Scariest scene in a movie? (Spoiler alert)

When I was a kid, the movie that scared me the most was Who Framed Roger Rabbit? I had nightmares about steamrollers for years. YEARS.

More recently, there's The Ring. I still can't be alone in a room with a staticky television. It still gets to me. Also, the lawnmower scene in Sinister. Egads. Even the soundtrack is horrifying.

I would have to say the revelation of the twist in M Night Shaymalan's The Visit.

I'd spent the entire movie wondering when we were going to find out that the grandparents had been possessed, what the demons wanted to do, how the empty well in the forest was going to play into banishing them and saving the day...

"Those aren't your grandparents. Who are those people? Oh my God, is that who you've spent the whole week with?"

Snapping back to reality with the twist "This is not a supernatural story" was a thousand times scarier than the original Halloween doing the opposite.

Shocking scenes don't stick with me over time; scary 'visuals' ebb away from me fairly quickly (I put it down to the brains' natural tendency to push away negative stimuli). Therefore my favorite horror is moody, subdued, atmospheric horror. The story itself; the buildup; rather than any specific scene. Favorite horror movie is "Let's Scare Jessica to Death" (1972); 1965's "The Haunting" (dir Robert Wise); and other more subtle films of this ilk. I favor unreliable narrators, characters with blind-spots, and ambiguous menace.

Plus I think something else too: all visuals are losing their power these days as we as a society shuffle around enslaved to daily diets of media. Media saturation effaces the impact which 'lone' imagery used to be able to haunt us with. For example: remember the spooky TV-set in 'Poltergeist'? That story takes place before the onset of 24 hr cable programming and 24 hr news feeds from CNN. But these days, if you are a TV junkie and spend your life watching TV, the prospect of a 'menacing' TV set is just not likely to terrify you.

Meanwhile, think how different an experience it is if you visit a medical oddities museum and stand before a dead fetus in a jar of formaldehyde. That's something you just don't encounter, up-close-and-personal, very often in your life. Or how about if you've ever walked along the shore of a lake and seen a rotting rowboat or a drowned animal lying at your feet.

Yup. For me, (speaking just for myself only) nothing I see on a screen or computer monitor these days has any 'power' anymore. My mind regards it all as boring and staid.

Wow - no references to The Shining yet? I first saw that around the age of 7 or 8. About the time the kids finger started saying "red rum" and the scenes of rooms with waves of blood colliding and cascading everywhere is when my mom said, "Jason, I think you should go to bed."

First time ever I complied without a moments' hesitation. I cowered under my covers for a good hour or two before falling asleep. I've watched the entire movie since then and not been as affected, but that was my first scary experience ever. Not a fan of horror now, and suspect that had a lot to do with my distaste for the genre as a whole.

Rhoda Nightingale said:

When I was a kid, the movie that scared me the most was Who Framed Roger Rabbit? I had nightmares about steamrollers for years. YEARS.

More recently, there's The Ring. I still can't be alone in a room with a staticky television. It still gets to me. Also, the lawnmower scene in Sinister. Egads. Even the soundtrack is horrifying.

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I actually watched the Ring last night. I have it on dvd.

Frankie007 said:

I actually watched the Ring last night. I have it on dvd.

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Not on video

There is a movie I know as Djinn, but has different names in different countries, is French production I believe.
There is a scene where the djinn is inside, in shadow, and stretches out, and it is creepy as f.

I just watched a movie called Under the Shadow, set during the Iran/Iraq War, where a woman's daughter becomes possessed by a djinni. Is that the same one? It was good.

The part in Alien where the guy (maybe the captain? I don't remember) is in the ducts, and the other crew members can see the alien on their scanner as it approaches him, but he can't see anything because it's pitch black, then he turns around and IT'S RIGHT THERE gets me every time. I even know it's coming and it still makes me nervous as hell and I jump every time.

I don't get scared by a lot of movies. When I was a kid, Phantasm freaked me out a ton, especially the scene where the kid wakes up to find The Tall Man over his bed, looking down at him. That messed me up.

As much as I love horror movies, though...how many scared me? A lot of gory films like Hellraiser and Event Horizon I think are more awesome and cool than scary, and films like The Exorcist suck me into the story more than scare me. I'd say Nightmare on Elm Street freaked me out when I saw it at twelve. Not Krueger so much as the whole environment of the film feeling trippy and surreal. Especially when Tina comes in that body bag...that messed with me.

Ju-On has many scenes that are creepy, but the bed scene messed me up (I'm noticing a thing with beds and sleep...)

But I think the most genuinely scary thing I've seen, and it took me awhile to think of it, would be the chase scene in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The whole third act of that movie feels like something out of a nightmare. Like, it's so relentless and so impossible to escape, and, even when it's over, the main character is broken beyond repair. It's just nightmarish. And so much of it is nonverbal. There's little explanation, little dialogue, it's just...nonstop.

I really love the scene from The Conjuring (2013) when mother plays hide-and-seek with children, and then she hears claps in the opposite side of where her daughter is hiding. And then there are two clapping hands that are sticking out of a wardrobe.

carroll said:

I really love the scene from The Conjuring (2013) when mother plays hide-and-seek with children, and then she hears claps in the opposite side of where her daughter is hiding. And then there are two clapping hands that are sticking out of a wardrobe.

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Yes!

CBJason said:

Wow - no references to The Shining yet? I first saw that around the age of 7 or 8. About the time the kids finger started saying "red rum" and the scenes of rooms with waves of blood colliding and cascading everywhere is when my mom said, "Jason, I think you should go to bed."

First time ever I complied without a moments' hesitation. I cowered under my covers for a good hour or two before falling asleep. I've watched the entire movie since then and not been as affected, but that was my first scary experience ever. Not a fan of horror now, and suspect that had a lot to do with my distaste for the genre as a whole.

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The Shining was hilarious to me...even as a kid. I still laugh at most of the scenes and Jack's face

Heh, like I said, as an adult less visceral than as a kid, but still get shivers from the "redrum" scene - and of course Jack Nicholson's line - "Here's Johnny!"

I later learned that line was actually one of the most famous ad lib lines in the history of cinema! Didn't know that wasn't​ part of the original script!

The infamous one second pale captain howdy baleful snarlface befouling the cryptic darkness in the exorcist where regan is first introduced to her charming little ouija board buddy, truly unnerving stuff!

Although he isn't considered a horror director by most, David Lynch has created some of the most terrifying scenes in cinema and on television.

The end of Mulholland Drive when the tiny old couple emerge from under the door and chase Betty/Diane; not to mention the thing behind the diner. The "as a matter of fact, I'm there right now" scene in Lost Highway. Most of Inland Empire. And, of course, Twin Peaks, season three, episode eight. "Got a light?"

Alot of people say that the Exorcist was the scariest movie they have ever seen. I was one of the few that actually caught a big screen viewing in 2008. They ran for like three nights.

It did not hold up at all. The audience was actually laughing.

I hate to say it, but if you were to take a movie like say, the Conjuring, back to the time The Exorcist was running, it would be much much scarier. Like heart attack inducing, no pregnant women in the theater scary.

I think the Conjuring is a solid film but I watched it three times since it was released, I've watched The Exorcist innumerable times, I just watched it the other night actually, it's all about the layers for me, it's a brutal story that bubbles beneath executed with unbelievable grace, the subtle touches make it an unsettling experience, the surface is a volatile landscape but search beneath and it ripples the whole damn skin so awfully that you can't help but recoil in both disgust and mirth. Will always remain top tier for me in terms of what I consider frightening, it's got so many angles and shades even though it has dated badly in areas, it remains a powerhouse.

In The Fourth Kind when Dr. Tyler hears herself screaming on the voice recorder she left running after she fell asleep, though she has no memory of anything happening. Everything about that movie creeps me the hell out, though. I LOVE the way The Fourth Kind used the documentary horror style, and how little is ever shown or explained. But the way she's listening to proof that something unspeakably terrible just happened to her and STILL doesn't remember what... that plays hardcore on my natural terror of losing control.

Another scene that really freaked me out, especially the first time I saw it, is the scene very early in Silent Hill when all the distorted humanoid monsters start coming at them. What's scary about it (and numerous other scenes in the original Silent Hill) is how the monsters are right out there, in the light, fully revealed and completely undeniable. It's not a "jump" scare, and they don't stop coming. The look of the monsters also really freaked me out. I've always found distorted human-like monsters to be the creepiest visually, and since I'd never even heard of the game before seeing the movie, the visuals of the monsters were utterly unlike anything I'd seen before.

As a young child, the scene that scared me most was actually from The NeverEnding Story. It isn't really a horror movie, but there's a scene where the camera lingers on the dark woods. You hear a low growl and the glowing red eyes of the Creature of Darkness appear at the edge of the woods, then they disappear and you hear it running away through the brush. Probably wouldn't bother me much now, but was pretty scary at age five.

Alien:
-Nothing tops the chestburster scene. I know people swear by the whole "what you don't see is scarier" mantra, but every so often, what you see is what's scary.
-The entire sequence with Dallas up in the vents, knowing the alien is somewhere close to him.

Pet Sematary:
-Zelda. Just Zelda. The rest of the film is quite campy and cheesy, which is why it was so freaky to me. I kept seeing her in my head for days after I watched that movie.

The Babadook:
-When the main character lady is watching a TV news story about how a woman killed her family (or something like that) and the character then sees herself smiling creepily behind the window of the house in the news report. It's a very subtle scene that straight up gave me goosebumps. No jump scares, no gore, no monsters, just a good ol' shiver.

In The Descent, towards the beginning, long before any monsters are encountered, one of the young women gets stuck while caving. It's a tight passage going vertically and then a 90° bend. She started to panic, and the experienced leader went back to calm her. Being such a realistic fear, I found it disturbing in a way that fantasy monsters simply don't.

OK, be honest: who's freaked out just thinking about that?

The most scared I ever got in a movie theater was at the end of Carrie when the hand came out of the ground at the tombstone. Don't know if that qualifies for the "scariest" movie moment, but at the age of 15, sitting in a theater, that almost literally scared the crap out of me. Took me a while to shake it off, too.

Only other movie that got me like that was in the beginning of Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte, but I think only cuz there was nothing like it on TV at the time. I was a really little kid, maybe 7 or 8, and when Betty Davis' fiance (husband?) gets his hand chopped off in the beginning (and they show it), it got me good.

In Ghost Story, what still gives me a scare is the scene close to the end where the hero is sitting helplessly waiting for death as the apparition comes down the hall toward him. In the American version of the Grudge all the scenes which take place in the haunted Japanese house creep me out because of the lighting and shadow, and also because everyone who goes there always goes alone, without anyone even knowing where they are, and if anything happened to them in that place there would be no rescue. That poor Japanese schoolgirl...and what was found later in the attic...that too.

Audition after Asami disappears from the hotel. It's really disturbing.

falconara said:

In Ghost Story, what still gives me a scare is the scene close to the end where the hero is sitting helplessly waiting for death as the apparition comes down the hall toward him. In the American version of the Grudge all the scenes which take place in the haunted Japanese house creep me out because of the lighting and shadow, and also because everyone who goes there always goes alone, without anyone even knowing where they are, and if anything happened to them in that place there would be no rescue. That poor Japanese schoolgirl...and what was found later in the attic...that too.

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Ghost story from 1981? That movie took me years to finish as it scared the crap out of me as a kid. I still watch it about once a month.

I would say the Grudge (US) is the scariest movie I saw as an adult.