The first movie to employ a jump scare was 1942’s Cat People, and it had nothing to do with horror. The jump scare was simply a bus screeching to a stop and a girl frightened by the sound. Jump ahead, sorry, to 2013’s The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia, with 32 scripted jump scares, the record so far. Now if you’re like me, you get a kick out of a good jump scare, like the ending of Carrie, when a dead hand reaches from the grave, or the ending of Friday the 13th, when Jason’s mother, Pamela, leaps out of the water. Truly effective and heart stopping jump scares. There are so many great cinematic jump scares out there and everyone who enjoys the horror genre has their own favorites.
Okay, back to jump scares and its 180, the slow burn, the 90 minutes or so of building tension by utilizing atmosphere or innuendo or maybe a lingering camera pulling slowly away. And when I think about movies with a slow burn, I immediately conjure up The Others, with Nicole Kidman. You absolutely know that what you’re seeing isn’t the truth and that the real truth is being artfully woven together to bring you the surprise ending, an ending I did not see coming and I pride myself on figuring out cinematic truths, like knowing early on that the dead person was really Bruce Willis.
Another prime example of a good slow burn movie would be The Witch whose deliberate and unhurried pace, along with character development, allows the story and mood to develop. But slow burn or scripted jump scares do frighten us and all of us, we lovers of a good scare, like being scared. But why? Dopamine is the answer. Fear produces dopamine which is sometimes associated with fight or flight, but in an environment that we perceive as harmless, our living room and most of the time, a movie theater, the release of dopamine in response to fear is pleasure. It’s a drug that we naturally produce that we can actually trust. As I said, I do enjoy a proper jump scare, but as we all know, they’re sometimes used incorrectly, like when you might actually say to your friend, chewing on popcorn next to you,it’s coming, another jump scare, and voila, there it is. That’s why my favorite will always be the slow burn. You can trust a slow burn and unlike the jump scare, the slow burn releases dopamine almost constantly, if it’s properly slow burning.
Psycho. Just the word itself raises your dopamine level a little, doesn’t it? But as you know, hopefully, Psycho, the Hitchcock classic, utilizes the slow burn masterfully. We’re given subtle clues along the way that hey, somethin’s not quite right with Norman, the way he talks about his mother, his philosophy of life as told to his first victim in his casket-like office. And after we discover that his mother is homicidal, we throw that truth away at the end when we find out that Norman likes playing dress up. Beautifully done, and the final scene as Norman smiles his oh so demonic and skeletal smile – priceless.
Another interesting observation is that slow burn movies sometimes are adapted from a novel, or even non-fiction, whereas it’s rare to find a movie that relies on jump scares having been adapted from a novel; Jaws, maybe, but that’s kind of borderline horror, as is Alien, one of my favorites. And one has to wonder, do we release dopamine when we read? I think we do, and I’ll tell you why. A good writer builds a scene in your mind and then populates it with this vampire or that demon and your mind builds on that character and that scene and you become one with it, with that scene and that character and you cannot escape a dopamine release. And who wants to read something without some kind of emotional or even physical response? Think back to whatever your favorite horror novel might be and ask yourself how you felt reading it. When you absorbed it and it absorbed you. You might be reading something now that has grabbed you and won’t let go and you’ve asked yourself why that is, well, it’s because you have experienced a physical, and pleasurable, response, and again, it’s not fight or flight, it’s in a safe and controlled environment, your bedroom, the living room, maybe the john. (Put your phone down).
There are, of course, movies that combine jump scares and a slow burn, like Alien – the scene in the air shaft as the character turns and illuminates the creature bearing down on him, is my favorite. But the film also slowly produces one secret after another until the final jump scare, Sigourney Weaver realizing the creature is a stowaway and how the hell can she get rid of it. Hereditary, the 2018 movie, builds tension through its exploration of grief and family trauma, punctuated by moments of unsettling imagery and intense jump scares that break through the psychological dread. And I can’t leave out what is arguably the most frightening movie of all time, The Exorcist – check out an added scene with Ragan going down the stairs backwards and smiling demonically, yeah, good stuff – the slow burn here involves Regan’s possession and how to get the damn thing out of her, but there are also plenty of jump scares to, well, scare you. And scare you is what we horror novelists are here for. So Happy Halloweening and happy dopamining. Boo!
Published 10/30/25