Resident Evil is often cited as an early video game to use jump scares. The 2009 film Drag Me to Hell contains jump scares throughout, with director Sam Raimi saying he wanted to create a horror film with 'big shocks that'll hopefully make audiences jump.' In video games Film writer William Cheng describes this as causing a 'sudden vanishing of the protective walls surrounding the film's protagonist', in turn giving the viewer at home a sense that the intruder is also somehow closer to them. The 1979 film When a Stranger Calls uses a form of jump scare to suddenly reveal the location of the antagonist to both the protagonist and the audience. The scene, which occurs at the end of the film, is credited as the inspiration for the use of a final jump scare in the 1980 movie Friday the 13th, to show that an apparently dead villain had survived. Ĭarrie, released in 1976, has one of the first modern jump scares. Prior to the 1980s, jump scares were a relatively rare occurrence in horror movies however, they (in particular the Lewton Bus) became increasingly common in the early 1980s as the slasher subgenre increased in popularity. The jump scare device is sometimes called the Lewton Bus after producer Val Lewton, who used it in subsequent films.

Alice begins to panic, running, and the silence of the night, the contrast between light and deep shadow, shots of the fearful Alice, and the intermittent clacking of high heels set up suspense: abruptly, a bus enters the frame with a loud unpleasant noise, scaring the viewer. In the film, Alice is walking home along a deserted street late at night, and realizes Irena is following her. While editing Cat People (1942), Mark Robson created the jump scare, in which quiet tension builds and is suddenly and unexpectedly interrupted by a loud noise, cut, or fast movement, startling the viewer. According to Orson Welles, this was intended to startle audience members who might have been beginning to doze off towards the end of the film. Though not intended as a scare, the film Citizen Kane (1941) included an abrupt scene transition of a shrieking cockatoo. Cat People (1942), which featured the Lewton Bus technique, considered the first jump scare.

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