Offscreen Teleportation

With the theme of Halloween fresh in all of our minds I thought it would be fun to explore a classic horror movie trope, Offscreen Teleportation. It might sound extremely sci-fi but let me break it down for you. Oh no! The creepy guy with the mask just found you! It's time to run. You run up three flights of stairs, through a hallway, and towards the closet, but when you open the closet.... THERE HE IS! While some may be quick to call this trope a lazy way to get a quick scare, and be right while doing so, it is surprisingly effective. 

While a scenario like that is oftentimes completely impossible or at best a really lucky break for the killer, that is the very reason it's so effective. The killer being able to find a faster way up a building and into a closet you found while running in a panicked state? Unlikely, but because of it being so unlikely it can often catch the audience off guard. 

On the flip side it can be used to great effect when the teleportation is intermittent, leaving the audience guessing with every slow doorknob turn. However, when teleportation is the only upper hand the otherwise perfectly realistic villain has then the fun and suspense can be ruined.

This trope was used to great effect in the movie Don’t Breathe from 2016. In this movie our killer is a blind man with supersonic hearing. Most of the time we can hear him sneaking around the old creaky house, but he always manages to get where we least want him, all without making a sound. This use of offscreen teleportation is great because the more realistic the situation the harder the audience falls for it. 

Alternatively the offscreen teleportation can be used in many other genres, including comedy and adventure. In many depictions of Batman, from movies to video games, it is used to great effect. Instead of scaring the audience it looks awesome. Our caped crusader is seen hanging in the rafters observing joker's goons, in the next shot he’s right behind the henchmen and takes them out with a POW! and THWAP!

But it's a double edged sword. How many times has Batman successfully caught a villian, only for the bad guy to magically escape and disappear into the night? I’m looking at you joker....

I’m sure we can all recall a moment when a character in a cartoon looks through a pair of binoculars and sees someone on the horizon, only to look down from the binoculars to see that same person standing in front of them. Throw in some dust settling and the character coming to a stop the way a spring door stop does and it's hilarious! 

JACK SLATER

I am a writer trapped in a nerd’s body, and I love analyzing my favourite tropes!