Like every October, scary season is back. That means last-minute costumes, spooky decorations, and reminders of some things we would rather forget. It’s that time of year when the dark corner of the bedroom starts to feel a little suspect and that pile of clothes on your chair suddenly looks a little different than before…
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. The following scenes and moments—which I have masochistically ranked in order of fear and longevity—are the bits and pieces of horror movies that have lived rent-free in my mind ever since I first saw them. Some will be on many similar lists, and some will probably not—this is entirely personal—yet each one still haunts me to my core, in one way or another. Read on if you dare, mwuahahahaha, and use the guide below to find them on services like AppleTV, Netflix, Prime Video and elsewhere.
10. All Of The Smiles - Smile (2022)
I always find that a good measure for how scary a horror movie is is how afraid I am to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Do I check behind the door? Do I try not to think about what’s behind the shower curtain? Do I hum a little tune to distract myself? How swiftly do I make my way back to my room? You know: just totally normal, grown-up behaviour.
The most recent movies that’ve had a lasting impression on my late-night bathroom trips are Parker Finn’s Smile and Smile 2—especially the memory of all those horrifying, unmoving, beaming faces that appear throughout Finn’s excellent directorial debut, and his equally good sequel. These are the kinds of movies that fans of sharp, cleanly directed horror will love—more in line with the likes of Midsommar and Get Out than the crueller side of the genre. They’re the first I’ll mention here, as three years is a short amount of time in the horror world—though I don’t doubt that they’ll be lodged in my brain for a few more, at least.
9. “Take Off Your Wigs” - The Witches (1990)
I had to put at least one childhood trauma on this list, and while Tim Curry’s Pennywise looking up from a sewer drain in It definitely scared the living hell out of me when I was way too young to have seen it, Angelica Huston’s transformation in The Witches (a horror, like Hocus Pocus or Beetlejuice, that younger members of the family might enjoy) has for some reason lingered in the memory more.
These days, it’s nice to be able to appreciate the movie for its cinematic qualities. The scene and the wider movie were directed by the legendary filmmaker Nicolas Roeg, who used wide-angle lenses to warp the witches' already terrifying faces—all of which were designed by Jim Henson’s legendary ‘Creature Shop’.
But good luck explaining that to a child who’s just seen it for the first time. Indeed, ask anyone who grew up in the 1990s and they’ll likely tell you that these images were burned onto their retinas.
8. The Birthday Party - Signs (2002)
As someone who resolutely goes to the theatre for any new release from M. Night Shyamalan, the director’s early run of movies has come to feel like sacred texts. This definitely goes for The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable (both of which I’d also highly recommend), but my favourite will always be his 2002 movie Signs—a story about a family, a farm, and a rather under-researched alien invasion.
The movie itself is not the kind to make you lose sleep, but nobody who’s seen Signs will ever forget the movie’s jaw-dropping reveal. In true M. Night fashion, this is a story that toys with its characters’ beliefs and uncertainties, building to a shock moment of found footage from a child’s birthday party—it won’t be the last one on this list.
7. The Roof Scuttle - Hereditary (2018)
Ari Aster’s Hereditary is a notoriously terrifying movie for many reasons. There is the main character’s ever-approaching work deadline—a classic Aster anxiety-inducer. There is the suggestion of a cabal of freaky old people. There’s the fateful meeting of a child’s head and a telephone pole. But the absolute worst, of course, is the moment when a character lingers on the roof, in a decidedly inhuman position, before scuttling away into some unseen corner.
There are plenty of factors that made Hereditary a sensation, a movie that announced both Aster as a visionary director (and if you like Midsommar and Eddington, definitely check it out) and A24 as an indie powerhouse in one foul scuttle. However, that moment is the one that has lingered with me the longest.
6. Damien’s Birthday Party - The Omen (1976)
As promised, another joyful gathering of children to witness a scene more suited to our nightmares. This time, it's little Damien's birthday in Richard Donner’s The Omen, which naturally was the last movie Donner made before moving on to joyful things like Superman, The Goonies, and the Lethal Weapon franchise.
That’s a rather peculiar career path, but Donner’s direction probably helps to explain (alongside the presence of the great Gregory Peck) why The Omen is still viewed as a classy horror—not quite on the same level as The Exorcist or Carrie, but certainly playing in a similar ballpark. And this sequence, which ends rather badly for Damien’s nanny (not that you can tell from the horrifying delight in her face), definitely deserves some credit for that legacy.
5. The Bathroom Scene - The Shining (1980)
If, like me, you watched The Shining at a relatively young age, you can probably list off quite a few moments that stuck with you: the twins in the hallway, Danny’s shocked expression, the “you’ve always been here” guy, and so on, so forth. If somehow you’ve yet to see it, this is a Kubrick movie on par with Eyes Wide Shut and A Clockwork Orange—you know, the spookier end of the director’s canon.
The award for most f-ed up sequence will, of course (yes, the blowjob bear is close second) always go to the women in the bathtub. The scene may not have aged the best—it’s definitely on the creepy side from Jack’s POV, not to mention a little ageist—but as one of cinema’s freakiest moments, it certainly deserves its infamy.
4. The Tall Man - It Follows (2015)
Speaking of f-ed up sequences, there are more than a few that linger with you in David Robert Mitchell’s exceptional It Follows. This is a movie from the early days of A24, but it’s also one of the studio’s most surreal movies—think less Hereditary and more I Saw the TV Glow, and you’ll have some idea of what to expect.
The movie is historically significant for Mitchel’s inventive trick of allowing the camera to pan around a 360-degree pivot, allowing the viewer to start to worry about which of the various people we see is actually the one following. However, the most terrifying moment comes when Maika Monroe’s Jay is first caught up with, in a house with friends, late at night, when a figure emerges out of nowhere and fills the hallway. That he’s now referred to as “The Tall Man” is enough to send a shiver down my spine.
3. The Ending - The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Given the hype and the proto-viral marketing campaign that made The Blair Witch Project such a phenomenal success, it’s amazing that its horrors are still so potent today. Maybe it’s because the actors never really appeared in anything else—a quirk that has helped to maintain the movie’s haunting mood for over a quarter of a century now.
This was the first found footage horror movie to really make a mark, so if you liked Paranormal Activity or [Rec], it’s one you’ll want to see. Just be ready for the final seconds, when all those hopeful uncertainties slip away, and you’re left glued to your seat with nothing but the terror.
2. The Mirror Scene - Ringu 2 (1999)
Rewatching this scene from Ringu 2 just now, probably for the first time in ten years, I’m still not sure which part scares me the most. There’s the connection to the video in the first Ringu, of course, which lets you know you’re not in a safe place. There’s the arrival of Sadako, shuffling up just out of the main character’s eyeline. Of course, there’s the awful stillness in the woman’s expression as she brushes her hair again, and again, and again.
All decidedly creepy, but nothing has stuck with me in quite the same way as what the woman does next—suddenly gliding behind the door, getting too close to the camera for comfort, and then a steady, nightmarish shift around the corner so that she’s suddenly, horrifyingly, right in front of you.
I think it’s worth noting that this movie was released before an infamous moment in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive—I had thought about including that one in this list, but if Ringu 2 got there first, then credit where credit’s due.
1. The Phone Call - Audition (2000)
It seems like the turn of the millennium was a brilliant time for horror in Japan. A few months after Ringu 2, Takeshi Miike’s Audition was released in theatres. The movie gives its anti-heroine a vengeful, feminist twist, arguably offering a link between the woman-as-force-of-nature vibe of movies like Carrie and Possession and the trauma-coded horror of today.
Of course, Miike probably didn’t have all that in mind when he made it. What the great director did have, however, was the patience of a saint: almost nothing scary happens in the film’s opening hour, so all the grizzliest bits are saved for the very end, which makes them all the more potent. That slow, worrying buildup means that the first taste of terror we get, a scene focused on a simple phone call, is literally unforgettable—one of the greatest shocks in the history of cinema.
