Films Where Horror is Heard But Not Seen

Sometimes you just want to see the monster. Imagine King Kong with no actual Kong sighting, just the suggestion that a giant ape was causing chaos and destruction, a shadow sweeping past the top of the Empire State building, an angry roar from a creature just off-camera. No thanks. Show us the ape!

But there are times when not seeing is believing. Those horror films where nearly everything is implied, through fleeting glances, the reactions of protagonists or the use of sound, are often the most terrifying because our imagination is left to do the work.

One of the greatest masterpieces of implied horror has to be The Haunting (1963). This horror gem is also quite possibly the greatest haunted house film ever made, offering genuine ‘things that go bump in the night’ chills, and none of the campery of The House on Haunted Hill (not that we’re cussing camp, imagine a world where Vincent Price had never lived!).

But The Haunting doesn’t play for laughs. It takes itself very seriously, something that can be dangerous for a horror film – if you go for deadly serious and don’t deliver, those laughs will come anyway. But The Haunting does deliver. A lot of this success can be attributed to the performance of Julie Harris, as the shy and retiring psychically gifted, Eleanor Lance. Her tortured inner monologue sets the tone for the claustrophobic atmosphere of the movie.

Director Robert Wise’s decision to film in black and white also adds to the atmospheric depth of the movie, as does his artful direction in general – Harris and Claire Bloom’s terrified faces as they huddle on a bed, clinging to each other as an unseen presence bangs on the walls and door of the room are horror cinema gold. He was nominated for a Golden Globe for his work on The Haunting.

The screenplay, by Nelson Gidding, can also take a huge amount of credit. When Theadora (Bloom) says to Harris’s Eleanor: “Haven’t you noticed how nothing in this house seems to move until you look away and then you just catch something out the corner of your eye,” it’s positively shiver-inducing, and a summary of the power of the movie itself.

In Rosemary’s Baby (1968) There’s plenty of creepy goings-on, but the baby itself remains unseen. Director of photography, William Fraker, apparently questioned director Roman Polanski on the point. “You mean we’ve got a picture that’s two hours long, it’s called Rosemary’s Baby and you never see the baby?” he demanded. “Exactly,” replied Polanski (Quoted in the book Reel Terror by David Konow.

The nearest the film comes to showing a monster is during Rosemary’s drug-induced dream, when we glimpse the hands and face of the Devil, but the reveal is so immersed in the surreal and disjointed nature of a dream, that you’re never quite sure if you’ve seen a monster or just Rosemary’s interpretation of what is being done to her.

Se7en (1995) is slightly different from some of my other choices in that you do see plenty that is horrifying. But what is unusual, and sometimes forgotten because the impact of the scenes is so great, is that we only see the aftermath of horrific acts, not the acts themselves. Also, we really didn’t need to see what was in that box to be horrified.

In Cat People (1942) King of implied horror, Jacques Tourneur uses shadows and sound to stunning effect. The 1982 remake starring Nastassja Kinski and Malcolm McDowell, left very little to the imagination — although to be fair, it still packed a punch, or a scratch. But the eerie play with light and dark in the 1942 original somehow manages to leave you wanting more, while at the same time feeling satisfied.