What scares you in shows

Skanky Vamp

Skanky Vamp

Sniffin' the Slayer
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Aug 12, 2008
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Black Thorn
So... it's very rare that anything in TV shows or movies scare me. Not stuff that's supposed to at least anyway. But last night I hear people talk about this or that show is sooo scary.

So my query, what things in shows scare you? What makes a show scary? Or do people call suspenseful scary? What is scary? I honestly don't know.
 
I tend to get creeped out by the suspense of not knowing if something is there, rather than serial killer/slasher stuff. I find shows that center on suspense/haunting scary but not those that focus on murder/gore. I am a pretty big scaredy cat with movies, but the only TV show I can think of that scared me was American Horror Story, but only a few seasons (and the openings were scarier than the show for me lol). Movies that traumatized me include The Ring and The Conjuring.

...I tend to consider something scary if I think about it in the middle of the night and it keeps me awake haha I usually make it through the viewing fine and it's only later that I realized I have made a mistake by watching 😱
 
Seeing people strangled to death. Graphic or distressing rape scenes (spuffy AR was not a distressing scene for me but newer shows have been). Human on human graphic violence is something I dont enjoy observing but super heroes/villians are fun as the are a level removed and have more stylised fight scenes, more like dancing instead of pounding a nose into someones brain. Excessive kicking to the head makes me physically sick.

Violent and bloody images stay with me, as do child murders (ocd). Movies containing psych wards trigger me, but this is improving. I dont enjoy watching actors pretend to wither in sexual bliss for long periods - oral sex scenes focused on women are upsetting/ triggering, I gave up on the Sinner 2 eps in because the scenes were sticking with me (dialogue was too spot on in some parts, too real, too raw).

Some filming techniques spook me - ghosts on SPN, but I can deal with this, I just wouldnt watch a show or movie that is entirely filmed like this. Its not the same sort of horror reaction as above, a spook here and there is needed.
 
brinkster130
brinkster130
Unsettling mostly. And encourages a fear of the unknown, maybe.
Unsettling is the perfect word for what happens most of the time for me, but scary can occasionally pop up. It's never a constant, though, so there isn't a specific show, just an episode here or there. I'm not a fan of jump-scares (they are not legitimate horror, stop calling movies full of jump-scares horror!) so for me scary boils down to how fast my heart beats in my chest and how much my skin starts to sing uncomfortably. That's usually done with some creepy music, lots of shadows, and a character or more walking into/around a tense situation. Thriller gets to me more than anything.
 
The scariest show on TV?

Monsters Inside Me.

It is a show about rare and exotic infections of various sorts and three stories are told in each episode. It starts with the first signs - someone not feeling like their usual selves. They go to a doctor who either gives them a misdiagnosis because the disease is so rare or they get the bad news immediately. Then we see the gradual deterioration and eventual correct diagnosis and how they got infected but not all stories end happily - most make a full recovery but some die and some are disabled to some degree.
 
I have this problem where everything feels real. Any type of horror, no matter how far fetched, makes me genuinely afraid of it happening. It's kinda pathetic. Therefore I avoid horror in general in tv and movies.
 
Non-fiction shows about demon possession, exorcisms, stuff like that. Or real hauntings. These truly terrify me beyond belief.
 
In 1953 the Houses of Parliament heard complaint about a TV show not being suitable for the TV. The show was The Quatermass Experiment but Queen Elizabeth 2nd did want to see it. The Queen holds no sway with such things but her opinion is/ was valued.
What sort of thing was shown? Several rats going along a clear pipe to a persons mouth and nose.
And the best bit is, in those days TV shows could not be recorded and played later and there were no special effects, everything was shown live!
 
As a rule of thumb, the key to scaring me is scare me for the characters. I'm not scared for myself, but for them. I can be scared for Buffy in Helpless, for example, but someone jumping out at me then would be no more scary than doing it if I were instead watching Kim Possible. I don't check under the bed or in the closet. (Though that said, BOOKS have scared me, and I remember once when I couldn't even go to sleep as the images in my brain kept scaring me. This is probably because I use a lot more of my imagination in it.)

Though I will say that the only reason I didn't run out of the cinema when I was 5 as Judge Doom is revealed as a toon in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? was because I wasn't about to leave the adults around me. But that scene doesn't scare me today.

Hmmm...there is one other time as an adult I almost ran out but that's a special case. I'm not sure how to share about that, though.
 
thrasherpix said:
As a rule of thumb, the key to scaring me is scare me for the characters. I'm not scared for myself, but for them. I can be scared for Buffy in Helpless, for example
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So it's more of a cerebral thing. It's that you empathize with the character but don't actually get 'scared'
 
T
thrasherpix
Pretty much
Any show with someone scratching the black board with their fingernails would do.
 
When they kill the dog. Can't. Have to skip it. Just can't watch it. Did it once this weekend during a movie and then while watching a crime show, even if it's just hinted at I just can't. I watched an EWW of the 2005 Amityville Horror and realized I had skipped the part where he kills the dog. I'm still upset I watched that clip now and it makes me cringe to remember it. So yeah, dog killings scare me.
 
Skanky Vamp
Skanky Vamp
How many friggin avatar changes are you going to make! it's like the 50th one today.
I don't get scared at tv shows in general, because a lot of them go overboard and don't really create tension. And dumb jump scares are not scary. I prefer creepy imagery or psychological horror to get my rocks off. The only recent example I can think of was in Agents of Shield when Jemma was stranded on the planet and saw the vision of the dead astronaut stumbling slowly towards her. There's no real action or music in the scene to distract you from the image either. Spooky imagery can be in any type of show though, and maybe I just see more in it than others because I'm drawn to that type of visual.
 
@Mr. Pole How many friggin avatar changes are you going to make! it's like the 50th one today.

I'll keep changing till I find one I like! Something that feels right. We're not all as perfectly avatar-outfitted as you are, after all.
 
Taake said:
I'll keep changing till I find one I like! Something that feels right.
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You think you're all special just because you are a mod and can have any avatar you want and just want to flaunt it in the normal peoples' faces.
 
Mr. Pole said:
You think you're all special just because you are a mod and can have any avatar you want and just want to flaunt it in the normal peoples' faces.
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Hey, we can all get the avatar we want. I know. I did. And I wonder how long it's going to be before calling someone "special" becomes politically incorrect.
 
Skanky Vamp
Skanky Vamp
I can't get the avatar I want!
Ethan Reigns said:
And I wonder how long it's going to be before calling someone "special" becomes politically incorrect.
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It's only politically incorrect to call someone special if the bus they rode to school in was short.
 
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