Sometimes all it takes is one terrifying moment to elevate a horror movie from flash-in-the-pan
fun to a must-see movie.
A single scene can make the difference between a movie that comes and goes without much fanfare
and one that makes its way into cinematic history.
These films managed to make moments that are not only unforgettable, but ones which viewers
might not be so eager to revisit.
Elevator down
Ti West's modern horror masterpiece, The House of the Devil, is a quiet, tense film—right
up until its infamous ending.
The movie surrounds Samantha, a babysitter who reluctantly agrees to keep an eye on a
couple's bedridden mother.
Predictably, the night doesn't quite go as planned.
But while the film as a whole is suspenseful and masterful in its building of tension,
it's the finale that makes it all pay off: a spectacularly terrifying satanic ritual
and chase scene featuring blood, guts and the reveal of a horrifically deformed grandmother,
the matriarch of a devil-worshipping cult.
The end is relentless.
It hits the viewer like a freight train and doesn't slow its momentum for a second.
You'll be out of breath by the time it's over and likely not anxious to revisit it any time
soon.
A close shave
Eli Roth tends to excel at nausea-inducing moments, largely involving gore and mutilation,
and while his filmography is chock-full of gut-churning nastiness, there's something
about the brutal simplicity of his debut film, Cabin Fever.
The scene in question involves one of the characters shaving her legs.
The catch?
Well, the plot of the movie revolves around some 20-somethings in the woods who are exposed
to a flesh-eating virus.
So as she shaves her legs, her flesh is peeling from the bone, piece by piece.
It's both repulsive and enthralling, and you'll probably never want to watch it again.
Discovering the tapes
Few scary movies have utilized sound scares quite as well as the psychological horror
juggernaut Session 9.
The film takes place in an abandoned mental asylum and shows how the lingering spirits
affect a group of men who are there to refurbish the building.
One of the men, Mike, discovers a cache of tape recordings of therapy sessions with a
patient suffering from dissociative identity disorder, who also might also be possessed.
These tapes play throughout the film, but it's that first scene that stands out as the
film's creepiest moment.
The squeal of the tape, the moment the voices appear, everything about it is masterfully
executed.
As soon as the voices start, the viewer knows something is wrong.
Something bad is going to happen as the sessions move closer and closer to the titular session
nine.
"Mary?"
"Have you seen the doll Mr. Doctor?"
The scene doesn't jump out at you.
It doesn't feature a gory dismemberment.
But it's creepy to the point that viewers will want to avoid it upon any future revisiting
of the film.
The sloth
David Fincher's Se7en features a number of gruesome mutilations, but choosing its standout
doesn't feature dismemberment or decapitation.
It simply features a man left to rot.
The film's villain had chained the victim for a year and simply never let him move,
doing just enough to keep him alive for a long enough time to allow his body to waste
away.
The makeup is horrifying, creating an image of a man who looks like something other than
human.
It's a nauseating sight to behold, which is exactly what it should be.
And it's all capped off with the reveal that the victim is still alive.
In a film full of horrific imagery and dark plot turns, the Sloth victim is the hardest
moment to endure more than once.
It doesn't have the tense narrative turns of the film's grim ending.
It doesn't need to.
It's horrifying enough on premise alone.
Night vision
The Descent is an exercise in unrelenting horror, and while the whole film may be difficult
to dive into more than once, the night vision scene in particular is almost too terrifying
to screen twice.
The film features a group of friends on a caving trip who find themselves hunted by
a group of cave-dwelling mutants.
The film does a great job of keeping the creatures hidden until the perfect moment.
Already thriving on claustrophobia and fear of the dark, the film switches to the point
of view of one of the women as she uses her camcorder's night vision feature.
Her gaze jolts back and forth between her friends, when suddenly one of the creatures
is visible in plain sight behind one of them.
It's a perfect jump-scare and ratchets the fear present in the film exponentially.
Home invasion
Few modern horror films have been as acclaimed as It Follows, a tense film about a girl being
relentlessly pursued by a creature that takes the form of other humans.
It's a brilliantly simple premise for a horror film and it works extremely well, but the
home invasion sequence is easily the film's standout moment.
The creature, which can only be seen by protagonist Jay, arrives at Jay's house, where she and
her friends are posted up in hopes of capitalizing on strength in numbers.
As the creature appears, she springs into a panic, locking herself in her room, only
to soon be joined by her friends…and an unusually tall man behind them.
It's found her, and the image it takes this time is one of the most disturbing forms it
takes in the film.
'We all float'
Before it was the unstoppable box office force of 2017, It was a lower-budget affair showcasing
a tour-de-force performance by Tim Curry as Pennywise the Dancing Clown.
The remake is an exceptional piece of horror, but when comparing how each film adapted the
most iconic moment from the novel they're both based on, the original is head and shoulders
above the new version.
It comes down to Curry's performance.
"Aren't you going to say hello?"
He takes Pennywise's demeanor in a direction that somehow feels even fresher today than
it did in 1990.
Everything he says feels so surreally out of place that the audience can't help but
feel creeped out.
"They float, Georgie.
They float."
It's all tied together with the infamous final shot of Pennywise's true form seeping through,
yellowed fangs and inhuman eyes.
It created a generation of kids who are still afraid of clowns to this day, and this scene
is what started it all.
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