Enjoying horror discussion

I have watched the Buffy episode “The Killer Inside Me”. All episodes of this series is similar as they the main topic is fight of good against the evil. The example of a non-diagetic sound was in the scene when Giles is sitting in the desert, watching the fire and we hear the suspense music because his friends have previously stated the he might be an evil entity that “took” his appearance. There are girls that he could endanger and that is why such music is used. It does contribute to the aesthetic of horror for the video, because it engages the audience in thinking whether there is real danger or not. Suspense is the main motive for including such music.

The example of diagetic sound is in the scene when we hear a door squeaking in the basement and Buffy asks Spike if he thinks that someone survived. We know that there is someone present because the sound comes from an object in the story. Suddenly several vampire-like demonic creatures appear and they fight them. The sound here also contributed to the aesthetic of horror for the video, because it prepared the audience for the fight between good and evil. This sound enhanced the “reality” of the whole scene.

The example of an interesting mise-en-scene is when Buffy and Spike are in a deserted land with nothing but bushes, sand, dirt and rocks around. It is happening during night time so that we can feel fear by looking at them opening some kind of a hole and entering a basement-like space where everything is dark and there are dead bodies of some creatures all around the place. It happens to be a military base. This mise-en-scene did contribute to the aesthetic of horror for the video because the sight is dreadful and no one would want to be there helpless in the night. Even Buffy, who is a vampire slayer says that she doesn’t want to stay for a long time in that place.

All of these effects contribute to the aesthetic of horror because “the horror story is driven explicitly by curiosity” (Carroll 279).[1]