The best jump scare movies are the ones that have little going on in the frame for most of the time, allowing the viewer to effectively scare themselves with the power of their imagination. But this doesn’t mean that the art of the jump scare is beneath great filmmakers quite the opposite. The best jump scare movies demonstrate that horror masters throughout cinematic history have used the jump as a powerful tool to pull the audience deeper into their terrifying worlds, and while there are often cheap scares, the best ones are the scares that really take viewers by surprise.