Chloe's Not Scared

A few months ago, one of my Instagram followers asked me to list my top 5 scariest scenes from a horror movie. The question fascinated me, mostly because it was specific: top scenes, not movies. Scariest scenes, not best scenes. The question was asked by musician and friend Brendan Hanks, who is a fellow horror nut and former owner of a haunted house (in my opinion). We started chatting about scenes that I forgot, or my scenes that overlapped with his. Now we share this dialogue with you! In a top ten list form, of course… for the algorithm.

Disclaimer: there are so many scary scenes that didn’t make this list. For starters, scariness is subjective. Obviously I’m not scared of anything (see: the title of this blog, only a little joking), but I know some people are scared of ghosts or gore or zombies and that’s ok. We also decided not to add scenes that crank up the tension throughout the film (like Hitchcock or The Autopsy of Jane Doe) or scenes that are scary because of extreme violence (slashers, Ari Aster, etc). These are standalone scenes and standalone scares. Without further ado, here’s our list!

10. Signs (2002)- “It’s Behind!”

Chloe: M. Night Shyamalan is an excellent director of scary scenes; he knows how to do a scary reveal, a jumpscare, and of course a good twist. When watching Signs for the first time, this is the scene that stands out. It’s a found footage and disaster movie scene all in one, with Merril hunched over the tv in the closet. Beat by beat, the news anchor warns us of the material, suspense, we get a laugh from Merril and then: true horror. I remember rewinding this scene over and over again to play it for my friends to the point it became funny (though I think some of our laughter was due to discomfort in fear).

Brendan: Signs feels like a good jumping off point for discussing scary scenes because as a whole the movie has some aspects that get difficult to defend, like some plot points that don’t hold up to scrutiny, or an ending that ties too neat a bow on religious vexation. But never mind that, we have Joaquin Phoenix as a lovable dunderhead! As Merril Hess, Phoenix is the perfect audience insert to go down the rabbit hole watching too much cable news. Doing a quick genre switch to found footage makes for a great reveal – impossible to deny but as grainy as your favorite cryptid evidence. That it’s pushed along by a swell in James Newton Howard’s barn-burner (sorry) of a score is icing on the cake.

9. The Ring (2002)- The closet scene

Chloe: Amber Tamblyn’s fucked up face was the cause of many a teenage nightmare. Shoutout to the special effects artist Rick Baker for not only creating this image but also supposedly keeping it in a dark corner of the shop to scare the crew.

Brendan: Finding people who look like they’ve drowned when that also seems impossible: horrifying! It’s like The Fog all over again.

8. It Follows (2014)- The tall man in the doorway

Chloe: Much like The Sixth Sense, It Follows made me scared to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. And this scene in particular plays over and over in my mind. Up until this point in the film, we have only seen “It” as naked grandmas and the like, usually in crowds. The fact that “It” made it not only all the way into the house but that Maika Monroe’s character is the only one who notices just cranks up the terror. Can’t wait to see what David Robert Mitchell does next.

Brendan: The creature of It Follows is always presenting itself in some manner that its target might find unsettling. It’s almost exploratory in that way, poking around the edges to see what might work best. In that sense, it’s funny to think of the creature coming to the conclusion that what might be horrifying is A Very Tall Man. It’s not wrong.

7. Ju-On (2002) and The Grudge (2004)– Kayako’s jaw

Chloe: Well, I guess we find out why she was making that noise!

Brendan: Is this the most any of us has related to Ted Raimi? I think so. The unrated cut has a longer shot of Kayako after the reveal, but honestly it works better as a short cut. It hits the animal part of your brain that recognizes something is not just wrong, but very wrong. The image doesn’t last quite long enough to put your finger on it, and you end up just screaming (internally, I imagine) along with Ted. At least that was my experience of it in the theater.

6. Mulholland Drive (2001)- Winkie’s diner

Chloe: We debated putting this on the list because it is not a traditional horror movie, but decided to do it since it’s one of the best jump scares ever. This psychological interlude plays with the idea of ‘what if your dream was true,’ in a very specific ad relatable way. God bless David Lynch.

Brendan: Patrick Fischler is so great here. There’s no setup to this scene and he is immediately believable as someone that would take their sounding board on a field trip (I always assumed it was his therapist, but I can’t remember if it’s actually stated). Fischler plays the scene with a level of vulnerability that gets the viewer right on his wavelength for how this dream makes him feel. This in turn makes us feel helpless and terrible, just like a good nightmare should.

5. Alien (1979)- Dallas in the air duct vents

Chloe: Maybe the scariest movie of all time.  While the chest-bursting scene could’ve made this list, it’s Dallas in the vents that got me upon first watch. Like most of these scary scenes, we all know what’s going to happen, but yet we can’t look away. Claustrophobia at its finest! I’ve been painting my newly purchased house recently (hence the brief hiatus), and even just temporarily removing the central air vents makes me think of this scene.

Brendan: I shouldn’t write anything about this scene until we discuss the bonus situation., but then Brett and Parker never got their due either. Tom Skerrit makes Dallas a likable presence even when making the boneheaded decision to break quarantine, which is critical to the dramatic tension here – we know what’s going to happen but we’d really rather it didn’t. The bowels of the Nostromo are cramped, grimy, and disgusting… such that an alien jumping out at one of our main character is shocking but not surprising.

4. It (1990 and 2017)– Georgie’s death

Chloe: Is it cheating if we put both 1990 and 2017’s version? I don’t think so, since they both do the same thing: scare the shit out of us. Tim Curry and Bill Skarsgård are both SO good as Pennywise, but for different reasons. Curry is insidious in his humor, but Skarsgård is just plain terror, especially with his eyes. The book is my favorite Stephen King (I think, or maybe the page count just Stockholm Syndrome’d me), and this is definitely the best and scariest opening in horror. Who knew that a clown in a sewer could reinvent the cultural perception of clowns AND sewers?!

Brendan: “Iconic” is a word that is tossed around too frequently these days, but I can’t think of a more succinct descriptor for these scenes. I think it’s fair to say if the average person knows only one thing about IT, it’s that a kid gets eaten by a clown in a sewer. The economy of the whole thing is brilliant – it could easily function as its own short and is instead the inciting event for the rest of the story; it sets up the tone of the story where things that adults find very mundane (storm drains, library stacks) are the source of menace; and, maybe most importantly, it’s fucking brutal. No one is guaranteed safety here.

3. The Shining (1980)- Jack wants the bat

Chloe: It’s not exactly groundbreaking to declare Stanley Kubrick a genius, but The Shining is my favorite movie of all time. Shelley DuVall (RIP) has the most underrated performance in this film. People always talk about Jack but Wendy’s character has the harder job, and this scene shows both Nicholson’s crazy and DuVall’s fear. I remember seeing this film for the first time and just being terrified she was gonna trip and fall down those stairs. As a notoriously clumsy person, I know I would.

Brendan: Every backward step up those stairs is precarious and DuVall really nails it as the spouse that has been thrown into the deep end of her husband’s mania. Likewise, Nicholson feels like he has been teeing up this whole time to tell his wife he’s going to bash her brains in (maybe King had a point about Jack’s performance). I’m not in favor of readings that dismiss the supernatural parts of the movie, but it’s hard to deny that the truly frightening bits are far more mundane.

2. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)- Dinner table scene

Chloe: Recently just watched this for the first time and damn, Tobe Hooper. By this point in the film, I was truly like “how the shit is Sally gonna get out of this one?” I’ve rarely felt so hopeless while knowing the main character will survive in the sequels. 

Brendan: The Hitchhiker’s mockery here is an outstanding bit of sadism. There is no point in the scene where you’re sure of what any of the captors is going to do, but there’s also no question that Sally will be completely helpless to it. It’s all incredibly fucked up.

1. The Conjuring (2013)- Hide and Clap game

Chloe: Say what you will about James Wan, but those pale-ass hands coming out of the darkness reinvented horror in the 2010’s. 

Brendan: Both of the clapping game scares in this movie scare the shit out of me. The hands extending out from the clothes inside the wardrobe? Fuck that. Quit making me scared of clothes. But the clap in the dark stairwell? That extinguishes the match lighting the scene? I’m done, heart stopped, soul exiting body. It’s not elaborate or gory, just an excellent payoff to Wan setting up both the space and the situation.

What do you think of our list? Is there anything that you would add?

About Brendan Hanks: Thanks for reading our list! Chloe and I love talking scary movies and it was a pleasure to collaborate here. A bit about me: I live in Iowa City with my partner, Kathleen, who cannot be in the same room as me when I’m watching a horror movie, and my dog, Mortimer, who would make a steadfast companion in any horror scenario (because he would need me to be his emotional support human). A sometimes producer of electronic music, I contributed the main theme to Philip Rabalais’ short film Earth FM under the alias Limit Infrared. For this reason I have an IMDB entry, which always cracks me up when I remember it. Now for the real plug: I’m on Letterboxd writing reviews and doing ratings but I’m abysmal at finding people to follow. If you follow my account MacreadysHat I promise a follow back so I can expand the range of movies that show up in my feed to check out.