought he was dead!
Gee, it’s dark in that room, I better enter walking backwards and make no attempt at turning on a light. Suddenly the silence is broken, RING RING!!! I better run to the phone and do some hysterics there for awhile.
She’s walking down a long hallway, with crisscrossing hallways. The killer may be hiding around any corner, but the door at the other end is the only way out. She is limping because she was shot in the ankle (as all women in horror movies are); tripped; lost her shoe; etc.