Analysis...Wait Until Dark

Last night I went to Kimball Tower, where they were showing Wait Until Dark. My friends and I have been looking forward to this movie since last year, when we saw it in the same place. This time was very similar to the last: we all came out totally FREAKED OUT. I truly believe that this movie is tons scarier than any other movie I have ever seen. Scarier than The Ring, Psycho, Final Destination, Sixth Sense, etc. How does Alfred Hitchcock do it?

I think one of the major factors in the "scary scale" is the suspense. In many modern horror movies, everything moves so fast that you don't have time to worry, or to think about it. Wait Until Dark moves much slower, but sets things up in such a way that you almost eat yourself from the inside worrying and wondering whether what you expect will happen actually does. Because many times the things we think will happen are scarier than the things that actually do, one often scares one's self more than the movie does.

Wait Until Dark contains my all-time favorite moment of film history. Our heroine has just conquered over and killed the villain with a knife. She tries the door, but it's chained closed. She goes back down the stairs, and as she walks past the dark hall, the supposed dead man leaps out at her, with the knife in his hand rather than his stomach. To me, the way he jumps is the most frightening part. He is merely a silhouette, but you can see his pain, and determination to kill her. There is no suspenseful music, no suggestive movement of the camera, or anything else to even make you think what's coming. Whenever we go to see that movie, at that moment, the whole theater (me, grown men, teenage boys, everyone) screams in terror. This one moment defines the movie, and stays engraved in your mind the whole year until you see it again.

That one moment could not stand on its own, however. The most important thing in making the movie bloodcurdling is the fact that the heroine is blind. The men do everything they can to fool her, but she notices things that people who could see would not be able to. But one can only imagine the absolute terror she would be going through to have people coming into her house that want only to kill her. When her phone line gets cut, you can almost feel the way her stomach would have dropped. To feel so alone, in a world where you can't see what is happening would throw me into shock. Everyone she can trust is gone, or has been killed. Some who she thought she could trust she finds out she can't. It truly is a frightening situation.

Her husband is a total jerk. She should've ended up with Mike somehow. Jerk.

All of these factors make us freak out no matter how many times we see the movie. Alfred Hitchcock really made a masterpiece out of Wait Until Dark. Now I just have to wonder why I go back, year after year, to be frightened out of my mind.