20. “Under the Skin” (2014)
Another very recent addition to our canon of unassailable terrifying moments, we wrote at length last year about our love for this sequence from Jonathan Glazer‘s masterful “Under the Skin” (it was our favorite shot of the year, in our favorite film of 2014) — particularly the last section of this clip in which Scarlett Johansson’s alien drags the swimmer’s lifeless body past the wailing baby on the beach. It’s so completely extraordinary and, well, alien, that in one simple, unadorned moment, we glimpse a perspective that is light years removed from our own humanity.
19. “Psycho” (1960)
No, not the Bernard Herrmann-accompanied, brilliantly edited shower scene, not the tricky clever camerawork that has us push Martin Balsam down the stairs, but this simple, relatively static end shot is the moment we’ve picked from Hitchcock‘s indelible “Psycho.” Why? The answer is obvious: it’s in that totally deranged smile. The tiny flash dissolve to a skull, the mad voiceover, the isolation of the shot — all this is the icing on the cake, but that insane smile from the remarkably handsome Anthony Perkins is single scariest thing in a very scary film, period.
18. “Silence of The Lambs” (1990)
We may have a disagreement here: there are folk who would unhesitatingly choose Hannibal Lecter’s grotesque escape as their scare-highlight of Jonathan Demme‘s genius horror. Others might suggest one of the quid pro quo exchanges between Lecter and Clarice Starling. But we’re going for the bit in Buffalo Bill’s basement which is neither gory nor particularly psychologically rich. It’s just damn frightening, as we see through the eyes (and night vision goggles) of the murderer, and know that Foster’s Starling is blind and helpless in the dark.
17. “The Thing”(1982)
With a few notable exceptions, we’ve largely avoided effects-heavy sequences as oftentimes they’re gross rather than scary, or reliant more on jump scares than actual creepiness. But it could also be because with this brilliant scene from his “The Thing” remake, John Carpenter simply set the bar for effects-based scares too high for anyone else to clear. Starting with the chest caving in during defibrillation, the scene just gets wilder and wilder, and the practical creature effects (mostly by Rob Bottin) totally keep pace.
16. “Se7en” (1995)
Maybe not the most disturbing moment in David Fincher‘s great “Se7en,” (that would maybe be the glimpse of the Lust apparatus, or the ending with the box), still if you don’t leap out of your skin when the fetid, skeletal remains of what was once a man shudder back to life well, we’d advise someone check your pulse too. In fact almost any one of the inventive deaths that John Doe cooks up could feature here (Gluttony’s obese engorged ankles tied with rope is another impossible-to-forget image) but this scene has all that atmosphere and a good old-fashioned YIKES too.