What is fear?

In the film Psycho directed by Alfred Hitchcock and The Visit

directed by M. Night Shyamalan fear is all that is present throughout the movie
through the use of effective media tools as well as sinister characters. In Psycho
we meet the antagonist Norman Bates a mentally ill motel owner with mommy
issues and he is presented as a mystery throughout the film with the help of
Hitchcock various lighting techniques and music. In The Visit we are introduced to
Nana and Pop Pop, two escaped asylum patients who choose to be grandparents for
a week after their escape and they are presented as two strange enigmas with the
help of Shyamalans camera angles and sound. Although Norman Bates from
Psycho and Nana and Pop Pop from The Visit are seen as very violent and
mentally ill characters, what makes them very scary villains in the eyes of the
audience is not their willingness to do evil things but their overall presentation of
how unpredictable they are because it is human nature to fear the unknown and
nothing in a movie scares us more when dark lighting, loud suspenseful music, and
scary film shots keeps the audience in the dark with psychotic killers that we dont
understand.
It is obvious that both directors tone in the films were fear however both
films had different ways of conveying the directors message. Hitchcocks villain in
Psycho Norman Bates was depicted as a man who had an unhealthy obsession to
the people around him. It was not only his mother but also other women who he felt
close too; it was how the first victim in the movie died. Hitchcock aimed to present
Norman Bates into the plot of the story through the use of scary lighting techniques.
One example would be in the movie when the female character Marion Crane drove
her car up to Normans estate and the house would always appear to have this dark
atmosphere in low key lighting leaving the entire property in darkness and shadow.
Hitchcock wanted to send his message to the audience in that moment that there
was something or someone nefarious in that house and to the audiences surprise
out came Norman Bates who later murdered Marion.
The director M. Night Shyamalan presented his message in a different way as
oppose to Hitchcocks. Shyamalans antagonists in The Visit Nana and Pop Pop
were depicted as escaped asylum patients who had mental illnesses of wanting to
live other peoples lives and believing to be possessed by demons. Shyamalan
seemed to present this efficiently through the use of incredible camera angles and
sound. An example would be in the movie when Nana, believing to be possessed
and chases the grandchildren under the house, as one of the children named Becca
hides we see an over- the-shoulder shot of Nana approaching from behind slowly
and as she gets closer the music gets louder, once Nana finally catches her however
she returns to normal like it never happened. During this scene Shyamalan wanted
to send his message that something bad was about to happen even though nothing
did but what made it frightening was that with the use of the camera angle the
audience could see the danger but in dramatic irony the character was unaware.

Even though both Alfred Hitchcock and M. Night Shyamalan preferred

different ways to convey their messages, both their films still had similar tones,
plots, and especially characters. Throughout the movie Psycho the villain is
unknown until the end of the film, the audience believed it was Normans mother
who was murdering everyone that came t the motel while instead it as Norman
himself believing he was his mother. During The Visit the audience believes that
Nana and Pop Pop were the main characters grandparents however in a plot twist
we find out that they murdered the real grandparents, escaped from a mental
asylum and killed anyone who came looking for the real grandparents, including the
neighbors. What truly made the villains from both movies so similar was not the fact
that both were vicious and violent, but the fact that they were mentally ill,
unpredictable and they wanted to be someone that they were not.
There were many similarities throughout both incredible movies however one
final similarity that must be noted was also both directors effective use of sound
and music. In Psycho once Marion is murdered in the shower we hear a notorious
thumping soundtrack that remains in the audiences head and in The Visit once
Becca is locked into a dark room with a psychotic women we hear a sinister
soundtrack then once she looks into the mirror the music stops playing and we see
Nanas face. In both those scenarios the directors puts the audience in a state of
fear and anticipation with asynchronous and extraneous sounds that assists in
scaring us because human beings always assume the worst so once that sound
begins playing is when the audience begins to assume the frightening event about
to happen.
Though both movies had very similar villains and plots, their distinctions were
how the directors chose to present their tones. Psycho notoriously presented its
villain and plot with the use of effective low key lighting and extraneous sounds.
The Visit efficiently presented its villains with effective over-the-shoulder shots
and close up camera angles with extraneous sounds as well. Both films were perfect
demonstrations of what horror movies are about because both not only included
menacing villains but also efficiently presented them in a way with the help of
various film techniques that left the audience in the dark and put them in a state of
fear of the unknown scenario and unpredictable person that they were watching.