10 Scenes From Scary Films That Stunned People to Their Core

The Ring is another movie with several unnerving and horrifying shots, which makes sense for a film centered on a cursed VHS tape. But nothing scares as many fans as the image of the girl in the closet.

We learn that a teenager died after watching the tape and are then treated to an image of her face after she has died that is the stuff of nightmares.

Demons, creatures, and supernatural threats of all kinds crawling on the ceiling is a well-worn trope in horror. But sometimes, a movie comes along and shows why it became a trope in the first place.

The moment in Hereditary, when we see Toni Collette’s possessed mother in the background of a shot centered on Alex Wolff, is one of the most unforgettable “there’s something on the ceiling” images of all time.

Sometimes, as many horror fans will tell you, less is more. That’s certainly the case with the brief image of a face believed to be that of the demon Pazuzu in The Exorcist. It’s an image you can miss if you blink.

But if your eyes are open, it won’t leave your mind for years. It’s an image that’s so scary that it sticks with people divorced from its context, too. One fan says they saw the image in Fangoria as a child, and it’s never left them.

M. Night Shyamalan’s filmography is uneven, and people’s feelings about him as a director range widely, but there’s no denying he’s a talented filmmaker.

Several fans say that the grainy image of an alien at a birthday party shared on the news in Signs rattled them on first viewing. One person says they “couldn’t watch the rest of the movie after that as a kid.”

The lasting impact of the final image of The Blair Witch Project is another instance of simplicity being incredibly effective. The image shows one of the young filmmakers that the movie follows just standing in a corner facing the space where the walls meet from a camera that’s fallen to the ground.

He’s not moving, and nothing is coming at the camera. It’s just an image of a young man standing still, staring at a corner, and it’s incredibly creepy.

The Descent is a modern classic for combining all too real claustrophobia with a fantastical story of terrifying underground monsters. These monsters take a while to appear in the film, but they make an impact immediately when they do.

One of the earliest images of these creatures, called “crawlers,” comes in a point of view, night vision recording shot from a small wearable camera on one of the characters and is jaw-droppingly scary. The camera whips around as the group panic after discovering a mass of bones, and after a few pans, we see a crawler right behind one of them.

Like the glimpse of Pazuzu in The Exorcist, the image of a bright red demon behind Patrick Wilson’s character during a conversation in Insidious has transcended its origin. Of course, it’s still terrifying in the context of the movie. But it’s also horrifying if you ever encounter it without that context on social media.

The Exorcist is the only franchise to earn two spots on this list, and for a good reason. The third film in the franchise, directed by the writer of the original book on which the first movie is based, offers a painfully drawn-out sequence that culminates in a terrifying image.

The camera remains still as characters in a hospital go about their business, almost lulling the audience into a sense of comfort before we see a figure rush out of a hospital room wielding giant shears to attack a nurse.

Few moments in horror movies make as much of an impact on places we feel safe as the shock of a ghost under the covers in Ju-On: The Grudge. As a character prepares for bed, unnerved by the strange supernatural phenomena in the home where she is staying, she feels a tug under her covers.

When she looks, there’s a blank-faced ghost almost calmly staring back at her. As one horror fan said, “They touched a sacred place for me with that one; if I cannot be safe under my own covers, where can I be?!?!”

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