Setting Up a Jump Scare: THE HAUNTING OF BLY MANOR
A lot happens — involving different people, during day versus night, years apart — in this scene from The Haunting of Bly Manor.
Like most of the best-remembered scares, this plays with the story’s overall location, character, and history. It gets to one of the most basic questions of horror; when we know or can feel a jump scare coming, why do we still startle?
Psychology and identification with character are part of the answer, though it’s more than merely a desire to be scared or feeling sympathy with Dani: the scare releases tension long-culminated by prior story and shots.
In short: Context and Character, as well as Construction, work to make the Jump.
Context
It’s key to the payoff that we’re introduced to the garden as a beautiful place with a bunch of stone bodies — what could be scarier than seeing a pretty tree or statue, then it moving at you!?
The crossfade (0:16-0:26) shows us we’re in the same place, but a different time; the garden has shifted day to night, years later. The entire history of Bly Manor come into play in two scenes, crossfaded to make them feel like one.
By opening with the deceased Rebecca Jessel, the scene puts us in fear for Dani, who has taken Rebecca’s literal positions as governess in the garden.
The crossfade’s timing with the voiceover combines Bly Manor’s history with the personal fates of the two governesses. As night falls — the time loved by those whose deeds are evil — the Storyteller’s somber reveal that Miss Jessel never left the grounds directly suggests Dani is facing the same fate.
Once we’re in Dani’s timeline, the scene works to put us inside her experience.
Character
We understand and sympathise with a character through an actor’s dialogue, body language, and facial expression. Empathy takes it to the next level, where whether we see them or not, we identify with them: empathy thus strengthens a jump scare. These emotions can be evoked through performance, but can also be augmented with filming techniques which put us in a character’s point of view.
It can be a difficult tightrope to make a disorienting and scary scene which is also consistent and clear and doesn’t ‘cheat’ by giving us much less information than the character. Some directors prefer shakycam for this, others will flip camera direction whether it’s internally sensical or not just to get ‘the feel’ which works best when used sparingly.
This scene uses movement and cuts. Camera direction is consistent with in-world action, but also intentionally somewhat disorienting because Dani is nervous, and we’re in her shoes.
Watch, then I’ll explain what I mean . . .
The camera moves L-R, then settles into a medium as the beam of light which swept across the camera lens / our eyes also moves L-R, then without warning we’re in Dani’s point of view with the frame moving L-R as we see what she sees.
(Remember this moment, we’ll talk about it further in the Edit section below.)
The moves make technical sense within the scene; the camera continues its movement from the crossfade, we can see Dani moving her eyes along with the light beam, then we’re in her POV where the L-R movement is consistent with the direction we just saw her eyes going.
Now story and setting are established and we’re locked into the character’s scenario, how does everything come together to make us jump?
Construction
Construction includes camera movement and acting as above, as well as framing and blocking, lighting and colour, editing techniques, sound mix, etc.
Note, this is not even my favourite Victoria Pedretti jump scare in the Flaniverse; I won’t post bc it involves spoilers, but The Haunting of Hill House, IYKYK. We’ve talked before about how a different Mike Flanagan show uses an edit to build tension. These three scenes — THOHH scare, TFOTHOU somambulance sequence, this scene — all use different constructions: different camera movement, edit, framing, etc. . . . but we still recognise the ‘vibe’ of what’s coming because many jump scares use several of a handful of tricks and techniques. Using certain film grammar in your construction means the audience will (consciously or not) anticipate something migh be about to terrify them, and that’s where that delicious tension is derived!
One thing is sure: few jump scares are effective if the edit and audio are poor. You don’t want the audience bored or merely bemused, so let’s talk sound and edit.
Sound / Mix
Not for nothing do we have the term ‘scream queen’! The ability to scream without looking ridiculous is deceptively difficult, let alone consistently calibrate and exude the proper level of terror. Often underestimated is the sound recordist’s job; if the scream peaks on the equipment, actors have to re-record; sometimes in a sound booth which really sucks the reality, room tone, and romance out of the whole thing!
Then in post a sound designer can augment the acting (eg. raising Dani’s breathing in the mix), add diegetic sounds to help keep us in her perspective (eg. a dog barking, gunshots), add more fanciful sounds (eg. the sound of a heartbeat), and wield that favourite tool of so many jump scares; music!
Here we get the sound of footsteps — which we first presume are Dani’s, but could also be Jamie’s — breathing, and two screams.
Sound mix and edit — how loud all those elements are and where they’re placed — put a last polish on the alchemy.
Edit
Remember the camera-movement-putting-us-in-Dani’s-shoes clip above? It sets us up for the repeated, much quicker, cuts a few moments later:
Because the preceding cuts taught us what to expect — camera movement, movement in frame, Dani’s POV shot moving the other way — we know when the cut comes we’re seeing what she sees: in this case a startled person with a gun.
Then bang bang bang! quick cuts and lens flares between a startled Jamie and equally scared Dani, both of whom we see in full fight-or-flight as it cuts between them seeing each other, startling, then realising what has happened. It’s so quick it may take until the second shot back on Jamie for us to realise who it is, which again mimics Dani’s experience.
A quick note for preproduction: if you know a jump scare will quick-cut between two characters, get wardrobe and props across it early. Dani and Jaime are distinguished in most ways — hair colour and style, blue jean jacket versus brown leather one, holding a flashlight in one hand versus rifle in two — so even before we know who’s startled Dani, it’s clear whether we’re looking at Dani versus what she’s seeing.
Moving On
Once the jump scare is over and our heart rates have started to return to baseline, the POV and camera movements have served their purpose. We leave Dani’s POV and go back to being an objective observer, equidistant from both Dani and Jamie.
The framing shows Dani and Jamie on opposite sides of their own frame, but they gradually come closer until they’re framed together in the scene moving forward.
Takeaways
Not every jump scare needs so elaborate of a leadup, but then if all your jumps are cheap and easy they will all start to lose impact! Mix it up, let some of your scares be layered with meaning, place, character, and edit. It’s worth it to patiently build up to a jump scare like this scene does, using other scenes to set the stage, crossfading to insinuate bad things are coming, establishing a character’s POV to give us more empathy and thus more terror, etc.
Even if in the end the jump-scare-in-the-dark is not a demon or a bad guy, but a startled gardener who has a gun and the hots for you.