Why Horror Movie Endings Fail At Being Scary

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WARNING: THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE CONTAINS (VERY) MILD SPOILERS FOR PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3, AND INSIDIOUS

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A trend I've noticed recently in many of the slow-paced horror movies that have come out in the wake of Paranormal Activity is that a lot of them have very poor endings.  The first Paranormal Activity had the perfect ending (I'm referring to the "real" ending, not the theatrical one): in keeping with the slow pace of the movie the ending of the first Paranormal Activity simply had the female lead sit still in a spot while the camera time-lapsed showing days and days passing.  It was simple, boring, and perfect.  But, it wasn't scary.  That ending fit so well with the tone of the movie because Paranormal Activity put the viewer in a constant state of tension without ever delivering on the "boo" scare lesser movies tend to do.  This was brilliant because, as any (good) horror director will tell you, the audiences imagination is their worst enemy.  Nothing that can be shown on screen will ever be as scary as what each member of the audience will imagine.

Now, I know what you're thinking, "but Jeremy, I thought you said the uncanny valley could provide a really scary situation with what it shows on screen."  What I actually said was that the uncanny valley would provide a level of discomfort and could be used to create atmosphere, the actual scares come from the viewers imagination.  Case in point: Insidious.  The uncanny valley effect doesn't really come into play until the end of Insidious but when it does its' purpose is to create a feeling that the entire world is off because it wasn't our world, then our own interpretation is that we don't know what this world is capable of and thus imagine our worst fear.  But I'm getting off topic.

The reason these slow-paced movies ultimately fail in terms of the ending is because, unlike other genres, the climax of this kind of movie has to be different.  Let's look at Paranormal Activity 3 as an example: the whole movie kept the slow pace of the original however it added a few "boo" scares to make the audience jump, they worked reasonably well and escalate at a decent pace throughout most of the movie.  This escalation can't continue exponentially though because the "boo" scares still rely on a slow buildup of tension and by the time we reach the ending the "boo"s are coming at us in rapid fire and thus depriving us the buildup needed to make them effective.  It's quite a conundrum, how do you escalate that kind of movie without resulting to rapid fire "boo" scares?  Change the game.

The most successful horror movie ending that I've seen recently is Insidious because it changes the game for the ending.  The whole movie up to that point has the same buildup curve as the Paranormal Activity movies (although done quite a bit better) and it even had the rapid-fire ending, but it was a fake-out.  The rapid-fire portion of the movie isn't the actual ending, and it's also quite a bit shorter and bigger thus making it more effective than the ending of Paranormal Activity 3.  Insidious changes the game by changing the environment; moving the ending of the movie to the spirit world, or hell as I like to call it, puts a different spin because now the ghosts and demons aren't invisible.  The human spirits are well within the uncanny valley because they seem frozen in their last horrific moments cycling through the same motions over and over.  They become scary in a different way because, as I said above, the viewer doesn't know what they're capable of and while they don't seem to react to the living people at first the spirits slowly catch on the longer they spend in hell.

The main demonic entity is thrown into a new light as well because, instead of being shown as an unimaginable malevolent force, it's a humanoid creature with human tendencies, specifically the tendencies of a serial killer.  The way the demon is characterized in this scene is akin to a combination of Hannibal Lecter and Freddy Kreuger, which works incredibly well with the way his attacks have been happening up to this point in the movie.  Overall the key to this ending being so perfect is that the director increases the excitement without decreasing the tension by throwing scare after scare, he simply slowly reveals the mystery while making the viewer ask more questions.  It works and it works well.  I said this in my original review but it bears repeating here: if you're a fan of horror movies, go see Insidious.