How staircases became one of horror’s most… | Little White Lies

How stair­cas­es became one of horror’s most fright­en­ing fixtures

20 Oct 2018

Words by Emma Fraser

Man in a dark suit sitting on a staircase, looking pensive.
Man in a dark suit sitting on a staircase, looking pensive.
From Psy­cho to Netflix’s The Haunt­ing of Hill House, stairs have long played a key role in the genre.

In hor­ror, run­ning up a stair­case is a one-way tick­et to near-cer­tain doom. Putting the flight in flight-or-fight response, lit­er­al­ly. In Wes Craven’s Scream, Sid­ney Prescott (Neve Camp­bell) dis­miss­es hor­ror movies because, They’re all the same. Some stu­pid killer stalk­ing some big-breast­ed girl who can’t act who is always run­ning up the stairs when she should be run­ning out the front door.” This cri­tique quick­ly becomes Sidney’s real­i­ty when she has to take the stairs in order to escape the killer – not once, but twice – in the first instal­ment of the meta-hor­ror franchise.

In new Net­flix series The Haunt­ing of Hill House, loose­ly based on the Shirley Jack­son nov­el of the same name, cre­ator Mike Flana­gan utilis­es a num­ber of hor­ror con­ven­tions for max­i­mum scare val­ue. As with the char­ac­ters in Scream, we know the tech­niques to look out for – some­thing will appear in the neg­a­tive space, tim­ing is impor­tant when deliv­er­ing a jump scare, and noth­ing good can come from a set of stairs.

Set over two time­lines, the show fol­lows the Crain fam­i­ly from the fate­ful sum­mer they spent in Hill House through to the present day. The Haunt­ing of Hill House deliv­ers a num­ber of creepy moments per episode, some as sim­ple as a rat­tling door­knob or blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appari­tions hid­ing in the shad­ows. Flana­gan uses the sprawl­ing Hill House loca­tion to high­light dan­ger lurk­ing in every as-yet undis­cov­ered cor­ner. A grand stair­case the entrance­way and a two-storey spi­ral stair­case in the library are the con­nec­tive tis­sue of this home.

A house is like a person’s body. The walls are like bones, the pipes are the veins,” explains trou­bled matri­arch Olivia (Car­la Gug­i­no) to daugh­ter Shirley (Lulu Wil­son). This metaphor is used through­out The Haunt­ing of Hill House with the stairs act­ing as the throat – an entrance and an exit which threat­ens to swal­low these char­ac­ters whole or expel them.

Unsur­pris­ing­ly for a hor­ror, many of the scenes take place at night, yet the spi­ral stair­case makes its first appear­ance dur­ing day­time hours in the first episode. It is back­lit by stun­ning stained glass win­dows, but there is still a sense of fore­bod­ing as Shirley takes for­ev­er to ascend all the way to the top. Ropes hang off the side, seem­ing­ly part of the con­struc­tion that is tak­ing place with­in these walls. Adding to the sense of fore­bod­ing is its prox­im­i­ty to the mys­te­ri­ous Red Room, which can­not be unlocked.

A storm rages in episode six, with most of the action tak­ing place at the foot of the grand stair­case, mir­ror­ing the per­ilous weath­er con­di­tions in the 1946 psy­cho­log­i­cal hor­ror The Spi­ral Stair­case. Using the killer’s POV to height­en the audience’s sense of fear, the film bears the hall­marks of both the slash­er sub-genre and the Final Girl trope, long before Jamie Lee Cur­tis wore that crown. Set in 1906, it sees a ser­i­al killer who is big into eugen­ics tar­get dis­abled women in a small Ver­mont town. The spi­ral stair­case is the cen­tre­piece of the cli­mac­tic scene as the killer chas­es his would-be vic­tim up it.

Stair­cas­es are often used in hor­ror to ramp up the ten­sion, as well as to offer a sem­blance of hope, how­ev­er mis­guid­ed. Trip­ping up is, of course, a poten­tial per­il; falling down anoth­er. Some­thing might even be unleashed, as in the case of 1982’s Pol­ter­geist. And the scut­tling spi­der walk’ from 1973’s The Exor­cist is among the film’s most endur­ing images, even though it didn’t make the orig­i­nal the­atri­cal cut – per­formed by a con­tor­tion­ist, it is the only time Regan (Lin­da Blair) leaves the con­fines of her bedroom.

But stairs can also help to keep things out as much as they threat­en to imprison. Toward the end of 1980’s The Shin­ing as Jack (Jack Nichol­son) los­es con­trol, his wife Wendy (Shel­ley Duvall) keeps him at bay with a base­ball bat as she slow­ly backs up the Overlook’s grand stair­case. Some­times going up is bet­ter than going down.

Alfred Hitch­cock utilised this every­day inte­ri­or struc­ture in a num­ber of ways while exper­i­ment­ing with dif­fer­ent cam­era move­ment. Scottie’s (James Stew­art) bell tow­er ascent in 1958’s Ver­ti­go uses an inno­v­a­tive and dizzy­ing dol­ly zoom tech­nique. Over­head shots have proven pop­u­lar over the years, fea­tur­ing mem­o­rably in Ver­ti­go and Hitchcock’s 1960 Psy­cho and now in The Haunt­ing of Hill House. The birds-eye per­spec­tive is par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­ori­en­tat­ing where a spi­ral stair­case is con­cerned, as it becomes hard to dis­tin­guish between the top and bot­tom – an illu­sion with no begin­ning or end.

In Psy­cho, the cam­era stays with Mil­ton Abor­gast (Mar­tin Bal­sam) as he slow­ly walks up the stairs; instead of run­ning away from dan­ger, he unknow­ing­ly walks toward it. Hitch­cock switch­es to an over­head shot as Milton’s attack­er stabs him, the cam­era stay­ing on him as he tum­bles back­wards, cap­tur­ing the hor­ror that’s etched on his face in unnerv­ing close-up.

Lau­rie Strode (Jamie Lee Cur­tis) is sim­i­lar­ly attacked at the top of the stairs in John Carpenter’s orig­i­nal Hal­loween from 1978, though unlike Abor­gast only her shirt is torn. Lau­rie is pro­pelled over the ban­nis­ter, which is both a bless­ing and a curse – it is a quick way to escape, but it does leave her injured. The use of a stair­case in this scene is a direct nod to both Psy­cho and The Exorcist.

As exec­u­tive pro­duc­er Irwin Yablans explains in the sec­ond episode of The Ringer’s Hal­loween Unmasked pod­cast, one of his stip­u­la­tions was for Car­pen­ter to include a set of stairs because Psy­cho and The Exor­cist, both had impor­tant stair­cas­es. I said [to John], Put a stair­case in this movie. Stair­cas­es are scary because you don’t know what’s at the end of the stair­case.’” (David Gor­don Green’s recent Hal­loween sequel takes this pro­duc­tion design cue a step fur­ther.) Forty years lat­er, audi­ences knows exact­ly what is lies at the end of the stair­case – and it is just as ter­ri­fy­ing as ever.

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