Jordan Peele Reveals Secret To Suspenseful Horror
After directing modern genre classics like Get Out, Us, and Nope, Jordan Peele has established himself as one of the most trustworthy voices in all of horror. Now, the iconic director is using his authority to tell both filmmakers and casual audiences what the simple formula is for suspenseful horror.
The Jaws Rule
He calls it “the Jaws rule,” which means that directors are better off building tension by not revealing monsters until very late in the film because “the scariest thing that you can put an audience through is to allow their imagination to go crazy.”
Jordan Peele’s advice may not seem very surprising to horror fans…after all, this is a genre where audiences often go out of their way to spot the zippers on the rubber monster suits and joke about how the monster in question looks far more silly than scary.
The Blair Witch Project Also Fits
But Jaws was a movie where (due as much to technical limitations as anything else) director Steven Spielberg didn’t give us a good look at the killer shark until very late in the film.
This gave audiences plenty of time to speculate about the nature and appearance of the creature, making its ultimate reveal that much scarier.
While he might playfully call it the Jaws rule, Jordan Peele actually began his analysis with a very different horror film: The Blair Witch Project. He declared it “one of the scariest films of all time” despite a glaring fact that even its biggest fans can’t deny. Simply put, “nothing f***ing happens.”
Nothing Happens, But So Scary
If you’ve never watched The Blair Witch Project, what Jordan Peele is alluding to is the fact that the film is presented as a found footage documentary in which our protagonists spend most of their time trying to discover the elusive monster.
This leads to scene after scene of the characters running around the woods and getting progressively more freaked out.
The only thing that “happens” in the movie is that one character is possessed and kills another while presumably getting ready to kill the other at the very end, which led to the fun marketing ploy that all of the performers really died and the whole thing was one big snuff film.
Less-Is-More?
Taking Jordan Peele’s horror rule to its most extreme extent, we don’t ever get to see the titular monster, and she is all the scarier for being such an unknown and ultimately unknowable force of evil.
This helps the movie sidestep a problem outlined by the director: ” The second you see the monster, you’re like…that’s kind of lamer than I thought the monster was gonna look like.”
His advice for horror directors is to adopt a less-is-more approach, but it’s important that all of this adds up to a cohesive experience for the audience.
Audience Must Know It’s Headed Somewhere
As Jordan Peele put it, “You can have a movie where nothing happens if the audience knows we’re headed somewhere, and they’re trying to figure out where that is.”
It’s easy to judge something like The Blair Witch Project for just showing actors running around the woods, but the film created an immersive experience where were trying to uncover this mystery alongside them.
Rather than making the movie feel disjointed, this simply added to the verisimilitude as these characters made the same silly jokes and dumb mistakes we would make in their place.
Other Directors Agree
Certainly, other horror directors seem to agree with Jordan Peele’s assessment…that is most likely why the title villain from Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu remake is seen so little in that film’s recent trailer.
For as imposing as that monster is, nothing is scarier than what audiences imagine as they witness one terrifying scene after another. And as every good horror director knows, the Jaws rule is likely to outlive us all.
Source: USA
