Dislocation Dislocation Dislocation: He's behind you!

The jump scare has been done time and time again. The same idea, done in a different way each time.

In 1975 audiences were screaming while watching Martin Brody harmlessly talking on the edge on his fishing boat. When he takes his eyes off the water the audience does too, unsuspectingly unleashing the behemoth shark from the murky great blue ocean.

In 1960 a surprise was revealed when Norman Bates' deceased mother was spun into the audiences faces, providing many a scream to the delight of Alfred Hitchcock.

In 1995 the movie Se7en lures us into a false sense of security making the audience believe they are looking a seemingly dead person lying on a bed, the faux corpse then miraculously eludes the hereafter one last time to grant audiences permission for an underwear check.

Fire face Scene - Insidious

Fire face - Insidious

A recent example of this jump scare technique would be the movie 'Insidious'. A truly scary horror film which tends to mix creepy looking figures into their jump scares to make it all the more terrifying.

While watching a particular scene I was trying to figure out just why the jump scene was scary and how I adapt it for my own. The scene can be shown below via YouTube link.

The woman is telling a story in one shot, and the story can be seen in another shot which is building up in our minds as the setting for the scary outcome.

We keep looking back to the woman in the kitchen as a point of refuge, then going back to the story scene with the tension ever mounting. The twist in the jump scare lies with it appearing in the kitchen, outside of where the horror has been built up.

This is scary because the audience has been tricked into a false sense of security. In their heads the kitchen is the audiences kitchen, it is safe. Bringing the inevitable jump scare from uncharted territory to an everyday surrounding is what makes this scene work so well.