Scariest Horror Movie Scene

Movies
1

In the spirit of Halloween and to extrapolate a bit on the 30 Days of Horror that the Qt3 guys are running on the front page – and subsequently inspired by a morning radio conversation topic I heard on the way into work today – I figured it might be fun to swap our picks for our favourite scary movie scenes. Not movies in their entirety, mind you, but your favourite scene from a horror movie – there are plenty of horrible movies out there that still have some chilling moments, so liking the rest of the movie is not a prerequisite.

(Some people might prefer spoiler tags for scenes that are really important to each film. Try to use discretion or be intentionally vague for those who may not have seen it yet!)

I have three that pop to mind when I think of this topic, and they range all across the history of cinema (and by that I mean they don’t predate 1980, really, but are still creepy as all get out).

Insidious

First is the recent Insidious; during the scene where Josh, Renai and Lorraine are seated around the dining room table and Lorraine is revealing that Josh used to be able to astrally project. It’s a calm conversation, one that has some big ramifications throughout the rest of the film but is otherwise very mundane. That is, however, until Lorraine sees a vision of the demon standing directly behind Josh. The transition from mundane to horror in that moment was so well-executed and got a physical reaction out of me. It was a jump-scare executed to perfection.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

I guess it might not be particularly terrifying but the ending of this film scarred me something fierce. Throughout the whole film we see Matthew fighting off the urge to sleep and trying to find a way to defeat these otherworldly creatures. Instead, the finale reveals that Matthew – our protagonist – has fallen to the “body snatchers” with an ear-splitting scream that can’t help but make you feel despair. It might be a meme now but damn was that scene terrifying in a classic way.

The Thing (1982)

The turning point of the film: R.J. realizes that the alien has the ability to mimic any one of the scientists in the base and so devises a test to figure out who is human and who is not by burning blood from each individual. That entire scene is so tense; the paranoia is rampant at that point and no one is sure who to trust. Everyone is on the edge of their seat as each scientist is eliminated one-by-one until Palmer is revealed as the Thing and attacks Windows much to the horror of everyone else watching. Terror and horror rolled together and pulled off so perfectly recounting the scene in text just doesn’t do it justice. This was John Carpenter’s magnum opus and, frankly, I consider it one of the finest horror movies of all time.

So there’s my picks! What’s yours? There so many films out there and so many scary movie scenes, I’m sure there must be some good opinions out there!

2

So so many to choose from, I don’t even…my brain kind of shuts down trying to think of something. I watch a ton of horror…like a ton. Not much frightens me these days, but the classic pre-80s movies such as the Exorcist relied much more on atmosphere than shock value and that is what really frightens me.

3

Ooh, cool thread. Let me think on it a bit, but I know of one that rrmorton and I are probably in agreement on…;)

4

It doesn’t have to be a shock value moment, really. There are plenty of classic scenes from horror films that are based entirely on atmosphere and terror than jump scares. The fear of the unknown and the slow burn of realization/discovery often make for the most terrifying scenes in film. Pretty much the entirety of The Shining plays out that way, with the shock value scenes (“Here’s Johnny!”) playing second fiddle to the slow burn of realization (discovering the pages of “All work and no play”), at least in terms of terror.

5

One of my all time moments would be

Poltergeist (Probably lame, but see above regarding my brain being shut down).

Poltergeist

Everything during the storm. The shadow of the tree. Even the counting between the lightning and thunder. Love that movie.

6

This, obviously. Middling film, brilliant scene! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zH8ynu0jRvY (not important to the movie at all)

Kind of a weird and not that great movie, but this scene in the Grudge 2 creeped me out. There’s something about that ghost girl that just gets under my skin. Whenever I’m walking through the house alone in the dark, it’s her I’m worried about coming across in the dark.

TCM, naturally. I saw this at age 10 or so, and I think it scarred me for life: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1igo_Kh0kwI

7

Since I recently rewatched my favorite horror movie, Night of the Living Dead, as part of triggercut’s October marathon, I have to point out a scene that still scares me:

The moment when Helen retreats back to the basement to find her daughter has died, returned and is chewing on the arm of her husband is a good scare. But then when the little girl comes for Helen with a trowel and stabs it into her repeatedly is so intense. I love what they do with camera angles, close ups and distortion on the audio. It still gets me.

I considered spoilering that, but is it really needed for a movie from 1968? I would hope everyone’s seen this movie at least once. If not, uh, sorry!

8

Poltergeist also for me. But, my scene is the Clown under the bed. When I was a kid I had many lucid dreams that my stuffed animals and wall hangings came to life…always scared the hell out of me. So, when I saw this movie, that scene brought back all those scary dreams and really freaked me out.

Nothing scares me now…nothing makes me jump…all those old scary things are benign to me now…but that scene was the scarriest when i was young.

9

That’s the one!

10

Audition - “Tiki tiki tiki tiki”

11

This short film terrifies me something fierce, a masterpiece inspiration for an equally terrifying film. Amazing.

12

Good thread. The first one that comes to mind:

Paranormal Activity

The first time we see the woman standing over the sleeping man. And then the timecode speeds up and we realize she’s standing like that for hours. So creepy.

13

Insidious had one of the best low-tech scary scenes ever.

Insidious

[spoiler]
The medium, Elise, is whispering while staring up at the ceiling. She’s describing what she sees in the dark shadows. Her voice is raspy, low, and whatever she’s saying is coming almost too fast to process. The assistant is drawing a demon. The camera cuts back and forth between the drawing, Elise whispering, and the shadow. The camera is slowly zooming in to the shadow. What’s up there? What is it? Elise’s whispers get more frantic. The shadow deepens. The frame tightens. The shadow is filling the screen. What is it!?!?!

Nothing. Nothing happens. So awesome.[/spoiler]

'Salem’s Lot. Yup a made-for-TV movie. Fuck you, I was a kid! When newly-made vampire Ralphie Glick comes floating up to his brother’s window, scraping his nails on the glass, begging to be let in… Fuck that noise. I was out of there.

14

My friend did that to his girlfriend the same night they saw the movies in theatres. He said she pretty much pissed herself when she awoke to find him standing there.

Okay…w…t…f

15

Probably doesn’t need to be spoiler-protected since it’s a much-parodied classic, but:

Bigwheel scene in The Shining

Kubrick’s camera is following young Danny on his bigwheel scooter through the hotel. He goes from hallway to room to hallway on different surfaces (and the sound-quality along with the soundtrack is important to the suspense). He turns a corner and sees the Creepy Twins. Goosebump-raising no matter how many times SNL does a spoof of it.

Event Horizon is a weak film with some spectacularly scary sequences. Not realizing what type of a movie it was, I took my seven-months-pregnant wife with me to see it in the theater; a mistake that I am reminded of with depressing regularity.

Log Scene

The rescue team arrives on the gore-spattered bridge of the ship and reviews the captain’s logs to find out what happened. After some mundane stuff they are treated to some rapid-fire scenes of murder and brutality along with some horrific sound recordings. I think the sound of all the otherworldly screaming superimposed over nonsense words and Latin pushes it over the top from simply “gratuitously gory shock-scene” to “horrific image of Hell”.

I haven’t seen Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness in many, many years… mostly because I fear it wouldn’t hold up as well as my memories of it do.

Final bed scene

The main character has escaped the chapel after his girlfriend sacrifices herself to save the world. Later, he has the recurring dream that we have come to understand is a message from the future, but this time it implies that his girlfriend is the anti-christ figure that will end everything. He awakes from the dream to roll over and see his live-corpse girlfriend in bed with him… before he wakes yet again. The final scene is of him approaching a mirror that may or may not be a gateway to Hell, but it fades to black before we find out. That scene had the creepy-factor of the dream-transmission with the jump-scare of the zombie-girlfrind tossed in. Wonderful (in my memory).

Another movie I fear would not hold up to repeat viewings is The Blair Witch Project.

Final scene in the house

The student film-maker Heather and her friend Mike are searching for their missing friend Josh, whose screams in the woods lead them to an old house. Scrambling through the house looking for him, they (and their handicam) eventually end up in the basement, where the unsteady camera reveals tiny, bloody handprints on the wall. As Heather races around looking for Mike, we get only a tiny glimpse of him standing motionless and meek in a corner… just like the child victims of the witch/murderer were made to do as he kills their friends. The screaming starts, the camera drops to the ground and the “found footage” ends. The unexpected tie-back to the creepy story related at the beginning along with the fact that you never actually see a monster is just fantastic.

The movie that scared me the most as an adult was the American remake of The Ring, with Naomi Watts. I had trouble sleeping for two nights after seeing that film. I honestly can’t point to a particular scene that did it; the whole damn movie is creepy as hell. But:

Discovering Katie

The scene where Becca discovers her friend Katie’s corpse is horrific. Becca had been told by Katie earlier that she has viewed the haunted tape and might be cursed to die. After not being able to contact Katie by phone, Becca finds the corpse of her friend, an expression of abject horror on her face. Kind of a jump-scare, and the scenes of the stop-motion little girl are probably even scarier later in the movie, but the expression on the corpse-Katie’s face has stuck with me all these years.

16

That was the inspiration for the Guillermo del Toro-produced feature film [I]Mama[/I] that came out earlier this year. Del Toro basically just gave the director/producer team behind the short enough money to create a feature-length film so everything in the feature is as true an extrapolation of the short film as you could ever get. The cinematography throughout the entire movie is what really sells it; the framing of certain scenes gives a compelling and terrifying representation of what is happening, even if nothing is shown explicitly. I can’t recommend it enough.

17

But for some reason this version of the short film cuts off the ending! I found this version, also with a del Toro intro (in Spanish, I think) that has the final bit.

The best part of that bit with the log is Laurence Fishburne’s line after watching: “We are leaving.”

18

Lake Mungo (don’t watch this clip if you haven’t seen the movie yet):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNUfmV-ExTQ

The Innkeepers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hj3A_jvoHis

As you can tell, ghost stories are the most effective in scaring me.

19

I like these, except The Blair Witch Project didn’t hold up for me even when I saw it the first time in the theater. I just wanted to add on that I still remember the scene in Prince of Darkness where

The one part you mentioned actually happens

The girlfriend tackles the possessed guy through the mirror as Satan approaches from the other side and plunges into a dark watery void. Then as she turns around to get back and reaches out her hand they break the mirror and ditch her there. That understandable sort-of-betrayal and being stranded in such a creepy place stuck with me.

Also I thought the climax of the American The Ring when the TV turns on behind Naomi Watts’ boyfriend was great because it managed to be one long sustained burst of creepiness that didn’t rely on jump scares, it was even more horrible because you sort of knew what was coming and then oh shit here it comes, and then they didn’t ruin it by trying to show the worst part on screen.

20

I think the scariest movie I ever saw in a theater was The Exorcist. Other movies have scared me but that has to be number one.