ABSTRACT
Taken from the movies Halloween, Scream and Alien: Resurrection these scenes exemplify an aesthetic strategy I call ‘cinematic terror,’ a frightening subcategory of suspense. In terms of narrative content the paradigm case of terror involves a vulnerable, extremely frightened character escaping from a threatening monster or killer gradually coming closer. Call this the chase-and-escape-scenario. Terror derives from the quick and loud perceptible temporal approach of a horrifying threat. Even if the outcome of the scene is as yet uncertain, a negative ending seems highly probable since the source of the danger draws near perceptibly and is therefore a known quantity to us, the viewers. While in chase-and-escape scenes the character is informed about the advancing threat, this is not always the case-think of an unknowing character rushing toward an abyss. The crucial prerequisite of terror is the fact that we know the nature of the threat, since for us it is by defi nition always perceptibly coming closer-“not yet there, but already present,” in the words of Béla Balázs.3
