15. “The Descent”(2005)
Speaking of YIKESes … Neil Marshall‘s anti-spelunking manifesto may lose its focus in its later parts (and make sure you watch the U.K. rather than the U.S. cut of the ending which is even more of a letdown) but prior to that it is one of the most inventively claustrophobic horrors in recent memory. Arguably, its initial set up — a group of young women with some interpersonal issues get lost in some underground caves — doesn’t even need a monster aspect at all, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t completely lose our shit the first time we got a look at the goblin thingie.
14. “Jacob’s Ladder” (1990)
Oftentimes it is a moment or image that is very nearly ordinary, but deviates from the norm in a very distinctive manner that is the most frightening. And so it is in Adrian Lyne‘s vastly underrated film. There are many scenes of strobe-lit panic, notably during a nightclub dance scene in which Elizabeth Pena appears to turn into, or be having sex with, some sort of lizard-monster, but the most bone-deep chills in this chilling film come from the ghastly glimpses of the creatures in Jacob’s (Tim Robbins) mind/memory — especially the dude with no eyes. (No perfect embed, but the trailer shows a few shots of them, in the back of the car and then at 1m31s in the surgery).
13. “The Vanishing” (1988)
For a while, before it was readily available on home video, George Sluizer‘s “Spoorloos” aka “The Vanishing” was almost like an urban myth among horror connoisseurs, so much so that it’s probable that word of its unforgettable climax reached you before you even saw it. And yet, the actual thing was hardly lessened at all in impact. The ending reaches a level of psychological torture and pessimism that is rarely ever attempted in American films (maybe “The Mist” is the only thing that has come close), as even Sluizer himself seemed to know when he directed the vastly inferior, toothless U.S. remake.
12. “The Orphanage” (2007)
Having recently talked up Juan Antonio Bayona‘s beautifully creepy and sad ghost story in our Gothic Horror feature, we wondered if we should maybe exclude it from this list and then realized that we absolutely couldn’t. For real, honest, soul-deep creepiness, it simply can’t be bettered, and it has a few killer moments of high tension too. Geraldine Chaplin waking up after the hit and run is one such, but the simplicity of this, our first proper look at, and Belen Rueda‘s first interaction with, the sackcloth-faced boy, makes it indelible.
11. “The Omen” (1976)
What does every little pint-sized spawn of Satan want for their birthday? Why a doting nanny hanging herself from an upstairs window in front of all the guests shouting “It’s all for you, Damian,” of course. As with several other entries here, perhaps the scariest thing about this scene is the nanny’s inappropriate gaiety. Waving over at Damian and trying to catch his attention from the house, she seems almost ecstatic, in a kind of weird religious fervor as she gleefully calls out to him — you don’t even really notice the rope around her neck until she jumps.