What makes good suspense?

[MystiCarly]

Suspenseful movies facinate me. Simply because try as I might it is very difficult for me to write suspense. Does anyone have any screenplay recommendations where suspense was written really well? Maybe some reading will help me.

[Steve]

Look at Hitch@#%$.

Suspense is often built on dramatic irony -- the audience knowing something that the characters don't.

[ksk2]

Well, there are no "pleasant" movies that are truly (IMO) suspenseful, so bear in mind that some of my suggestions will be "unpleasant" or downright nasty-ass. Or viewed as such by dint of their presumed genre. But here we go. And the good ones get a smile rating...

The Birds :)

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? :) :)

Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte...

"M" :) :) :) :)

Dial "M" For Murder :) :)

Rear Window :) :)

Rope :) :) :)

Angel Heart :)

American Perfekt :)

Night of the Living Dead (has less to do w/"zombies" than it does with the psychological effects of "cabin-fever") :) :) :)

Seconds (which I always recommend) :) :) :)

And a real Byyyyyoooot: The Hitcher :) :) :)

hopefully helping, kosak

[hang em high]

Kosk, come on now, the HITCHER four smiley faces, how many times does a ex porn star make it big. . . no 'pun' intended.

[ksk2]

Pleeeeease tell me you're not talking about Jennifer-Jason....! She's purity incarnate! ;)

[hang em high]

no, no, kosk, Rutger was a porn star. The 'B' movie assasin was a naked terror in his first stint in films.

[Cornell]

Hey, I want to throw in what I thought was a good suspense movie...

"Don't Talk To Strangers" starring Rebecca DeMorney (I think I spelled her name right) and that "wanna be sexy", silly Italian guy married to whacha-majigger...the movie even had a good ending.

I think really good suspense writing is when the audience is kept guessing through most of the movie, then when they think they've got it figured out, they find out that they're wrong. I believe that a suspense movie has to constantly "move"--get the heart pumping and have constant character interaction to throw you off balance--have you flying by the seat of your pants, so to speak. I really liked Sixth Sense and a lot of my friends thought it was a great suspense movie? I thought it moved way too slow, and I never once wondered what was going on (so, where was the suspense?)...but I liked the surprise ending.

P.S. Thanks for the recommendations on movies, Kosak, I'm going to pick-up a couple of those next visit to the video store.

[ksk2]

And remember to rent A Pure Formality! Despite the subtitles and better plot, it where 6the Sense stole the (blanked-out) from...

WINK!

[Cass Gifford]

Anything that makes the viewer question what they think will happen next.

Cass

[steeves]

yea, questioning what will happen next is a start... but to be suspense i have to be biting my nails and sitting on the edge of the seat, feeling the tension.
that is suspense.

[Tony R]

CLOSETLAND kept my teeth clinched, and my knuckles white. Very odd film that creeps up on you, grabs hold, then shakes you into madness. (well, okay, maybe I exaggerate a little)

ALIEN, the original...

Other films already mentioned...Hitchc0ck...definitely one to study (I loved ROPE)

Having an idea what's going to happen...or knowing what will happen next if the hero/heroine doesn't do something to change the situation...then drawing it out, like stretching a wire to its highest tension...but not too much, or you'll lose the viewer...that's the way to do it.

Suspense, in my opinion, is a far more effective device than surprise. A classic example: Four characters sitting around a table, plotting something for five minutes...BOOM!! A bomb that was planted under the table goes off. Ho-hum. Four characters sitting around a table, plotting something when the audience knows there's a ticking bomb under the table that's going off in five minutes. A little better. Four characters sitting around a table, plotting something, and one of them is a secret traitor, he knows the bomb is under the table and when it will go off, so does the audience. But he will be shot if he leaves the table before they're done, so he's got to find a way to hurry things up, but time's running out, and one of the guys is confused about the plan so he asks for the smart mastermind guy to explain it to him again...now that's good. (IMHO)

...of course suspense and surprise coupled together can, if done with some degree of dexterity, produce near orgasmic (in a strictly movie viewing type of way) results.

[Nemesis Unbound]

I hope all my movies create orgasmic results :b

[wcmartell]

Tony beat me to it! Here's an excerpt from my book:

Suspense is not the same as action, nor is it the same as surprise. Suspense is the ANTICIPATION of action. The longer you draw out the anticipation, the greater the
suspense.

Hitch@#%$ explained; "Two men are having an innocent little chat. Let us suppose that there is a bomb underneath the table between them. Nothing happens, then all of the sudden, BOOM! There is an explosion. The audience is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has been an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence.
"Now let us take a SUSPENSE situation. The bomb is underneath the table, but the audience knows it... Probably because they have seen the villain place it there. The audience is aware that the bomb is going to explode at one O'clock, and there is a clock in the decor. It is a quarter to one. In this situation, the same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating, because the audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: 'There's a bomb beneath you, and it's about to explode!'
"In the first case, we have given the audience fifteen seconds of SURPRISE at the moment of the explosion. In the second case, we have provided them with fifteen MINUTES
of SUSPENSE."

There are over 4,000 words on suspense in my book, too much to cut and paste all of it, so here are the high points (examples made up just for this post):

1) Big Clock/Time Lock: There's a "ticking clock" that goes through the whole script. There's a Cornell Woolrich novel called PHANTOM LADY which opens with a guy being sentenced to the gas chamber for murder - he says he's innocent. Now two of his friends have to find new evidence that he's innocent BEFORE he's executed... it it gets right down to the wire! The DAY of the execution they are still scrambling to find the key piece of evidence.

There's a film from the late 60s called SATAN BUG about germ warfare that STARTS with the germs stolen, hidden in a major city, and set to kill the population at X hour. What city? We nobody knows! So hero races to figure out who stole the germs and who they sold them to and where those people hid them... while the clock is ticking!

2) Scene clock: That bomb under the table. Suspense in a scene. In my book I use that end fight from GOLDFINGER as an example. Bond is handcuffed to a nuclear bomb that is set to go off in X minutes. An armed guard has the handcuff key in his shirt pocket. Oddjob and his razor-hat are another complication. Can Bond solve all of these problems and escape before the nuclear bomb goes off? The armed guard is killed... and falls into a pit... Bond drags the bomb around and tries to reach the shirt pocket (handcuff key), can't! Suspense builds as the time on the bomb timer clicks down.

I also talk about NOT knowing what time it is to create suspense.

3) Suspense cross cutting. Take two things we DON'T want to see come together and put them on a collision course. Simple example is two trains on the same track headed to each other. The closer they get, the greater the suspense. But this could also be your hero searching the killer's hotel room, and the killer stepping into the elevator in the hotel lobby and pressing his floor button. Move back and forth between those two scenes, and you'll have the audience yelling at the hero, "Get out of there! He's coming!"

4) Action cross cutting. Taking two exciting scenes and moving between them. When you get to a "how can the hero get out of this?" situation, go to the parallel scene (happening at the same time) with the sidekick in trouble. When that scene reaches a cliff-hanger, go back and show how the hero gets out his situation... and into a worse situation. You're moving back and forth between cliff hanger scenes - creating suspense.

Does that help?

- Bill
www.scriptsecrets.com (http://www.scriptsecrets.com)

[Tony R]

I've GOT to get your book, Bill. I remembered the Hitchc0ck statement from a lecture...kept it in the old noodle ever since. It's such a brilliant sentiment.

Hey, what about HIGH NOON!!

[ksk2]

The Changeling, w/ George C. Scott...

Great suspense, and a chilling finale...

[Bill Marquardt]

Tony - I was in Hollywood last week and saw a billboard advertising a remake of High Noon (really). I don't know when the release is scheduled. But it's coming. Just you wait. It's coming. ...

[Tony R]

The Changeling - definitely an underappreciated film. Should be on any aspiring thriller or horror writer/director's list of films to see.

on the flip side:

Nick of Time (I think that's right) - an example of how a supposed suspense film, a film designed by its very premise to be suspenseful, could have so little suspense (imo of course). Also a good example of a film that went downhill and stayed there.

[lilybet]

Well, Tony, you created two suspenseful posts last night, indicating "fuzzy" feelings. It didn't sound like it was from the ale. I had the oddest reaction. It concerned me for some reason, I wanted to rush into typing "are you all right?" Then I realized, this is cyber space, you might not even be there, and if you weren't, what the hell was I going to do to help, anyway. Glad you're all right, but it was suspenseful.

Silly-lil

[Tony R]

Oh, man Bill...and my day was going so well, too.

Actually, I had heard about the remake. Why....why...why? Why do they do this? Tell me that it's not Gus Van Sant attemtping another one of his "film making challenges"...to try to determine for himself once and for all if he's really a brilliant director. I actually thought he was (at least proficient)...until...well, we won't talk about it anymore.

[Tony R]

Oh, I was just mentally tired, and the old noodle wasn't working quite right. Of course, I discovered that there's not much difference in my posts between that state and the relatively clear one I'm in right now. I stumble over words (that I love so much) in either one.

BTW, to keep on topic. Lil revealing a truth about herself that I didn't know was a surprise (and an interesting one at that). Waiting for a certain regular to return (or wondering whether she would at all), and imagining what her reaction would be to particular One on One posts...now that was suspense.

;)

[wcmartell]

Actually, I think it's for TNT or TBS and it's not Van Sant. I want to say that Tom Beringer is the star, but I'm not sure.

Not as bad an idea as HIGH NOON 2 with Lee Majors.

- Bill

[MystiCarly]

Thanks all for the great response. I remeber that Hitchc*ck idea about the scene with the bomb from a class..but I had a really crappy instructor and he didn't explain it well. Thanks everyone.

[Falcon]

IMO,and I think it was said already, good suspense is keeping the audience and the characters on the same page..the more the audience know the less suspenseful the movie is..
-Falcon