Sometimes you just need a few extra seconds before all the screaming and stabbing starts
up again.
From nightmarish jump scares to unbelievably weird-looking beasts, these are the most paused
horror movie moments.
David Kessler is having a rough vacation.
He just wanted to go backpacking across the Yorkshire moors, but the moment he steps off
the beaten path, he's attacked by a werewolf.
When he wakes up in a London hospital, he keeps having ghastly nightmares.
These freaky dreams are the scariest parts of An American Werewolf in London.
From the hospital, we cut to David's home.
He's working on his college homework, his family is watching TV, and everything seems
peaceful.
Before we can get our bearings, an army of mutant Nazi monsters bursts into the house
and guns down David's family.
They burn his home, shoot everything to pieces, and kill David.
And that's when our hero wakes up in his hospital bed.
It was all just a nasty Nazi dream, and his sympathetic nurse is only too happy to open
up the curtains and let some sunlight in.
But as she pulls back the shades, there's a Nazi-Beast standing there, knife in hand,
and he stabs the nurse to death.
We haven't even seen the American werewolf yet, and we're already pressing pause so we
can collect our nerves.
The psycho witch turned evil spirit, Bathsheba is having a great time in The Conjuring, terrorizing
the poor Perron family.
Of course, if those kids think they're scared whenever Bathsheba shows up, then they've
got no idea what we're going through.
Whether she's playing "hide and clap" in the cellar or getting all possessive, every time
this hag shows up on screen, we're hiding behind the sofa.
Of course, there's one Bathsheba scene that stands head and shoulders above the rest.
It's the scene where young Andrea hears something banging around inside her wardrobe.
Nervous, she goes to check it out, flings open the doors, and finds nothing inside.
That's because Bathsheba is up on top, just waiting to pounce.
Horror fans will want to press the pause button here for multiple reasons.
One, it's our first good look at the demon haunting the Perron family, and she is a terrifying
sight to behold.
Secondly, this is one of the scariest scenes in movie history, and when your heart rate
spikes to new and dangerous levels, you'll need to take a break and remind yourself it's
just a movie.
Wes Craven and Sam Raimi are masters of the horror genre, and their films have a combined
body count higher than most serial killers.
In addition to giving us some of the scariest movies ever made, Craven and Raimi also had
a friendly feud going on, where they'd reference each other's movies in their own films.
For example, in the first Evil Dead, a slashed-up movie poster for The Hills Have Eyes makes
an appearance.
Craven returned the favor in A Nightmare on Elm Street when Nancy Thompson falls asleep
watching Evil Dead.
Raimi's well-loved film makes another appearance in the Craven-directed Scream, when one character
considers watching the undead action flick before deciding against it.
"How many Evil Dead?
How many Hellraiser?"
As for Raimi, he absolutely loves putting Freddy Krueger's glove into his deadite franchise.
Not only did it show up in an episode of Ash vs. Evil Dead, but the deadly fashion accessory
also appears in Raimi's horror masterpiece, Evil Dead II.
Eagle-eyed horror fans should press pause when Ash Williams heads down into the fruit
cellar or walks into the woodshed.
The glove shows up in both scenes, hanging on the wall in all its razor-bladed glory.
Now we can't stop thinking about that Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash movie that we're never going
to get.
The Stephen King bestseller Gerald's Game seems like an unfilmable book.
The plot follows a woman named Jessie who retreats to a secluded country house with
her husband Gerald, where they hope to rekindle their marriage.
Unfortunately, after cuffing his wife to the bed, Gerald keels over from a heart attack,
leaving his wife handcuffed to the bed alone.
From there, the novel pretty much takes place inside Jessie's head.
Somehow, director Mike Flanagan and actress Carla Gugino turned this crazy book into one
of the very best King adaptations.
Of course, that also means they had to shoot the infamous degloving scene.
"Okay then.
Visualize it then.
All of it."
Now, there are horror moments that make you scream, and ones that make you want to throw
up.
The degloving scene from Gerald's Game will make you want to do both at once.
Desperate to get free, especially since a hungry dog and the creepy Moonlight Man might
return any time, Jessie takes some serious steps to escape her bonds.
She slits her wrist with a piece of glass and then she just starts yanking until the
skin on her hand starts peeling off.
She basically turns her hand inside out to make her great escape.
This gnarly scene sent people into hysterics, and once it's all over, the pause button will
come in handy as you proceed to lose your lunch.
It is full of blink-and-you'll-miss-it moments that require a pause button to fully appreciate,
like the scene when Ben Hanscom spends a day studying at the library.
Unfortunately, things take an unsettling turn when a librarian shows up.
When she hands Ben a book on local history, she shames him for staying indoors during
the summer, but Ben just ignores her.
"A boy should be spending his summer with friends.
Don't you have any friends?"
"Can I have the book now?"
However, reading about Derry isn't a relaxing way to spend your day.
The town has a haunted history, and Ben is horrified to learn about a devastating explosion
that decapitated some poor kid and sent his head hurling into a tree.
The images are upsetting, but the really scary stuff is happening behind Ben.
After the librarian leaves, another librarian, who was previously shelving volumes in the
background before the conversation, stops what she's doing and starts staring at Ben
- just before Pennywise starts appearing in the book's pages.
Press pause, and you'll see she's grinning an evil grin and watching like a predator
about to devour its prey.
Obviously, this means that Pennywise is prowling about, and the longer you look, the more goosebumps
you get.
Mandy is an LSD-infused nightmare, complete with tigers, chainsaw battles, and a posse
of demon bikers who look like they just rode out of Hellraiser.
They're known as the Black Skulls, and they only love two things in this world: drugs
and pain.
There are legends of these guys riding up and down the interstate, murdering truckers
and hitchhikers, and these creatures share a weird connection with a psycho cult called
the Children of Dawn.
If these hippies ever need some muscle, they just blow a magical horn and the demons appear,
ready to ride.
The first time the Black Skulls roll onto the screen, shrouded by smoke and blood red
light, it's a moment to behold.
Much like the Cenobites, the Black Skulls each have their own grotesque look.
The design for each biker is so unique that we've got to press pause and marvel at each
one for just a moment… before they're unleashed on our poor heroes, and things get gory.
The Perfection follows two cellists who both attended the same prestigious conservatory.
After meeting for the first time, they go on a roadtrip across China.
However, icky stuff starts happening the moment they get on the road.
Current superstar Lizzie comes down with a mysterious flu, and her new friend and lover
Charlotte does her best to help Lizzie survive their nightmarish bus trip.
As they wind deeper and deeper into the Chinese mountains, Lizzie starts throwing up all over
the place.
Puking is bad enough, but when Charlotte takes a closer look, she sees that Lizzie's vomit
is full of maggots.
Even worse, Lizzie's arm starts wriggling, like insects are literally crawling under
her skin.
It looks like she's become some sort of bug incubator, and the insects are going to devour
her arm… until Charlotte pulls a meat cleaver out of her backpack and tells Lizzie to chop
off a limb.
When Lizzie pulls out that meat cleaver, we've got to hit pause so we can figure out what
the heck is going on.
But hey, don't worry, things are going to get way more bizarre before this film is over.
"Should we just get this check and pretend that none of this ever happened?"
"This is your moment.
You can bow out gracefully and I'll never hold it against you."
The Ritual follows four friends who head into the Swedish woods and encounter a pagan cult
that worships an ancient entity.
As it turns out, that entity really loves skewering people on tree branches.
The monster is called the Jötunn, a beast out of Norse mythology, and for most of the
film, the giant creature keeps out of sight.
It hides in the forest, plaguing our four heroes with horrible nightmares before turning
them into shish kebabs.
Eventually, the surviving backpackers are captured by that aforementioned cult, and
unlucky Dom is offered to the Jötunn as a sacrifice.
Up until this point, we still haven't seen the mysterious beast, but when Dom finally
finds himself face-to-face with the oversized creature, it's unlike anything we've ever
seen before.
The Jötunn has the body of a goat on steroids.
The top half of its head looks like a decapitated human torso with deer antlers.
Its glowing eyes are buried in a cavern where its face should be, and there are long human-like
arms hanging off the sides of its head.
It's a truly bizarre creature, and we just have to press pause and admire its wild design.
Unpopular ending aside, Signs is an entertaining and terrifying sci-fi flick, and there are
more than a few scenes in this M. Night Shyamalan film that scared us senseless.
But if we're talking about pause-worthy moments, we all know exactly what scene is going to
make this list: the Brazilian birthday party.
By this point in the film, it's pretty clear that aliens are invading Earth.
We've got crop circles, lights in the sky, and chattering voices on baby monitors.
But other than a quick glimpse of a leg, we haven't actually seen an alien yet.
That all changes when Merrill turns on the news.
Not wanting to freak out his family, he moves the television into a coat closet to follow
the invasion on the news.
When he sees a home video of a close encounter, Merrill loses his mind.
The footage is shot on a camcorder, lending a disturbing realism to the scene.
A Brazilian dad is filming his kid's birthday party, but the children are screaming and
crying because there's something awful outside.
The dad points his camera into an alleyway, and suddenly, the alien lurches into view.
The long-limbed creature is only onscreen for a second, but it's enough to send shivers
down our spines.
We're pressing pause as fast we can because we need to collect ourselves and to get a
better look at this ugly extraterrestrial.
Home invasion movies might be the scariest sort of horror movie.
After all, while Freddy Krueger won't actually kill you in your dreams, it's possible that
a trio of real-world mask-wearing psychos might drop by one night to terrorize you just
because you're home.
That's the premise of The Strangers, a chilling horror flick where a couple are having one
tough night even before the Strangers arrive.
When her boyfriend runs to the store, Kristen finds herself home alone and feeling a little
unsettled.
The house is eerily quiet and strangely empty, and something feels a little off, almost like
Kristen is being watched.
And that's because there's a masked killer standing in the hallway, just a few feet behind
her.
The villain stands in the door, perfectly happy to watch Kristen walk around the house,
tracking her as she moves from one side of the room to the other.
The whole thing is done in one wide shot, which creates an unbearable sense of anxiety.
The tension is so thick you could cut it with a knife, and things get so quietly intense
that we can't help but press pause.
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