Misc
A Beginner’s Guide to Jump Scares
Jump scares get a bad rap. In the horror discourse, they’re often dismissed as cheap and tawdry ways to get audiences on the edge of their seats, like a bargain basement replacement for the psychological thrills of more “important” horror movies. But the fact is, jump scares are a vital ingredient in the horror pantry, and they can be used to propel artful masterpieces just as much as popcorn-munching chillers.
A Step By Step Guide to Overcoming Jump Scares
However, even if you agree with that assessment, some people just aren’t built for jump scares. If you or someone you love is interested in seeing certain jump scare-focused movies but can’t control a viscerally negative reaction to those roller coaster thrills, I have prepared a three-step program to help teach you how to watch them and wean you onto the really gnarly nerve-janglers. (Full disclosure: I’m on step 3 with someone very close to me right now, and so far it’s doing the trick).
For the purposes of the following examples, I’m going to assume you are the horror fan who wants to eventually show a particularly scary movie to someone else, so we’ll refer to that person as the Scaredy Cat.
Step 1: Hop
Depending on where your friend/partner/family member/dark passenger is in their horror fandom, you may have to start them at the very beginning to build up some jump scare stamina.
First, we should start with true gateway movies, titles that are aimed specifically at children. There are quite a few scary moments in iconic children’s classics, so maybe they’ve already been exposed to some of them. Think Large Marge in Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, Fizzgig popping out of the tree stump in The Dark Crystal, or the screaming book in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (I don’t recommend giving J.K. Rowling any more money by paying to watch this, but if you’re a millennial or younger, you probably have a copy lying around or know somebody who does).
If they haven’t experienced any of these delectable kindertrauma offerings as a child, then sit them down for some essential viewing. The filmmakers behind these kinds of movies intend to scare the audience, but only a little, couching these moments in off-kilter but more family-friendly aesthetics that will allow viewers to process their fear in a safe environment.
Step 2: Skip
Once that step is done, I recommend viewing some iconic horror shorts like David F. Sandberg’s Lights Out, Andy Muschietti’s Mamá, or Parker Finn’s Laura Hasn’t Slept. While these can be mighty scary, and in my opinion, frequently scarier than the feature films they inspired, they all tend to follow a certain rhythm. Make sure your Scaredy Cat is very prepared going in. Don’t try to have fun at their expense.
Have your Scaredy Cat try to focus on the way the short film is trying to scare them, how it builds tension continuously into one quick release. With shorts like this, there is usually just one jump scare at the very end, so they can rest assured that they will have as much recovery time as they need afterward. Also, knowing the run time of the short ahead of watching it can help them keep an eye on exactly when the scare is coming.
Watching a few shorts in a row can be an excellent guide to how filmmakers craft the scares that are dotted throughout their features, but in a bite-size package that’s slightly easier to swallow.
Step 3: Jump
If your Scaredy Cat has proven themselves willing and able to pass steps 1 and 2, it’s time for the final showdown. This is where you dip their toe into feature-length horror for adults. While this step will look slightly different for everyone, there are two routes you can take depending on what type of movie fan they are.
Route 1: The Franchise
This is the route I’m using with my personal Scaredy Cat. If they are a completist who likes exploring the full breadth of a franchise, they might not be able to resist a horror series with slightly stronger continuity or more built-out lore, like Paranormal Activity, Insidious, and Scream. They might be scared by the movies, but it may also be difficult for them to resist the urge to find out what happens next. These franchises also usually have an escalation of scares as they go along, naturally weaning your Scaredy Cat onto scarier and scarier movies.
Now these franchises will inevitably have entries that are worse than others, but having the conversation about which are your favorites and why is also a useful tool for having them engage with the franchise in a way that isn’t solely about jump scares. Also, if Insidious is the franchise you choose, it’ll clue them into the James Wan style of jump scare, which is very common in modern horror and could come in handy for future movies.
Route 2: The Familiar Face
Another route would be to find a movie that stars or features an actor they love from something else. If they love Daniel Radcliffe, for instance, The Woman in Black is a very good place to start. Are they a Buffy fan? Maybe The Grudge, starring Sarah Michelle Gellar. Well… maybe. Don’t @ me if that one doesn’t go well, this all depends on who they like. But seeing a star they enjoy might be the carrot that helps them get over the stick of jump scares.
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If you’ve completed all these steps and your Scaredy Cat’s heart hasn’t exploded, then they might just be ready to approach the big guns like The Conjuring, It: Chapter One, The Descent, and [REC]. Jump scares still may never be their cup of tea. But at least they will have the tools to recognize when one is coming and the experience under their belt to know they can handle it when it does.
Misc
[INTERVIEW] Can AI Consent? An Interview With the Crew Behind ‘Black Eyed Susan’
Black Eyed Susan was a stand-out hit at Brooklyn Horror Film Fest this year. In the film, the down-on-his-luck Derek (Damian Maffei) is coerced into product testing Susan (Yvonne Emilie Thälker), a life-like sex doll meant to be able to take a beating and bleed and bruise like a real person. Susan’s complex AI leads to conflicted feelings from Derek. The audience at the fest was open to the challenge of Black Eyed Susan’s taboo and transgressive subject matter. To gain a little more insight into the film, I talked with writer and director Scooter McCrae and lead actor Yvonne Emilie Thälker.
Black Eyed Susan was a stand-out hit at Brooklyn Horror Film Fest this year. In the film, the down-on-his-luck Derek (Damian Maffei) is coerced into product testing Susan (Yvonne Emilie Thälker), a life-like sex doll meant to be able to take a beating and bleed and bruise like a real person. Susan’s complex AI leads to conflicted feelings from Derek. The audience at the fest was open to the challenge of Black Eyed Susan’s taboo and transgressive subject matter. To gain a little more insight into the film, I talked with writer and director Scooter McCrae and lead actor Yvonne Emilie Thälker.
[Ed. note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.]
An Interview with Scooter McCrae and Yvonne Emilie Thälker
Horror Press: Where did the inspiration for the film come from?
Scooter McCrae: It came from the deepest darkest recesses of my usually very sunny, open, and fun mind. There was no inciting incident that led to the screenplay being written. I was very much thinking about being a guy, and getting older, and thinking “Everything’s been really good” but even with that there’s certain things that we think about that tend to just go dark. I find that a great place to play. It helps give the lighter moments their weight.
HP: Chuck Palahniuk’s short story Exodus has similar themes and mentions “turning people into objects and objects into people. How does that idea apply to Black Eyed Susan?
Yvonne Emilie Thälker: We’re asking ourselves the question of “what is a person?”, and that goes back to Frankenstein. That’s one of the wonderful things I love about sci-fi movies and, to an extent, horror movies. Black Eyed Susan is a mash up. It is kind of asking a lot of those same questions: Is how you treat objects a reflection of how you treat people? How do we treat an AI that mimics a human, and how does it reflect on us? We write sci-fi and horror to examine our fears around humanity.
SM: To Yvonne’s point, really good science fiction is about sociology. It’s not about the technology itself. You know, that’s a bit of, as I like to say it’s the cheese and the mouse trap.
We live in a world where corporations are people, and real people don’t even get the same respect or tax breaks that fucking corporations get. There’s just so much inequality between objects and people. And sometimes I think objects get the better deal and people get the raw deal, and sometimes it works the other way around as well. But in science fiction especially, there’s going to be a point at which people and technology are just simply going to meet, and there’s going to be some kind of sociological showdown trying to figure out who gets what rights and who gets to say what, and which one has more validity.
HP: Yvonne, What was it like to play a role that is highly gendered and objectified as a nonbinary person?
YET: It’s probably impossible to put all of my ideas about my own gender and the role into a succinct couple of words, because I think aspects of my gender can be very fluid. They can also be kind of agnostic- I’ve got other things to worry about. Every nonbinary person is different. As a model too, there are times where being in a very feminine dress or role for the camera feels like drag. It feels like a thing I’m putting on, but it’s not a full reflection of who I am. But that’s what acting is.
I really like the ability to shape shift. That’s one thing that people would sometimes tell me as a model throughout the years. To me, that’s a big compliment. I like the ability to be chameleon-like and look one way in one shot and then very different in another.
So I really relish the opportunity to play roles that are very much not me, even if there probably is a twinge of feeling slightly uncomfortable being in this kind of very specific, objectified feminine space. I’d love the opportunity to play other types of characters and other types of genders that I’m not.
HP: It’s also empowering to see another nonbinary person in a lead role!
YET: That’s so wonderful to hear! That is the main reason why I decided to be assertive about my pronouns and my identity early on. I think it is important to be myself and an example for others. Seeing yourself represented is so important and can help people not just to come into their own, but also let them know that they belong in this world.
SM: I like what you’re saying too because the representation isn’t the point of the character or the story.
HP: I think a lot of times, people who might not know a trans person only think of us as our identity and don’t realize that we have full lives outside of that.
HP: What does it mean to have a sexual relationship with someone or something who can’t consent? Especially when they might not be a person, but look like one.
SM: That goes to like vibrators or dildos or fake pussies to an extent. Are they willing participants? You just don’t think of it that way. The fact that the doll in the movie has an AI, that’s what is causing confusion; the fact that it has the ability to give off the impression of having sentience. And with sentience comes the question of consent.
I’d like to think that the movie does talk about it. And the great thing about being a writer or a filmmaker is that I get to ask all the questions I want, and I reserve the opportunity to not have to ever answer them. That’s art. You don’t have to answer these questions, but raising them is what’s important.
YET: I would say for me, I actually feel like Susan consents. She’s designed to not only physically be able to take a beating, but to kind of want it. So there’s that issue of: she’s designed to consent. Is that really consent? It is possible to be in BDSM culture and to want to take a certain level of violence. You are consenting to it and you want it because it is cathartic for you in some way. But you know, the story of Susan, I think goes beyond that. For me, the sticky issue is more: how are you okay doing this to something so human like and not doing that to a real human?
HP: I’m wondering what that does to our conditioning. Also in terms of what we see about heterosexual relationships in the media and pornography.
YET: It does influence us when all the women are represented as young and small and beautiful and mostly white and able-bodied and it’s like, there’s no stretch marks, there’s no chipped nail polish. But then when some men encounter real women they’re like, “Oh my God, when this woman that I went on a date with took her makeup off, she’s got acne and under eye bags”. I think that’s a very specific kind of misogyny working there.
It leads to this type of paranoia with people thinking, “Is my body good enough? Is my skin clear enough? Am I fit enough? Am I strong enough?” I think a doll like Susan could be very harmful in terms of if men were routinely using these dolls and abusing them, and then, they try to have a relationship with a real person, and the real person is like, “Yes, I’m into BDSM, but we need to use these safe words and safe practices. I need to feel like I trust you.” Then it shatters the illusion. We’re seeing the beginning of that in the world of Black Eyed Susan, where it’s going to lead to these unhealthy expectations, and, in my opinion, lead to actual abuse of actual humans.
SM: Yeah, addressing the illusion is important. Understanding why something is an illusion is part of the fun of it. It doesn’t take away from the pleasure factor. If you’re doing it right, it adds a level of confidence. When you go to see a movie, you’re not going to say, “It’s all fake. Well, what a waste of my time.”
As someone who does like pornography, and quite a bit, I’ll bring up Sturgeon’s Law, which is that 95% of everything is shit. And this applies to pornography, probably more than anything else. You watch whatever you want, as long as you know that it is, of course, fake and that the people making it are professionals.
In fact, I used to shoot and edit porn, and what’s interesting here is that the people who were making them were basically friends. They all work locally in the industry, but when they would get together, it was a lot of fun. People got paid. They were shot quickly and low-budget, but people were actually having a great time. People were cumming. We’d shoot them in a day or two at most, and it was just the best possible representation of how good pornography can get made by people having a good time and wanting to make stuff that gets out there and promotes just having fun. The worst shoot I ever did, some people came in from LA for me to shoot in a hotel: absolutely the worst porn shoot I ever had to do in my entire life. They were just literally snorting coke, and just, it was just awful. It was the worst cliche. And I couldn’t even believe I was there. It was just like watching zombies engage in calisthenics.
Many thanks to Scooter McCree and Yvonne Emilie Thälker for talking the time to talk with us at Brooklyn Horror Film Festival.
You can preorder Black Eyed Susan via Vinegar Syndrome here!
Misc
[REVIEW] The ‘Slayed’ LGBTQ+ Shorts Block at BHFF 2024 Tapped Into Queer Nightmares and Daydreams
Brooklyn Horror Film Festival is over for another year, but many of the films I saw will linger long on my mind. That’s especially true for those that played as part of the annual ‘Slayed’ shorts block.
Horror Press was once again proud to sponsor ‘Slayed,’ which exists to elevate short films made by LGBTQ+ filmmakers and focusing on queer themes. If you couldn’t make it this year, check out our round-up of the block below.
Beach Logs Kill (dir. Haley Z. Boston)
A surreal daydream edges into nightmare territory in writer-director Haley Z. Boston’s Beach Logs Kill. The short centers on an always-in-detention misfit (Abby Quinn) who finds herself drawn inexorably to the school’s beloved quarterback, Number 36 (Ryan Simpkins). After a charged encounter in the locker room that may or may not have been in the misfit’s head, Number 36 heads out onto the field, where a horrific accident awaits them.
Beach Log Kills masterfully captures that muddled moment in all our queer awakenings when we can’t quite decide if we want to be with someone or be them — that place where desire and obsession collide, hesitation reigns, and anything could happen, but, inevitably, nothing does. Boston reclaims jock machismo through a queer, femme-forward lens, offering a locker room fantasy for every girl who ever watched their crush from afar, afraid to tell, along with one of the most memorable uses of a tampon in horror this year.
Lady Parts (dir. Ariel McCleese)
Some girls just make you wet. In the case of Iris (Ava Hase), dreaming about Ellie (Liv Mai) leaves her practically drenched. Writer-director Ariel McCleese takes this concept to the edge and beyond in her short Lady Parts, which combines elements of body horror and vaginal imagery with enough goop to make Cronenberg proud.
The short focuses on Iris’s struggle to confront her sexuality even as it threatens to spill over and consume all. An encounter with a boy, Ethan (Jake Holley), ends in tragedy, her body revolting. But what was forced and unpleasant with Ethan is beautiful and natural with Ellie, leaving them both reveling in the wetness.
Unsettled (dir. Bella Thorne)
The words “This is a true story” flash on screen like a punch to the gut at the end of Unsettled, a queer nightmare written and directed by Bella Thorne and based on the experiences of producer and star Jason Parks. Parks plays Jay, a young man whose night at a gay club in the Bible Belt of Oklahoma ends with him waking up bound in a bathtub, having been drugged and abducted by two men.
Thorne’s direction carefully balances frantic moments with quiet, breathless terror, and it will be interesting to see what she does with the material when she adapts it into her feature directorial debut, Color Your Hurt. Parks has said in interviews that making and watching the short was a “cathartic” experience, which is good to hear because the events depicted in it are truly horrifying. But the scariest part is the apathy of law enforcement and onlookers — and the haunting unspoken question of what might have happened to Jay/Parks if he didn’t break free.
Dream Factory (dir. Alex Matraxia)
The role of cruising in the gay community has faded over time as unambiguous queer bars and hook-up apps have proliferated. Writer-director Alex Matraxia’s experimental short film Dream Factory stirs the ghosts of this era, inviting viewers into a location that has long played an important role in the queer experience, both as a site to cruise in the relative obscurity of darkness and as a place to feel seen: the cinema.
Clocking in at around six minutes, Matraxia’s dialogue-free short doesn’t follow a conventional narrative, instead invoking a pervasive air of eroticism tinged with danger. Two men meet beneath the flickering light of the projector, while a cowboy and gangster, two archetypes of masculinity, fill the screen and a mysterious blonde figure roams the hall. The incessant hum of the projector underscores all as lips linger over ears and bodies stalk and crash.
Rat! (dir. Neal Suresh Mulani)
In addition to handling writing and directing duties, Neal Mulani stars in Rat!, a comedic horror short about the perils of provoking stan Twitter. Mulani plays Navin, an entertainment journalist who goes viral for posting a video criticizing a major pop star, Wally Max (Jacob Berger), for supposed queerbaiting. His editor may love it, but the star’s fans do not, leading some to hunt him down.
Rat! is especially interesting in its exploration of the gray areas of internet culture. Max’s fans are clearly in the wrong for taking fandom too far, but Navin isn’t entirely in the right, either. Mulani shows him looking up what others are saying about Max before composing his video, blatantly looking for an angle rather than expressing his true thoughts. And while there’s an important conversation to be had about the trend of real queer people (especially queer people of color) being shouted down by fans in these conversations, so is there a danger of making assumptions about the sexuality and gender identity of others.
Stink (dir. Matias Breuer)
There’s something so uncomfortable about the idea of being watched without your knowledge. Writer Drew Beckman and director Matias Breuer take voyeurism to a violating new level with Stink, an unsettling tale of unseen obsession.
The short opens on the beach, where a stalker (Beckman) watches the handsome Levi (Karan Menon) sunbathe. An eerie voiceover gives us a glimpse into the true depths of the stalker’s obsession as he draws closer to Levi, crossing more and more boundaries, dipping his fingers in a glob of saliva left behind in the sand and raising them to his lips. Things only escalate from there as the stalker enters Levi’s apartment while he’s in the shower, transfixed by his smell, desperate to taste. His thirst satiated for now, he moves on to his next obsession, but we’re left with the disquieting question of whether he’ll take things even further next time.
Girls (dir. Julien Hosmalin)
The soft, shy queer female gaze is juxtaposed with a leering, violent male one in Girls, directed by Julien Hosmalin, who co-wrote the script with Olivier Torres. This stylish French horror short centers around lounge singer Ally (Carmen Kassovitz), who runs away with Romane (Natacha Krief) on her motorbike, looking for a little peace. But when the bike breaks down, their getaway devolves into a nightmare as Ally is kidnapped by a sex trafficking ring and put up for auction.
With a truly satisfying climax, Girls is proof that the revenge subgenre needs more sapphic entries. If you’ve ever wanted to see a motorbike used as a weapon, this is the short for you.
We hope this recap convinces you to check out the ‘Slayed’ shorts block at Brooklyn Horror Film Festival 2025. Until then, keep an eye out for these shorts, and be sure to support the filmmakers behind them.