User blog comment:ChristianWallis/Is the Written Word Scary?/@comment-4715955-20160827130902

My only idea is that the PG-13 horror film is a fucking joke, and I hate jumpscares with a passion, almost as much as I hate people who think startled = scary (mostly 9-year-olds, or people with the brains of 9-year-olds).

The stupidity of the jumpscare thing was brilliantly proven by the indie game Spooky's House of Jumpscares. All of the jumpscares in that game are adorable, harmless cardboard cut-outs. There is nothing scary about them at all, but the player is tensed up because they know one might pop up randomly and startle them, so they're on edge. They're not on edge because of any sense of danger or atmosphere, they're on edge because they know a cheap scare is coming. Maybe they enjoy that sensation, but it isn't fucking scary. As you progress, you start to encounter stuff that's genuinely spooky or downright terrifying in an SCP sorta way, which rely on disturbing imagery and sound and a sense of actual danger to scare the player.