The best episode of the entire original Twilight Zone series, in my mind, is "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet". It stars William Shatner playing a man who recently had a mental breakdown on a different flight and is struggling to stay on a flight with his wife and combating his anxiety that he feels while on the plane. Everything seems to be okay as he seems relaxed, he's making it through the flight okay until he eventually looks outside his window where he has a view of the entire wing of the plane. Out of the darkness in the stormy night comes this mysterious creature that curiously wonders around the wing until the creature spots William Shatner's character watching him as he walks around on the wing. After a little bit the monster begins to mess around with the plane's engine on the wing of the plane and William Shatner's character is helpless as he can only watch the monster get closer and closer to sabotaging the engine and struggle as he tries to convince everyone that there is a monster on the plane and is trying to sabotage the engine. The monster itself knows of William Shatner and his attempts to warn his wife and the crew of the flight but it constantly taunts Shatner, avoiding being seen by his wife and the crew of the flight. Shatner knows he has to do something or the entire flight is going to die from the efforts of the mysterious monster.
Why is this scary?
First off, the mystery of the monster. The show does not take time to give us a lore dump as to what this monster is, where it comes from or why it is doing what it's doing. Instead it simply shows up and makes it's intentions known through its actions and what I think the mystery does for the audience is it lets us create our own stories in our mind as to what this monster is and why it's trying to sabotage the plane. One could think that possibly, in this story and this world this monster has previously sabotaged other flights and has caused the deaths of many other flight passengers. You and I could watch this episode at the same time but both of us could develop our own reasons as to why this monster is horrifying in it's own rights and we can create our own reasons as to why the idea of a monster like this is scary and we come out appreciating the episode for either the same or different reasons because we were allowed to imagine all sorts of possibilities as to what the monster is and why it is deciding to sabotage the plane.
Second, the tension. Imagine knowing of a threat that will cause a lot of harm to a lot of people and despite your best efforts to try to warn them about it, no one believed you. That is something that William Shatner's character goes through and it's almost hard to watch him struggle not only to convince himself that the monster on the wing of the plane is not real but also trying to convince his wife and the flight attendants of the monster sabotaging the engine. We as the audience have to watch him struggle so much with trying to come to terms that he is seeing a real monster sabotage the plane and warn anyone of the threat to the flight.
Third, balancing showing and telling. There isn't a lot of dialogue in this particular episode of the Twilight Zone and a lot of the tension and fear generated in this episode is done by watching the monster play with the engine but also see William Shatner stare out of the plane window in utter shock and anxiety as he is helpless to warn the attendants and his wife. You have no idea how the story will end and you almost are afraid that the monster will win at the end of the episode because all seems hopeless for William Shatner to warn the attendants and his wife of the monster trying to take down the plane.
Now the problem I find with most modern horror films is that instead of building genuine tension, creating a genuine sense of unrest and establishing a haunting atmosphere, instead they rely on cheap jump scare tricks to substitute for genuine horror and tension. Some recent horror films if you notice do not scare you by building tension but instead rely on jump scaring the audience with the same tactics you see in most other horror films today. The camera zooms in on the main character observing an object or walking into a room, the music cuts off and suddenly it is dead quiet, after about half a minute or a whole minute the jump scare happens and instead of it being the monster or the ghost it's the main character's friend or parent and their intention was either A. Check up on them or B. Just to be silly.It's not just one horror movie that does this it's a majority of the modern horror films that fail to bring about genuine tension when all they do is lure you in with a false pay off.
If the audience picks up on the sense that the characters are in no real danger at all or the "jump scare" in question has no real threat behind it then I don't think we're really watching a horror movie so much as we're watching a ghost/ creature feature without a soul.
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