RGV on what makes a good horror movie

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Ram Gopal Varma is an acclaimed film director, screenwriter and producer. He has made many critically acclaimed as well as commercially successful films both in Telugu and Hindi.

In an exclusive chat with CNN-IBN Varma explains what makes a good horror movie.

Childhood

I think I love to pretty much scare people ever since I was a kid. May be just creeping upto them and screaming. There was a mask I has that some one had brought me from the US. I think it was pretty much there so when I became a director, it naturally came into my movie making also.

Impact of first horror movie

I think the very first film that had an impact on me was Ramsay brothers Do Gaz Zameen Ke Neeche. That really scared me when I was a kid. I remember there was a shortcut to my home but there was graveyard next to the shortcut. So I took a very long route and walked three kilometres to avoid the graveyard.

Impressed by The Exorcist

But I think technically, cinematically speaking when I grew up I saw The Exorcist... that was in two phases. When the first time I saw it I went 80 kilometres from one town to another town because that was the only place where it was played and it hit me so bad that I was wearing a cap and I forgot the cap in the theatre. But I was too scared to go in. For a week I was just having the image of Linda Blair. Everywhere I saw... even my cousin sister looked like she was possessed. I used to look for signal as to what is making the people possessed.

But years later when I saw it in a more technical aspect that's when I realised not the head turning scenes or all those gore effects in The Exorcist. It's more in the conflict and the fact that the mother cannot run away from her daughter. If you see a ghost you run away. But if it is a daughter who is possessed by ghost you can't. So that conflict is what made it unique and far bigger than anything you have ever seen. Then again the performances and the extreme realism created by William Friedken. I think that's what attracts me.

RGV's four tools to scare you

Element one is the believability of the character setting. Who the characters are and where they are. That is breaking away from the cliché of a graveyard or a haunted house on a hill, where nobody would go. To bring it where you live is what Bhoot did.

Element two

So the characters and the setting then camera angles which would almost create the feeling where you don't get to see your own house from that angle or that composition or camera movement. You are giving a view point which is not really something which you would see inspite of living there.

Element three

Then the background score but the background score like is very tricky to use. Not even I have perfected it. When the audience want to be scared the background score forcing to scare them might have a reverse effect like getting them irritated. It may have the effect of a laugh track in a serial where you don't find it funny when every one is laughing. You get irritated.

Element four

More than anything else I think it is the sound design which makes a horror film. In a heightened state of fear everything gets little exaggerated. When you are alone at home you just feel the fans making just a little bit more noise than normally what it does. Or a paper just flies with the wind and it makes the wrapping. You never hear a paper's sound before.

I think because the sound makes your imagination go. Like if you hear the sound of a ghungroo in your backyard... that sound can take you imagination off. But if you actually see the person, it could be a ghost, it could be horrifying looking that would create a response, a visual. But as long as the visual is not clear I think it is the sound which makes your imagination and the fear will be generated within you rather than coming from an outside source.

I would think the sound is probably the most important thing in a horror film.

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