Blood and wound effects are widely used in movies to scare the audience. The gore these effects offer from blood-squirts to heavily wounded bodies showcases scenes where characters get hurt or even get to the point of becoming decapitated. Using the right camera shots and angles, scenes with blood spilling on the ground and characters slightly or heavily bleeding can exhibit terrifying and frightening emotions to the viewers. Most blood and wound effects use simple materials like corn syrup, food coloring, milk and liquid latex.
Movies with zombies, monsters, psychos, ghosts, along with these entities' and creatures' victims, typically require actors and actresses to look their parts through the right makeup and prosthetic effects. Depending on the characters portrayed by the on-camera talents, specific types of makeup and prosthetics are placed over their faces and other required body parts to show a more terrifying look, a pale and ghostly look, a lost limb, a mutated body or an obscured face. In some characters, makeup may be enough, but others still need more distinct prosthetic effects that use sculpting, modeling and casting techniques to create advanced cosmetic visuals that make more convincing scary characters.
Complex characters that require more than just makeup and prosthetics are either produced through the use of animatronics technology or computer-generated imagery (CGI). Animatronics use mechanically and electronically controlled mock-up creatures that are operated like puppets. Most characters using animatronics are creatures that don't exist in real life or animals that are too risky and/or dangerous to use during filming. Popular characters that use it include monsters, wolves and bears. Meanwhile, CGI simply uses 3D characters made using animation and special effects software to create frightening creatures and supernatural entities.
Levitation and flying effects in scary scenes typically combine live-action and post-production requirements to create convincingly scary scenes of characters floating in mid air. In modern filmmaking, these effects are typically done using a green screen background where the characters are equipped with harness equipment and they float around the green screen background through wire set-ups. These wires are removed during post-production. The applicable scary background to replace the green screen is added during this stage as well.