Summary
- Horror movie lovers find comfort in being on the other side of the screen, but masterfully crafted horror movie moments take away that comfort.
- The scariest scenes in movie history can continue to frighten audiences decades later, like Jack Torrance's encounter in Room 237 in The Shining.
- Non-horror movies can have scarier scenes than some actual horror movies, such as the infamous "Squeal like a pig" scene in Deliverance.
From the shower murder in Psycho to the disturbing dinner scene in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, the horror movie genre is full of scary scenes that still terrify audiences to this day. Non-horror fans wonder why horror movie lovers intentionally set out to terrify themselves, but there’s a comfort in being on the other side of the screen. When Swedish cultists are killing American tourists in Midsommar, viewers can watch on from the safety of their own homes. But the most masterfully crafted horror movie moments are so deeply immersive that they take away that comfort.
Horror cinema is jam-packed with petrifying scenes that still pack a punch on repeat viewings, from gruesome killings like the death of Dallas in Alien to ghostly encounters like the climactic confrontation in The Blair Witch Project. There are also some unsettling scenes in non-horror movies that are scarier than most actual horror movies, like the notorious “Squeal like a pig” scene from Deliverance. The scariest scenes in movie history can still frighten audiences decades later, like Jack Torrance’s jaunt to Room 237 in The Shining.
13 The Red-Face Demon Appears (Insidious)
Insidious puts a fresh spin on the haunted house movie in that it’s not the house itself that’s haunted; it’s the couple’s young son. The family moves to a new home, but the demons come with them. There are some horrifying moments in this movie as the purgatory dimension, “The Further,” bleeds into the real world. The most shocking jump scare in the film is the first appearance of the red-faced demon who looks just like the Biblical descriptions of the Devil.
12 The Video Tape (The Ring)
The Ring revolves around a cursed videotape that kills its viewers within a week of watching it, and the tape itself is the scariest sight in the movie. The tape depicts the vengeful ghost of a psychic, Samara Morgan (Sadako Yamamura in the original movie), as she climbs out of a well, crawls toward the camera, and manages to cross the fourth wall through the TV screen into the real world. The best horror movies make mundane activities terrifying, and the mundane activity that The Ring makes terrifying – watching TV – is what audiences are doing when they watch the film.
11 The Final Confrontation (The Blair Witch Project)
Now that the “found footage” gimmick has been done to death, The Blair Witch Project doesn’t have the same visceral impact it once did. At the time of its release, audiences didn’t know whether it was real or fictional. But, whether the documentary aspect is believable or not, the ending is terrifying. The ending of The Blair Witch Project sees the group encountering the witch. From the children’s bloody hand prints on the walls to an unresponsive Mike standing in the corner, the scene is full of unsettling imagery. The witch remains unseen, so the audience can fill it in for themselves.
10 Jack Enters Room 237 (The Shining)
Room 237 is the center of the ghostly presence in the Overlook Hotel in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. When Jack Torrance goes up to the room to see what spooked his son, Danny, he finds a beautiful woman bathing in the tub. However, when she gets out of the bath and starts kissing him, he’s horrified to see that she’s really a rotting corpse. This corpse chases Jack out of the room, laughing hysterically, as Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind’s creepy, mesmerizing score matches the audience’s overwhelming feelings of dread and terror.
9 Dallas' Death (Alien)
Ridley Scott’s space-bound horror masterpiece Alien is full of petrifying moments, from the facehugger to the chestburster. But the tensest and most terrifying scene of all is when Dallas is killed by the Xenomorph. Scott masterfully builds suspense throughout this scene by cutting between Dallas cautiously crawling through a dark tunnel and the crew watching his location on the computer screen. The two blips that represent Dallas and the Xenomorph show that the alien is fast approaching the captain. Dallas is none the wiser, and his crewmates are helpless to save him, leading to the iconic jump scare when the Xenomorph lunges at him.
8 Rosemary Meets Her Baby (Rosemary's Baby)
The genius of Rosemary’s Baby is that it refuses to confirm Rosemary’s conspiracy theories until the very last scene. For the majority of the movie, the most plausible explanation is that Rosemary is just paranoid and her neighbors aren’t really in a Satanist cult bent on impregnating her with the Antichrist. But the ending of Rosemary's Baby, with its haunting final scene, has Rosemary finally meet her baby, and she sees that it has demonic eyes. As her neighbors chant, “Hail Satan!” her fears are confirmed. The most unsettling part is that, despite the baby’s origins, Rosemary still ultimately looks upon it with a loving mother’s gaze.
7 Peter's Nightmare (Hereditary)
There are a ton of scary scenes in Ari Aster’s Hereditary, and they mostly revolve around decapitation. In between Peter accidentally beheading his sister and a possessed Annie cutting off her own head with a piano wire, there’s a truly unnerving nightmare scene. Peter is lying in bed, tossing and turning, troubled by his horrible mistake, when he sees Charlie’s silhouette standing in the corner of his room. What makes this scene so scary is the way it blends the nightmare world with reality. Until Charlie’s head topples off, it stands to reason that this is really happening.
6 Regan's Head Spins (The Exorcist)
William Friedkin’s The Exorcist was the first blockbuster horror movie and one of the first films to force critics to take the genre seriously. Audiences had never seen the Devil’s supernatural powers depicted so realistically on-screen, and it made The Exorcist a global cultural sensation. There are plenty of terrifying scenes involving Regan MacNeil’s possession by the demon Pazuzu, but arguably the scariest is when Regan’s head spins around like an owl. Even after being parodied over and over, this scene still packs a punch. It’s always shocking to see a human body do the physically impossible.
5 Marion Crane Is Killed In The Shower (Psycho)
After the first half of Alfred Hitchcock’s seminal slasher Psycho sets up a noir-ish storyline involving Marion Crane embezzling money from her boss, the midpoint twist turns it into a different movie entirely as Marion is slashed to death in her motel shower. Hitchcock labored over the edit of this scene, carefully choosing the order of the shots and the timing of the cuts, because this scene would make or break the movie. Killing off the main character in the middle of the movie was a risky move — especially since no one had done it before — but this scene is so perfectly crafted that it made Psycho a timeless classic.
4 Sara's Reanimated Corpse (Suspiria)
Dario Argento’s visually stunning, deeply unsettling horror classic Suspiria is full of scary scenes: a ballet student is hanged by a skylight, maggots rain down from the ceiling, and the broken quill of a glass peacock goes through Helena Markos’s neck. But the scariest moment in the film is when Sara Simms’s mutilated corpse is reanimated and creeps into the room. This scene ensures that the climactic sequence of Suspiria is the most horrifying part of the entire movie.
