Trauma

A lot of horror movies rely simply on sudden jolts of sound to make you jump. I recently watched Friday the Thirteenth (2009) and it was literally all it had. Which is fine, no one can deny it gets the job done. The problem with it is that the movies become inseparable and which one is scarier can only be judged really on which made you jump the most.

Burnt Offerings instead creates an atmosphere. It creates it masterfully through character decisions and great use of music. There was a stage early on when I realized nothing eventful had even happened as yet and despite this my heart was pounding. Sure enough a moment later some frightening action took place and I realized for the first time in a long time a horror movie had alerted my sub-conscience and not my mind. These days in horror movies it's far too easy to predict when the event is coming (it's generally when the filmmaker is trying to make you think NOTHING is coming).

Burnt Offerings is more than watchable in this day and age. The lines are nowhere near as cheesy sounding as a lot of other pre-1980 films make them sound today and the acting, whilst not perfect, is anything but bad. The suspense will have your heart pounding and it's all building up to something so terrifying it deserves far more recognition among horror buffs. Not to be missed.