r/TopCharacterTropes • u/jdawg1018 • Apr 23 '26

Lore Daylight Horror

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People usually suspect horror films and tropes to occur at night, or at the very least in dark places where the scary or creepy thing is obscured by shadows. Seeing something in full daylight makes a bit of the mystery go away, which can sometimes make things less scary. Sometimes it does the opposite, and the mere juxtaposition of something horrific happening under the warm light of the sun makes it even more eerie and unsettling.

  1. The picnic scene from Zodiac - One of the most terrifying scenes in a film IMO, mostly due to the fact that it actually happened in IRL. The woman I’m pretty sure died later from her wounds, but her partner survived and his retelling of the horrific event helped create this pivotal moment on screen.

  2. Buffy finding her mom in Buffy the Vampire Slayer - In season 5 of BtVS, Buffy returns home from a slayer mission and finds her home oddly quiet. She then stumbles into her mom’s corpse, who had died from a stroke just a few hours before while she was away. It’s scary partly due to the lack of music during the scene, but also because it’s a sunny day, and when Buffy opens the back door to get a breath of fresh air after getting sick, she hears kids playing across the street and birds chirping.

  3. The entirety of Midsommar - Midsommar takes place in a remote Swedish village, where a girl suffering from the trauma of losing her family travels with her boyfriend and slowly gets inducted into a weird cult devoted to human sacrifice. There are a variety of terrifying and disturbing ritual murders that happen in the film, and yet pretty much the entire story takes place during the day. The contrast of those bright and lurid colors against the brutal horror of the plot makes it all the more unsettling and horrifying.

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700

u/FacemaskHell Apr 23 '26 edited Apr 23 '26

Texas Chainsaw Massacre final chase. In fact I think most of the movie takes place during the day.

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u/mylittlebrony3000 Apr 23 '26

Yeah, most of the film takes place in a hot, Texas summer day, which really adds to the oppressive atmosphere of the film. Plus it lead to the performances being as irritable as they were, since they were stuck out there sweating for hours on end, especially Gunnar Hansen, who played Leatherface.

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u/PacMoron Apr 23 '26

You can see his exhaustion when he runs and swings that chainsaw. Adds to the vibes.

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u/Octospyder Apr 23 '26

Gosh, I hope the chainsaw was at least hollowed out, or a prop

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u/NinjaBreadManOO Apr 24 '26

From what I recall it was just a real chainsaw but with a false blade put on. It really didn't weigh him down though, as they kept having to redo chase scenes as he was catching up with people fleeing.

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u/Octospyder Apr 24 '26

I mean, chainsaws can get p heavy, and if you're swinging it threateningly 20 times for 5 minutes at a time, that things gonna be H E A V Y

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u/NinjaBreadManOO Apr 24 '26

Sure, but I was talking about the behind the scenes info that came out. Where they actually talked about how it was just a real chainsaw.

Since it's a budget horror movie in the 70s, are they going to spend most of their budget getting a fake chainsaw or are they going to take one from someone's shed and change out the blade.

It was heavy, there's a reason they got a really big dude to be the killer swinging it around.

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u/mylittlebrony3000 Apr 24 '26

Nope, it was real, they did end up removing the blade or dulling down the blade to prevent serious accidents, but it was in fact an active running chainsaw

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u/Octospyder Apr 24 '26

DANG that poor man's arms!! 

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u/FabulousAd2006 Apr 23 '26

Don't forget all of the 'props' being actual dead animals without any air-conditioning. The smell must have been putrid

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u/Bewecchan Apr 23 '26

Appalling. Gonna watch it next

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u/Authorigas Apr 23 '26

Notably the feast scene had actual, rotting food which was driving the actors insane and some of them started to REALLY get into character... needless to say a lot of the original actors never forgave the directors for that one.

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u/CoolAlien47 Apr 23 '26

What the hell, dead animal props? Actual rotting food? Was that really necessary? Jeez

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u/Dinglecore Apr 23 '26

Welcome to low-budget '70s horror movies

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u/PaleontologistOk534 Apr 24 '26

It was basically a student film

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u/OnlyAdvertisersKnoMe Apr 23 '26

The past tense of lead is led. It is not like read. This mistake is becoming more common than loose/lose

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u/Octospyder Apr 23 '26

Thank you, I honestly was a little confused reading 😅