Nothing Is Scarier: Difference between revisions

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* ''[[The Others (film)|The Others]]'' was much like this. Nine-tenths of the creepy in that movie came from the kids talking and the dark surroundings.

* ''[[The Mist]]'' had the parts where people were fighting in the stores or arguing to go outside rather suspenseful.

* A common formula is to combine this trope with [[Quieter Than Silence]] and a bit of non-cynical [[Lampshade Hanging]] for [[It's Quiet... Too Quiet|it being quiet... too quiet]]. An example from [[Tim Burton]]'s ''[[Sleepy Hollow]]'':

* A common formula is to combine this trope with [[Quieter Than Silence]] and a bit of non-cynical [[Lampshade Hanging]] for [[It's Quiet... Too Quiet|it being quiet... too quiet]]. An example from [[Tim Burton]]'s ''[[Sleepy Hollow (Film)|Sleepy Hollow]]'':

{{quote|'''Ichabod''': What is it?

'''Masbath''': Listen.

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** Another [[M. Night Shyamalan]] scene was from ''[[The Village]]'' when our protagonist is in the forest, completely blind, not even realizing she's stumbling into a patch of bright, red berries, thinking about the stories of Those Of Which We Do Not Speak. (Red attracts Those Of Which We Do Not Speak.)

** Shyamalan has a knack for bordering [[Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane]] with Nothing Is Scarier to leave the audience guessing if [[The Sixth Sense|the kid really can see ghosts]] or [[Unbreakable|the guy really is superhuman]] long before the supernatural aspects are ever revealed, in a way that's generally suspenseful and leaving us, in the event that the occurances are supernatural, expecting the worst.

* ''[[Identity]]'' uses this quite a it as well, being a whodunnit slasher. One notable scene is when a couple are arguing and the wife locks herself in the bathroom. The husband starts banging really frantically on the door. It becomes unnerving when he stops.

* ''[[Identity (film)|Identity]]'' uses this quite a it as well, being a whodunnit slasher. One notable scene is when a couple are arguing and the wife locks herself in the bathroom. The husband starts banging really frantically on the door. It becomes unnerving when he stops.

* ''[[The Blair Witch Project]]'' relies heavily on this technique.

** Arguably it ''is'' this technique, given that {{spoiler|the killer is never seen}}.

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* There are differing opinions on Jacques Tourneur's ''[[Night of the Demon]]'' as to whether they should have shown the title demon at the beginning of the film - or at all - but the general consensus is that for or despite its spare appearances, it is a superb horror movie where ''nothing'' often lurks in the darkness.

* This is the reason why the original ''[[Night of the Living Dead]]'' is much more powerful than its remake. The original had you waiting for half an hour looking at people scared enough to piss in their pants and trying to figure out what to do. The remake had constant zombie attacks and fast-paced action.

** Oddly, the remake/reimagining of ''[[Dawn of the Dead 2004]]'' pulled it off well early on... twice in a row.

** Oddly, the remake/reimagining of ''[[Dawn of the Dead (2004 film)|Dawn of the Dead]]'' pulled it off well early on... twice in a row.

** The original ''[[Dawn of the Dead (film)|Dawn of the Dead]]'' features a truly terrifying 20 seconds at the beginning, before someone taps the heroine on the shoulder in the TV studio. Nothing scary is happening, but it's unsettling as billy-o

* In interviews, [[Clive Barker]] has spoke of his intent to avert this trope, due to its overuse in horror films growing up, and so the titular ''Rawhead Rex'' was revealed early in the movie. All ''[[Hellraiser]]'' films have followed the convention of showing the Cenobites in their full, gruesome glory.

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** Nothing after nothing came bursting out.

* ''[[Yume Nikki]]'' is very good at this, but oddly enough, the best example wouldn't even ''be'' an example were it not for the fact that one of the game's secrets got out. [[media:Achievement Unlocked - 0G - UboAAAAAAAAAAAAA 6626.png|See this]]? A little creepy, but not worth being the picture for the game's Nightmare Fuel page when there's entire worlds full of severed body parts, right? Thing is, if you want to see Uboa ([[Watch It for the Meme|which may well be why you're playing the game at all]]), you have to deal with a [[Randomly Drops]] mechanic: he only has a 1/64 chance of showing up, and then only under very specific circumstances. By the time you've spent ten minutes walking in and out of Poniko's house and flipping her lights off, Uboa's actual appearance and [[Hell Is That Noise|accompanying sound effects]] will make you [[Jump Scare|jump about a foot]].

** And on a broader scale, the dream worlds are so big and have so much empty space that you never know when you're going to stumble onto something, and after you've found a few of the... ''[[Nightmare Dreams|weirder]]'' parts of Madotsuki's dreams, you realize that whatever it is, it's going to be deeply disturbing. But then, this ''is'' basically ''[[~~Earthbound~~]]'' [[X Meets Y|meets]] ''[[Silent Hill]]''...

** And on a broader scale, the dream worlds are so big and have so much empty space that you never know when you're going to stumble onto something, and after you've found a few of the... ''[[Nightmare Dreams|weirder]]'' parts of Madotsuki's dreams, you realize that whatever it is, it's going to be deeply disturbing. But then, this ''is'' basically ''[[EarthBound]]'' [[X Meets Y|meets]] ''[[Silent Hill]]''...

** Actually, for some, just the drastic change of the lights in Poniko's room turning on and off, ''without'' Uboa, is horror.

* Of all places, it appears that ''[[Super Paper Mario]]'' invokes this trope. {{spoiler|After Sammer's Kingdom gets destroyed by the Chaos Heart, Mario and friends return there to search for the Pure Heart. The previously colorful, vibrant kingdom of samurai has been replaced with... a gigantic white emptiness that you have to walk through for quite some time. It can be rather foreboding, especially with the music....}}

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** This was made specially for everyone who played the original. The dogs jumping through the windows scared most of us. Then we all played the remake, and were expecting the dogs again, but nothing happened.

** The basement, particularly the filthy, dimly lit kitchen, has the same effect, aided by [[Hell Is That Noise|some really unnerving background music]].

** In fact, the vast majority of the ''Resident Evil'' franchise has this effect. Better rendered environments help with the atmosphere, of course, so the newer installments (REmake and ''[[Resident Evil 0]]'' in particular) have more of this, but almost every game has several rooms where, even with all the enemies dead, ''the room itself'' will make your skin crawl. Notable examples are basement and parts of the lab from REmake, the dimly lit operating room and the winding Training Facility corridors from ''0'', and the Infirmary from ''[[Resident Evil Code Veronica|Code: Veronica]].''

** In fact, the vast majority of the ''Resident Evil'' franchise has this effect. Better rendered environments help with the atmosphere, of course, so the newer installments (REmake and ''[[Resident Evil Zero]]'' in particular) have more of this, but almost every game has several rooms where, even with all the enemies dead, ''the room itself'' will make your skin crawl. Notable examples are basement and parts of the lab from REmake, the dimly lit operating room and the winding Training Facility corridors from ''0'', and the Infirmary from ''[[Resident Evil Code: Veronica|Code: Veronica]].''

** Aside from the sewers, there's only one really scary place in 4, the operation room. You see the blue guy. You know he's going to attack you. And then he doesn't. And he keeps not doing it. He's just sitting there. Then, when you finally defrost the room, the door gets locked. But it doesn't end there. You escape him, and then get out into the hallway. Basically, your next experience should be "whew I escaped let's keep goiHOLYSHITANOTHERONE."

** The first encounter with a Licker in RE 2. You enter a room where there's no music playing, then you see something run across the window. Enter the next hallway, still no music, then the Licker drops down from the ceiling.

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** Just to show how well they use this trope - there are still LOTS of people who are convinced that you actually see {{spoiler|Mr. Blonde cutting off the cop's ear}}. Despite there not being the actual gore on screen, there are still people who insist that it happened plain as day.

* ''[[The Orphanage]]'' lives and breathes this trope. Shall we cite the main character playing a game with ghost children? Or how about little [[Creepy Child|Tomas?]]

* ''[[~~Julias~~ Eyes]]''. The movie is this trope, the fear of that which you cannot see. It's played particularly well [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wK7NY4h4zyc In this trailer (It's in Spanish)]

* ''[[Julia's Eyes]]''. The movie is this trope, the fear of that which you cannot see. It's played particularly well [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wK7NY4h4zyc In this trailer (It's in Spanish)]

* In ''[[2001: A Space Odyssey]]'', the approach to [[The Monolith]] is fearsome simply because we do not know what will happen when the people touch the Monolith.

* ''[[Who Framed Roger Rabbit?]]'' has this with {{spoiler|[[Big Bad|Judge Doom's]] true form. We see a glimpse of it with his [[Red Eyes, Take Warning|glowing red eyes]] that are occasionally ''literal daggers'' and the shapeshifting weapons he uses, but the fact he remains hidden completely by his latex suit except for that enters this trope. Since the dip melted him while was still in the suit, we don't know what his true form is, if he even has one, and that just makes a villain who was already pure horrifying ''even more terrifiying!''}}

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* ''The last man on Earth sat in a room. There was a knock upon the door.''

** This is known as the shortest horror story ever. However, another author was able to modify this story to make it even shorter and scarier:

{{quote|''The last man on Earth sat in a room. [[Zombie Apocalypse|There]] [[Alien Invasion|was a]] ''[[Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere|lock]]'' [[The Virus|upon]] [[Abusive Precursors|the]] [[AI Is a Crapshoot|door]].''}}

{{quote|''The last man on Earth sat in a room. [[Zombie Apocalypse|There]] [[Alien Invasion|was a]] ''[[Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere|lock]]'' [[The Virus|upon]] [[Abusive Precursors|the]] [[A.I. Is a Crapshoot|door]].''}}

* In [[Patricia A. McKillip]]'s ''[[The Riddle Master of Hed]]'', we hear of a king of Hed chased into his home by—something. But it didn't come through the last door. He waited, and waited, until he longed for it to break in. Then he opened the door—and found no sign of it.

* In [[Patricia A. McKillip]]'s ''[[The Riddle-Master of Hed]]'', we hear of a king of Hed chased into his home by—something. But it didn't come through the last door. He waited, and waited, until he longed for it to break in. Then he opened the door—and found no sign of it.

* Of all the places for this trope to [[Trope Maker|originate,]] it may have come from ''[[A Christmas Carol]]''. After the Ghosts of Christmas Past and Present give Scrooge [["The Reason You Suck" Speech|long conversations about what's wrong with him,]] the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come never says ''a thing''. Adaptations with a narrator tend to emphasize this by removing or reducing the narrator's part for the length of time that the third spirit is on.

* ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'': when Daenerys visits the [[Mind Screw|House of the Undying]], she is told to take the first door on the right in each room to navigate the house. At some point she comes across a long corridor with only doors to the left. Then the lights begin to go out and she hears ''something'' approach... {{spoiler|At which point she figures out that the last door to the left is the first door to the right, escaping whatever that was.}}