Best and/or Scariest and/or Creepiest Scenes Ever (from horror films or TV shows or whatever, I don't care)

We should have a 'best/scariest horror movie scenes of all time' thread, that would be wicked. Lots of good ones in not-so-good movies.

― Artisanal Personality Disorder (Old Lunch), Thursday, May 9, 2019 2:05 PM (twenty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I nominate the stabbed-hand-stab from the Crazies remake.

― Simon H., Thursday, May 9, 2019 2:08 PM (twenty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

We should have a 'best/scariest horror movie scenes of all time' thread, that would be wicked. Lots of good ones in not-so-good movies.

― Artisanal Personality Disorder (Old Lunch), Thursday, May 9, 2019 12:05 PM (seventeen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

vulture did a ranking of this recently? it was a little too loose of an idea to work as a ranking tbh it would be a much better message board thread

― american bradass (BradNelson), Thursday, May 9, 2019 2:24 PM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i recall the very not-good Darkness Falls having a good scary opening scene.

― omar little, Thursday, May 9, 2019 2:27 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there's a pretty scary scene in the downright awful the houses october built but it's not worth the suffering

― american bradass (BradNelson), Thursday, May 9, 2019 2:28 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

bonus points for the movie being just enh (or worse)

I'm gonna have to give this a good long think. One that always pops into my head when this question is posed is when the ghoul suddenly appears from behind the door in The Sentinel. I think this is the clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vtObrqqnEI

Has a similar vibe to the man in the mirror from Repulsion imo.

oh man i have a really good one that has haunted me since childhood

In the movie Bedroom Window, there is a scene where Elizabeth McGovern is walking on some stairs (in a parking garage maybe?), and there is an open door she walks through -- then the camera shows that there is a stalking CREEP hiding between the wall and the door. I don't remember anything else at all about the movie, but the camera turn to reveal the dead-eyed face of the creep still scares me to this day. I am always looking for creeps hiding behind doors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INjarC0gJo4

this isn't a bad movie, it's one of my favorite movies of all time, but the most recent, richest scare i can remember experiencing was during the theater scene in messiah of evil

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfLFCgBzmS4

and just to get it out of the way, the hospital scene from the exorcist iii

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBEfFgNld98

Yeah, there's a few hall-of-famers in that one, for sure.

I hate to derail this early, but imo "scary scenes not in horror movies" should also be a thing we discuss here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omNgeDME-cQ

oh yes i LOVE that

Yes, horrific scenes from non-horror entertainments should absolutely be a part of this thread.

I'd have to rewatch it (which I don't particularly relish the thought of) to see if it retained its impact but the suicide scene from Monster's Ball left its mark on me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtKOPF0NyHg

I watched WFRR over and over again as a kid but had to leave the room every time this scene came on

More 'best' than 'scariest' but the very last, completely WTF scene in the first Von Trier Kingdom miniseries (NSFW if you go looking for a clip).

More 'creepiest' than 'scariest' but Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neill taking turns casually carving into their arms with an electric knife in Possession (plus roughly eight dozen other unsettling moments from that masterpiece of cinema).

The only time I’ve ever been seriously weirded out by a movie was the head-in-vice scene in Casino. But to be fair that movie was made almost 25 years ago so it’s probably pretty tame in these post-Saw days.

This is definitely not my thread, but Fringe has an episode set in a(n abandoned?) subway station where a head explodes that grossed/freaked me the hell out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkfnuUU_6J8

The death of Pesci and his brother(?) is the scene that fucks me up from Casino.

I wish I could find a clip, there's a scene in The Witch Who Came From the Sea where the main character is flashing back to a traumatic scene which ends with her as a panicked child shouting the same thing over and over as the audio track degrades her voice to some weird and barely-audible rasp, and the effect is so uncanny and creepy. I can't think of another scene like it.

Scenes that creep me:
Funny Games- when she is casually tossed off the boat
The Strangers- the stabbing and the one masked person standing quietly in the house
Twilight Zone (movie) - the monster on the airplane wing
Crash- the scar fucking

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ul-LwLX6Nk

I wish I could find a clip, there's a scene in The Witch Who Came From the Sea where the main character is flashing back to a traumatic scene which ends with her as a panicked child shouting the same thing over and over as the audio track degrades her voice to some weird and barely-audible rasp, and the effect is so uncanny and creepy. I can't think of another scene like it.

The ending of In the Company of Men creeps me out in a similar fashion

The dismemberment scene in Looper still freaks me out to this day

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxqe8Xq6LBQ

doesn't make a lot of sense (like most time travel shit) but I'll give 'em this, it's a really clever scene

Oh yeah, that Looper bit was rough. I had to turn away during the video in Annihilation.

The face slice in Pan's Labyrinth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5le9sYdYkM

Jesus christ, give a warning before you terrify me like that!

bean sí in darby o gill

tunnel in kill list

beach conversation in it follows

beach scene in Under the Skin. final scene with the coven in The Witch

There's a slew of Lynch scenes that I'm sure I don't even have to specify.

Green Room is filled to the brim with intense and terrifying scenes but the one that burned itself in my brain is the girl slowly unzipping the dude with a box cutter. Blasé, offhanded violence in a movie probably unnerves me more than anything.

Large Marge is all-time. Probably aided by lunch table mythologizing from the kids who'd seen it and built it up into the biggest scare imaginable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2Y5tgCBAvQ

for reference
The Haunt Of Fear: ILX Top 100 HORROR Movies Poll Results Thread

The blood testing scene in The Thing is up there with scariest of all time for me.

The scene I'd pick from Under the Skin would be this one where the two guys meet while floating in the void. One of the few times while watching a movie where I really felt like I was seeing something otherworldly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UCPwlNd3Js

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdIlLn52Oak

Not really scary, but very, very creepy: Rosemary and Guy in bed when you hear the chanting next door for the first time. Can't find a clip, can't even find a still. The camera movement--a slow tilt up from Rosemary and Guy to the wall above--is beautiful.

a lot of the unremarkable domestic scenes in that movie are somehow terrifying

Furry fellatio

xxp yeah I just saw that, it was great

I hate to derail this early, but imo "scary scenes not in horror movies" should also be a thing we discuss here

Can't find a decent video of it, but one episode of Luther there's an extended opening of a woman coming home to her flat, brushing her teeth, taking off her shoes, getting into bed, drifting off to sleep. Then this man with a knife slides out from under her bed with this sort of stealthy wiggle. Absolutely horrible.

If you have a fear of mannequins/dummies/dolls suddenly springing to life, Tourist Trap is riddled with effective instances of just that. Movie makes zero goddamn sense but it does what it does well.

Plus these fuckers in old Doctor Who
https://cdn-static.denofgeek.com/sites/denofgeek/files/styles/article_width/public/autons_1.jpg
https://cdn-static.denofgeek.com/sites/denofgeek/files/styles/article_width/public/daffodils.jpg

Oh, the scene with the bag in Audition

Full body shivers the first time I saw that

Co-sign the subway sequence from The Wiz. Total nightmare fuel for my 7-year-old self.

yes to both under the skin scenes for sure

the b&w pictures of previous 'martyrs' in martyrs are haunting af, as is the entire last few minutes of body horror shading into cosmic nihilism and back again

Martyrs is all time and relies on its cumulative build to that pay off

That scene towards the end of Bone Tomahawk is the thing that's fucked me up the most recently. It's the audio track as much anything. Yeesh.

The ghost at the end of Personal Shopper is pretty extraordinary and had a huge effect on me - physically and emotionally.

The 'daylight stabbing' in Zodiac is horrible.

Yes, there's something about the overuse of darkness/nighttime as the setting for scary scenes that makes scary things happening in broad daylight even scarier.

when Matthau kneels on broken glass proposing to Elaine May in A New Leaf

(people do scream)

The 'daylight stabbing' in Zodiac is horrible.

― Good cop, Babcock (Chinaski), Friday, May 10, 2019 9:42 AM (twenty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh god zodiac is a very scary non-horror movie

just the sight of the killer stepping out from behind a tree in a long, kinda indistinct shot is terrifying even before the methodical stabbing happens

yeah cosign that scene, horrible

the end of this scene from the eye never fails to literally raise the hairs on the back of my neck for some reason

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIiVlAJ6Fqw

The elevator scene in this movie is awesome too

i'm not a horror buff, but i feel like that one scene in inland empire, a couple hours deep when things are getting almost nauseatingly dreamlike, where laura dern's face temporarily morphs into a digital doom mask, should be in this thread

the first appearance of BOB

yes

and behind the cafe in Mulholland Drive

Yes, I was alluding to those scenes and more in my earlier 'Lynch is the master of this' post. See also: Winkie's, Maddy's death, etc., etc.

deems knows

BOB terrified me the first time i saw it when it aired originally and didn't happen long after i watched Bedroom Window (mentioned upthread)
i guess i am terrified of creepy men hiding behind things and then revealing their faces

I want to include haunting and uncanny scenes in this list, as well! Even if they aren't (finger quotes) SCAAARY.

Like I'm thinking of Kwaidan atm. The scenes of Hoichi singing as the camera slow pans across his spectral audience...nothing like it. And the freeze frame at the end of 'The Black Hair'. Movie is dope, yo.

as i said in the Stephen King thread i think Lynch is underrated by a lot of folks for his mastery of dread-including atmosphere and framing. the original Twin Peaks was a tough show to watch at night as a kid living in a rural somewhat desolate town with a couple of lonely intersections and a road traveling into town covered by a tunnel of thick trees for a mile-plus. the woods and traffic lights swaying in the wind at night, no thank you for some reason!

the end of this scene from the eye never fails to literally raise the hairs on the back of my neck for some reason

because it's 100% nightmare fuel, jesus! though i think this scene from the 1989 woman in black just about tops it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhuc-ot7Ryg

linus roache’s face slowly, almost imperceptibly morphing into andrea riseborough’s and back again in mandy is very effectively creepy/trippy, while we’re on the topic of weird face stuff

^^^ almost brought up this scene

That diner scene in MD is so fucking terrifying. I've only seen it once but it's imprinted on my mind's eye. Lynch is master of the uncanny.

Re that stabbing scene in Zodiac, there's a documentary with the extended edition that details just how forensically rebuilt the park so it fitted the descriptions just so - to the point that he dug up and replanted a tree. That obsessiveness makes its way into the scene, somehow.

And god yes, that scene from Woman in Black is shriek-inducing. The stage version of WiB is one of the best scary experiences of my life. Had to sleep with the light on for a week the first time I saw it.

*xp just how forensically *Fincher* rebuilt the park

i put that scene on until the camera started panning across the bed with the voice and nope

Sister Ruth's eyes in the final part of Black Narcissus

Rewatched The Innocents recently and even knowing the the plot, the final scene still had me white knuckled. Speaking of scary stuff in broad daylight tho, this shot from the film has never failed to scare the shit out of me when it comes up:

http://dailygrindhouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/THE-INNOCENTS-600x300.jpg

Yessssss, I couldn't think of anything specific but there are definitely some effectively spooky moments in The Innocents.

the stabbing in Zodiac has that same daylight horror as The Strangers. I see they were only a year apart release.

I guess it's sort of daylight horror but the first appearance of Leatherface in the og Texas Chainsaw Massacre was and continues to be very effective.

As mentioned above, all the scary face scenes in Salem's Lot and Inland Empire. Agree also with the television version of Woman In Black and hong kong version of The Eye.

Lake scene in Let's Scare Jessica To Death

Where do I start with Watership Down?

Even though its a horror comedy kung fu, the opening of Spooky Encounters is pretty spooky.

Not totally scary but the lightning scene in Secret Chronicles Of The Ghost Cat is awesome. Cat woman would have scared me more if I was 2-20 years old. Definitely intimidating though.

Bloody coffin scene in Alucarda is really awesome.

Blair Witch and Rec endings of course.

A few haunting scenes in The Premonition (70s) are pretty jumpy stuff, in a good way.

The Premonition is the only one in the American Horror Project box that I haven't watched. Must get on that.

I guess it's sort of daylight horror but the first appearance of Leatherface in the og Texas Chainsaw Massacre was and continues to be very effective.

― Artisanal Personality Disorder (Old Lunch), Friday, May 10, 2019 11:23 AM (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the door slamming

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QSsVgPbmeU

Yup. That impassive, static medium shot does so much of the heavy lifting. Frustrating that a setup that effective is used so seldom in horror.

Like, toss yr ooky-spooky score in the trash, don't telegraph every damn thing before it happens, just put that camera on a tripod and let us be a fly on the wall for the terror about to unfold.

Can't find a clip but the Ugly Wuglies scene from the BBC version of E Nesbit's The Enchanted Castle would probably do for a 12 years old's version of lynchian not actually scary but pretty damn creepy.

Last 20 minutes of Bone Tomahawk really freaked me out.

Came here to post first appearance of Leatherface, as I'm sure I have in some similar thread. That is alltime.

Here's one of my recent "favorites"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbNGXZO4vbA

mary elizabeth mastrantonio’s drowning and revival in the abyss is genuinely upsetting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7xza4oYsbY

thought the it adaptation was whatever but gotta admit this scene got me.

That was the one reasonably well-mounted moment in just about the entire thing.

Okay, I'm hoping that at least one other person gets where I'm coming from -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlv_LQHX450

the scene in "Aliens" where Ripley and Newt fall asleep underneath the cot in the medical lab; then Ripley wakes up, spots the empty stasis tubes where the facehuggers were, gently wakes Newt and just says, "We're in trouble."

the scene in "Aliens" where Ripley and Newt fall asleep underneath the cot in the medical lab; then Ripley wakes up, spots the empty stasis tubes where the facehuggers were, gently wakes Newt and just says, "We're in trouble."

2.58 is probably the most unsettling thing to appear in the entirety of classic Dr Who. Ironically the footage only survives due to being snipped out by the Aussie censors at the time, everything else was junked.

https://youtu.be/88svfiAJ0C8?t=178

Embed, you bastard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88svfiAJ0C8

Excellent use of British teeth there.

One of my favorite films. There's no way Lynch got the mystery man from Lost Highway without the guy at the end of this scene from Carnival of Souls. Also *great* use of music in a film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XS-PRypBdIM

This scene from Kairo/Pulse:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYs87-kDXwg

The cursed videotape from Ringu is next-level unease:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mbo5vHy8dw

yep

The stabbing scene from Side Effects was genuinely disturbing to me. Sometimes I’ll be using a knife in the kitchen and remember it and my stomach will do a little flip-flop

https://youtu.be/GRzA8KaskyY

i can't find the sequence on youtube but the scene in a.i. where david is walking through the cybertronics building and finds all those other models of himself, and looks through the empty eyesockets of a copy of his face? belongs here

Sinister was a mostly bad-good B-horror movie, but the snuff films within the movie are very effectively creepy. Soundless, crappily-edited 8mm home movies that quickly change from picnics and pool parties to horrific murders.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSOvTa38w24

Another kind of pool party.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3Li5dLDfmY

That bit in The Broken with Lena Headey, where you see a POV from _inside_ a mirror, and it's this vast dark world with a tiny little window of light.

I like that scene from Let the Right One In

haha i came here to post mr oak and mr quill, that's the one bit of australian censorship where my reaction is "well good on you for cutting _that_"

haven't seen it in decades but i remember being absolutely terrified by the electroshock at the beginning of "return to oz" (which may be anachronistic? i can't remember when it's set but wouldn't insulin shock be more likely?)

basic upshot is nothing can be scary like "children's entertainment"

Case in point:

Punky Brewster's Halloween two-parter 'The Perils of Punky' (1985) sent the show veering from mawkish sitcom into full-on kiddie horror. pic.twitter.com/kd8uPFNrnD

— Scarred for Life (@ScarredForLife2) March 12, 2018

Freeze frame of the broken bottle on the beach as the foot is coming down on it.

So many of these from PIFs. Dark Water, Apaches, The Finishing Line. Electrocuted rescuing a frisbee. The little girl with her fingers melted by a firework.

Being a kid in a 70s public information film was like being a Redshirt in Star Trek. pic.twitter.com/SYcWhdbWRv

— Scarred for Life (@ScarredForLife2) May 21, 2018

I don't watch much Horror per se but the Ringu scene was the first properly unsettling scary thing I'd seen.
plus the obvious Lynch stuff

Oh yes Return to Oz machine, also the Wheelers

can't remember the specific scene but House of Wax had something horrifying. also the first time we see the truck in Jeepers Creepers.

I know I keep banging on about this show but Bodies *spoilers*
has a scene I couldn't shake with a woman trying to cause herself to miscarriage and the foetus is born just alive

the whole show is prolonged horror pretty much

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XS-PRypBdIM

the last ten minutes of BBC's Ghostwatch are the scariest ten minutes recorded anywhere ever imo

Otm. This is a good read about the making of and reaction afterwards. (How nice it was to be able to make this in a world without social media tbh)

Ha, was literally just coming to post that it was effective seeing Ghostwatch for the first time as an American adult. I cannot even imagine what it would've been like to see it as a kid and in its proper context.

I watched it knowing everything about it and it was still some eye-boggling throat-cracking shit, can't even imagine what it was like to see it at the time

xp!! haha

The trailer for The Shining more than any moment in the film itself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANKdpe4J2h0

I feel duty-bound to point out this related A+ UK-centric thread for those unaware of its existence: is there a name or a phrase for or anything much written about that distinctly British CREEPY VIBE prevalent in TV shows and movies of the '60s/'70s? (e.g. The Prisoner, Sapphire and Steel, Baker-era

yeah I bumped it like yesterday :)

(with penda's fen. which isn't so much scary as lyrical, beautiful and inspiring. the edward elgar scene especially is one of the BEST if not scariest i've seen)

Ha, didn't even notice! I've had that thing bookmarked since its inception.

oh god i love ghostwatch. another scene of a door slamming that absolutely ruins my ability to sleep

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJXvdTIBQMU

spoiler for the end of prince of darkness but: this is the scariest scene john carpenter ever filmed

this is not a dream

one particularly sadistic sequence I think of from time to time: JJL's demise in The Hitcher

Ghostwatch is significantly enhanced once you know to keep an eye out for the many 'blink and you'll miss it' appearances of Pipes throughout (a trope I was glad to see Hell House adopt). The split-second glimpse in the room beneath the staircase is my favorite.

this shit may have damaged me for life
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z4rQfV3Lo8

also i may be hella corny but the end of paranormal activity fucked with my head a bit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCXmk4QAcUc

no that PA one got me too, and I usually am cool as a cucumber during horror flicks. something about watching it in my dark room with my face close to the laptop added to it

box cutter scene in breaking bad

christ that shining trailer is good. i wish i could have seen the shining for the first time without knowing every scare through decades of cultural osmosis.

- Mulholland Drive - 'Man Behind The Dumpster'
- Kill List - 'Tunnels' / 'Hunchback'
- Eyes Wide Shut - 'Orgy' (the music + masks combo freaks me out)
- The Grudge - two scenes: one with the grandmother being tormented by an evil shadow spirit; another where someone is leaving work late and keeps getting phone calls on her mobile
- Midsommar - ritual suicide scenes

I thought there were some genuinely frightening scenes in M Night's 'The Invitation', especially the grandmother hobbling around the house at night screaming and puking, and the bit where she chases the kids around the crawlspace under the house

The "wall of death" execution scene in the mostly-execrable Caligula (1979) really got to me, I had to turn it off after that because I was getting freaked out. In fact I just looked it up on YT and it freaked me out all over again.

haha oh man yeah that is an image that really sticks

I wonder if I would've found Paranormal Activity scarier if I didn't regularly wake up to find my insomnia-prone gf basically doing some variation of the immobile late-night starefest that I assume is meant to make the viewer's skin crawl.

I don't know how I failed to mention it before itt but so many small, quiet moments in Testament are among the most dread-inducing things I've ever seen on film. Most especially the scene of a young Lucas Haas being bathed in the sink, which I saw when I wasn't much older and probably did permanent damage to my brain.

The overhead shot when Martin Balsam gets offed in Psycho freaks me out every single time

Yea that one was underrated

Shower scene overshadows some other mega legit scares

My dad, who saw it in the early sixties but wasn't what you'd called a cineaste, always said that the reveal mother scared him way more than the shower scene. That doesn't really do it for me but the framing of the stair murder and the way Perkins moves is just incredibly shocking still.

Tarman in Return of the Living Dead is half played for laughs but I dunno, that guy kinda freaks my shit out tbrr.

that's a good one. it's deffo the way it's framed, i was ready for the attack but not from that direction. the bare bulb swinging on the norman reveal is disturbing too mind you, that wig!! and the i wouldn't even harm a fly nonsense.

the only horror scene that had an effect on my actual behaviour was whichever hammer dracula film that had the count entering a bedroom as a bat via the window, i must have seen it on tv aged 8 or so and legit did not open any windows in my room for at least 3 years, even in the height of Summer. lol.

xp

After i saw Psycho i didn't shower for sixteen years

There's a Tintin comic (Cigars of the Pharoah maybe?) where someone blows a bold dart through a window into a sleeping person's neck and I slept with the covers right up past my jugular for years after reading that as a kid

In all seriousness tho my showers were very fast for the week after that. As fast as they could be for a nine year old at least

I was convinced that one of our friends mothers was standing in the bathroom one night with her back to me and i was afraid to come out and it turned out to be a misleading sihlouette of the mirror and sink through our frosted shower door

Watched Beware! The Blob recently (which is basically just a head film directed by Larry Hagman) and it had an amusing riff on the Psycho shower scene (wherein a husband keeps dramatically ripping back the shower curtain to ask his wife completely banal questions).

I wonder whether the bathing woman in the Shining might itself have been a play on a role-reversed version of the Psycho shower scene

there are probably loads of 'hiding behind the shower curtain' scenes through cinema though

Yeah, it immediately occurred to me after posting that riffing on the Psycho shower scene is probably among the most played-out tropes in cinema.

I've got mixed feelings about when people bring in types of disturbing that are too mundane for my tastes (as I'm always hoping for something on the eerie, awesome, pleasing terror side) but here I go...(I think I talked about a few of these recently, most are from childhood)…

Since when has doubleclicking the return button meant "post"?

Fantasy films like The Labyrinth, Willow and Dark Crystal depressed the hell out of me when I was a child. Legend has some awesomely creepy imagery but it also fell into depressing for me too.
I found these films deeply ugly in a way I just couldn't deal with and I just hated that it was so easy to slip into a hole or chasm and die. I was painfully aware how often characters survived by luck.
And the bog in Labyrinth with just too much. I could never find it funny, the idea of smelling like especially foul shit for the rest of your life was some of the rawest horror I'd seen from a film.
I remember vividly a sleepless night thinking about Dark Crystal and just feeling nauseated and hopeless about it.

More in a minute...

I had a similar sleepless night after watching the John Cleese comedy Clockwise. Maybe I thought it was an overpoweringly bleak vision of adult life.

The Mighty Max cartoon had a bit where the deformed clown Freako magically turned Max into a severely deformed person. Extremely disturbing.

3D cartoon Reboot when Dot is cornered in the streets and has her hair shaved off by the police robots of a new dystopia. Feels like a rape scene. Really troubled me.

Two things that seemed especially horrible because they were played for laughs:
In the sitcom Frasier, Roz getting full-on kissed by a creepy friend and she clearly wasn't okay with it.
The old ladies in Harry Enfield raping young men.

my favorite riff on the shower scene

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uPdZTiGoGc

(that's Barry Levinson as the bellhop)

There’s a harrowing scene in the (otherwise rather tame) Stephen King adaptation Doctor Sleep where a cadre of serial killers/psychic vampires ritually sacrifice a kidnapped young boy to harvest his suffering.

I’m not easily disturbed by horror movies, but the scene was surprisingly effective and harrowing.

Harrowing enough to use the word “harrowing” twice, even

THE HARROWING

Prepare...to be harrowed.

if we're talking about creepy stuff in generally non-creepy media: there is a lot of low-key terrifying stuff in both avatar and legend of korra, cf. bloodbending

It's not generally thought of as a scary film, but the first abduction scene in Communion used to freak the hell out out of me, and still kinda does. I dreaded the alien on the book cover as a child, so maybe watching it was never the best idea.

But I do like the somewhat surreal, dream-like approach is takes in regard to the experience, which is a nice contrast to the literal-mindedness of most UFO/abduction depictions on film and TV. There's the sense of intrusion from some "other", akin to the Diner monster in Mulholland Drive and the subway/passing car people in Jacob's Ladder.

The scene in Paul Schrader's "Blue Collar" where Yaphet Kotto is slowly asphyxiated by spray paint

The scene where Peter Weller gets shot at the beginning of Robocop made me queasy at age 14 in the theater, especially when his hand gets blown apart by the shotgun. Ugh!

Yeah, that scene has stayed with me too. The 'knife across the chest' in First Blood had a similar, visceral impact.

Midsommar - ritual suicide scenes

This piqued my interest, as I somehow hadn't heard of Midsommar. I took myself over to YouTube, where someone has helpfully uploaded an edit titled "All the deaths in Midsommar".

I really wish I hadn't watched it.

child-catcher scene in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

There's a scene in The Exorcist that terrified me, no pea soup vomit, no head spinning, just the expression on Regan's face watching the priest walk across the room. Still haunts me, and I haven't seen the movie since 1974.

Hardly original but the Wheelers and the creepy statue setting is just perfectly terrifying (Return to Oz)

I mean hardly original in that it's probably been suggested already

isn't Midsommer the movie with the cliff diving scene

remember being like..."uh you're supposed to cut away from that"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Catcher

the character does not appear in Fleming's book itself. In fact, Roald Dahl, co-author of the film version's screenplay, originated the Child Catcher (as well as almost all of the Vulgarian scenes).

The Child Catcher is very very Roald Dahl.

uh i am apparently only now learning that chitty chitty bang bang is roald dahl's second film adaptation of an ian fleming novel, the first being you only live twice? which is very off-topic but blowing my mind regardless

A tiny moment that gave me a chill--Richard Gere's face hitting the water in Days of Heaven.

Re The Exorcist, the scene where they're doing tests on Regan & put something into her neck and blood spurts out always makes me shudder. Realism/physicality I guess. The sound in that scene also plays a role.

thread just reminded be about ghostwatch

i think it did genuine fuckin damage to me for a while, that did. i was put to bed screaming, and woke up the same way, for about a week.

It's not generally thought of as a scary film, but the first abduction scene in Communion used to freak the hell out out of me, and still kinda does. I dreaded the alien on the book cover as a child, so maybe watching it was never the best idea.

But I do like the somewhat surreal, dream-like approach is takes in regard to the experience, which is a nice contrast to the literal-mindedness of most UFO/abduction depictions on film and TV. There's the sense of intrusion from some "other", akin to the Diner monster in Mulholland Drive and the subway/passing car people in Jacob's Ladder.

― Duane Barry, Thursday, 21 November 2019 12:53 (three days ago) link

Totally. “IS THAT SOMEONE THERE?”

Underrated movie.

Christopher Walken giving the most Christopher Walken performance ever only compounds the strangeness further.

Perhaps not as surreal but certainly justc as scary is the alien abduction flashback from Fire in the Sky. The movie itself is mediocre but that sequence could stand on its own as one of the greatest sci-fi horror shorts ever made. It masterfully captures the pure animal terror of being treated like a lab rat by beings with unfathomable motives.

Forgotten to mention the scary bits in Beyond The Black Rainbow

As this thread seemed to expand to include 'disturbing or upsetting' I'm going to nominate the beating dished out to Ray Liotta in Killing Them Softly. Brilliantly acted and really quite horrible.