The Red Balloon Analysis

Of the four films screened, while none were especially frightening the closest to this standard of scary is The Red Balloon as its combination of common human fears jump scares and mystery gave it the strongest appeal to the horror pathos. You could see in the classroom how many fears were used to get the greatest audience response from escaped mental patients to being in a house by yourself with something sinister lurking around. Other such fears were demon children and feeling you are being hunted as demonstrated through the babysitter’s dreams and response to seeing Alistor. The musical score was used to reinforce the common fears through the use of minor chords and high notes and unnatural sounds accompanying strong sound cues to elicit an audience response for the entire duration of the film purely on music before the visual elements even come into play.
The appeals to fear through music and theme were more subtle than a jump scare and would not get a response out of some audience members so the element of surprise and its effect were used to make the less fear still jump and have some level of fear through a quickly cut jumpscare in combination with a cacophonous musical cue together making quite the startling duo to get a response even a small one out of every single member of the