The animal sound effect that elevated ‘The Exorcist’
Some of the scariest things ever put to film all come from the art of suggestion. It might seem easy to throw a creepy-looking image in someone’s face in the hopes that they will jump when they see it, but the real fear that sticks with someone is implied half the time, which leaves it open to the audience to fill in the horrific details in their head half the time. While The Exorcist is known to be much more direct with its scary imagery, it’s as much about what you hear as it is about what you see.
Throughout film history, some of the best scares of all time usually come from the noise that comes with it. The fact that The Shining has a score that is based on most strange sounds already puts it in a world of its own, and while no heads were actually removed from skulls in Hereditary, hearing something like that hit the ground is much more powerful than if you actually saw it happen.
The Exorcist was no different in following in the footsteps of other iconic horror movies. Just from the opening notes of Mike Oldfield’s ‘Tubular Bells’, you already know that something isn’t quite right, including different sound effects that sound like the demon is about to leap through the screen at any moment.
Then again, when you’re making a movie about a possessed girl and a demon that wants to cause mayhem through her, how do you actually make that sound scary? Sure, you can find different ways for the voice-over actors to warp their voices into something different, but there has to be some ex-factor beyond that.
As it turned out, William Friedkin had just the thing…and it had nothing to do with actual voices. When the movie is just getting started, there’s a subtle bit of foreshadowing when you start hearing what sounds like a strange buzzing sound. Don’t worry, your speakers aren’t broken…Friedkin just wanted to give people some anxiety before the real stuff started.
Although most people wouldn’t have a problem being scared by a demon onscreen, Friedkin added bee sound effects that keep the viewer on edge during the slower scenes in the first act. Since most of the film is designed to make you feel like things aren’t safe, just hearing the sound of buzzing while two people are having a regular conversation instinctively makes you want to turn around to make sure nothing’s wrong.
This is a case of the movie speaking to the other side of your brain. Your eyes might be looking at the screen and not see anything that frightening, but your mind is already letting you know that something really isn’t OK…almost like some kind of calm before the storm when things start going haywire halfway through the film.
Compared to the various movies that utilise jump scares like they’re trying to break a world record, this way of doing horror should be used much more. It might take a little bit longer for the scares to come than normal, but when fans finally get to the horrific payoff, it’s going to be that much more unsettling when you’ve had that amount of buildup beforehand.
