Killer Bass

How many horror movie cliches can you name? Lets take a few minutes to name a couple...

-The house oddly secluded in the woods

-The dumb girl who gets killed

-The unreliable phone that disconnects at the perfect time

-The dumb girl that trips and in return gets killed

-The dumb girl that is always half-naked

-The group that chooses to run into the forest rather than into the car two feet from them

-The bomb that can be disarmed perfectly with one second left on it's timer

-The yell of "Is anyone there?" in a dark room

-The person who insists on killing the monster instead of packing up and leaving

-The foreshadowing daydream of murder from the main character

-And the group of white people with only one friend who isn't white

Pretty silly right? But, there are other subtler things that go into most modern horror/gore flicks that many of us may not even be consciously aware of. My favorite effect being that of the subwoofer. As seen above in the picture, the subwoofer is the speaker used to produce the bass in home, auto, and theatrical stereo systems. Subs come in a variety of different Hertz depending on what you need, but in most theaters we're talking about 80 Hz or lower as to produce an almost inaudible sound. When used with other sounds of a higher frequency, it's used to balance them out, but when in horror movies, we most commonly see it on it's own and as an effect to instill fear.

When we watch movies that have extremely silent scenes, the subs often kick in a few seconds before anything bad really happens, i.e. the murderer finally making a move. It's extremely prevalent in movies from the Paranormal Activity series. But where does the biology come in? This subconscious association between the sound of deep bass and fear belong to a type of learning called classical conditioning. Classical conditioning (also known as associative learning) was discovered in 1890's by the work of a man named Ivan Pavlov. In summary, Mr. Pavlov studied dogs. Originally studying salivation, he discovered that the dogs would salivate when hearing the sound of his metal instruments, the reason being that after cutting meat with those tools he would feed the dogs for his studies. Because the same sound was heard with the same process, the dogs' minds would associate metal-clinking with the food following after it, much like how we relate sounds from our daily lives to certain processes. I know that I personally associate the sound of keys to my mother, because everyday when she comes home I can hear her keys jingling after she closes the door. Weird example? Yeah... but nonetheless, these effects and associations are made without choice, and the sounds from slasher flicks are no different. Would Paranormal Activity 2 really be as scary if smooth jazz was playing? Or what if it was completely silent? Well I'm leaving this one up to you guys with a challenge. For all my horror movie lovers, I'm asking you to do the following in order and give me a little feedback. This will probably work better with those who haven't seen any of the Paranormal Activity movies, mostly because those movies use heavy bass...

-Watch any of the movies with all sound on, and please, don't be afraid to crank the subs up. That way all of the effects will be a lot more obvious and dramatized.

-During the movie, take note of whenever you hear the woofer kick in. Just jot a note so you know how long into the movie you are. This way we can see the relation between the scenes and sounds.

-When you're done, pop another similar horror movie in later, but turn the woofer down or completely off.

-Decide on whether you found the movie scary without the bass or with it. It may not be the same for everyone, since associative learning isn't really up to us!

I've done this and have completely found that the subwoofer makes it scarier for me. Whenever it's turned on in a theater it almost instantly makes me cover my ears and freak out. I'd love to know your results if you actually do this, you don't have to watch the whole movie if you don't want to, just a clip or two!

~Stephanie