There are creatures of the night, serial killers, killer animals, space creatures, boogey men, babadooks, bleeders, slashers, and screamers.
Trailers know how to play into your emotions, banging out beads of sweat like a coal miner digging for that elusive blood diamond. These are the things that give you nightmares!Īnd sometimes, a trailer can bring you to the edge of your seat with complete silence, as is the case with the first Alien movie. It's like being thrown in a pitch black room without a flashlight before hearing someone scream, 'Run!' These are the monsters that lurk in your closet at night. These collections of horrifying images were made even more terrifying by a lack of structure and narrative.
They were truly terrifying pieces of blood-soaked cinema cobbled together by some maniac in a studio dungeon somewhere. In the 70s and 80s, trailers weren't as slick as they are today. Most of the best scary trailers were made way back in the day, as you can see by our list. That first introduction is possibly what still makes them scary to this day. Before you really got to become intimate with Freddy, Jason and Michael, these are all probably creeping shadows you first witness in a sneak peek not meant for your eyes. And it still worked, because the short spools of film still had all of their scary parts!ĭo you remember any horror movie trailers that scared or scarred you as a kid? Chances are, a movie trailer first introduced you to some of Hollywood's scariest boogie man. Sometimes, the trailer was the only part of any given horror movie you were allowed to see. Think back to when you were a small child. Or, maybe you are new to these films and want to know what all the hype is before you spend your precious time watching them. They were the ones that made you fall in love with this crazy, fun, quixotic genre called horror films. They were the ones that had something about them that made you feel like you were going to be scared like never before. They were the ones you saw in a theater or rewatched on DVD because you liked them so much. Then, once you have that, if your film can also be interesting, unique or feature a surprise that promises to be one of those two, you just might have a film that will make viewers part with their dollars or hit BUY or RENT on their On Demand remotes.Īnd what better way to both display this and continue to celebrate Halloween than give you a list of the "13 Scariest Horror Movie Trailers Ever Made"? We know you remember them. So, is that all you need to have? Will people flock to your movie over that of one with a name actor if you present them with the requisite elements? No! This is the film business, right? The elements need to be put together in a way that is tantalizing to the viewer. However, that is where the horror genre is able to exploit these structural elements to their fullest potential. At their core, a horror film needs to have thrills, chills, girls, guys and gore. In fact, 2-3 minutes might be too LONG for sneak peeks at these films. How so, you may wonder? Well, horror movies need only have a few elements to make them workable. In fact, the time constraints and story constructs of the trailer seem perfectly suited to this genre. And, when dealing with genres, horror movies, aside from science fiction, seem to have all the others licked. Yes, that 2-3 minute snapshot of a film is the thing that draws us in. What makes us want to see any movie? Is it really the actors anymore? If that's the case, why do big name actors have so many movies that are losing money at the box office? What makes people want to go a see a movie is quite simply the trailer.