As we say goodbye to Spooky September to usher in the haunted Halloween season, I thought I’d share my picks for some of the scariest scenes in some classic horror movies.

Horror is perhaps the most subjective genre of all films, because what’s scary for one person, may not be scary to another. Yet, there seems to be some type of collective conscience of fear that most of us tap into when we see a scary moment on film.

Art by Nathan Thomas Milliner

It’s that one scene that chills us to the bone, or makes us throw the blanket over our head, or creates a tiny wave of spiders that crawl over our skin. Sometimes it’s a jump scare and sometimes it’s 4 minutes of terror that turns our spines into butter.

Rec, 2007 (Spanish version) – End Scene

One of the best found-footage films to come out of the early 2000s, that spawned three sequels, this Spanish-language horror classic thrusts audiences into the dark and forces them to experience the frantic terror of a surviving film crew locked in an apartment building filled with zombies. There was an English remake called Quarantine in 2008, nearly identical to the original, scene for scene, as seen in the video below. The movie uses a shaky handheld camera to build tension and thr jump scares to terrorized movie goers, but perhaps the biggest scare ended up as the last shot of the movie.

Session 9, 2001 – Hello, Simon

A critical failure when first released, Session 9 is horror’s most underrated gem and now has a huge cult following. This slow-burn psychological horror is the story of an asbestos removal crew assigned to clean up the abandoned Danvers State Mental Hospital in less than a week. When one of the crew members Mike finds a box of session tapes belonging to a former patient named Mary, who suffers from dissociative identity disease, the terrifying truth of what happened to her one fateful night plays out as we slowly watch another member of the crew, Gordon, lose his grip on reality. By the end of the movie, we meet what we believe may be one of Mary’s most dangerous personalities, Simon, during session 9, the movie’s most chilling recording.

Taking of Deborah Logan, 2014 – Cave scene

Another found footage supernatural horror gem that plays out like a pseudo-documentary, follows the sad decline of a woman named Deborah Logan, suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. At first, we feel sorry for the woman and her family, watching Deborah’s bone-chilling antics through the eyes of a camera lens, but soon we come to understand that a sinister being may actually be behind what’s taking hold of Deborah’s mind. It’s always scary whenever a movie uses real-life illnesses like Alzheimer’s or Cancer as a plot point, but no one was ready for that crazy cave scene.

Paranormal Activity, 2009 – The Bite

Smart marketing and strong word of mouth spun the little unknown film from first-time director Oren Peli into a popular supernatural franchise. The first film initially cost only $15,000 to make and went on to gross $194 million dollars. Part of the successful marketing campaign showed trailers with audience reactions to the movie about a young couple Katie and Micah, who moved into a suburban tract home inhabited by a demonic spirit. Filmed with shaky cam, there were numerous jump scares and long intense shots seen through security camera style footage, which showed the couple’s sleepless nights. The scariest moment was watching Katie get pulled out of her own bed and brutally dragged down the dark hallway on day 20 of their terrifying ordeal.

Conjuring, 2013 – Wanna play Hide and Clap?

Based on the untold files of real-life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. In 1971, the Warrens followed up their case about a possessed doll named Annabelle, by helping the Perron family, who claimed their newly purchased Rhode Island farmhouse was haunted by a malevolent spirit. Lorraine learns that spirit is named Bathesheba, a local witch and Satanist from Puritan times who cursed the land. Back before the days of cable and internet, the Perron parents entertained their five daughters with a variation of Hide and Seek, where the hiders clap their hands to clue in the blindfolded seeker of their location. Apparently, ghosts like to play games too.

Sinister – Lawnmower Scene

Crowned the scariest film ever made by Broadband Choices in 2020, based on the analysis of viewer heart rates, Sinister follows a true crime writer Ellison Oswalt played by Ethan Hawk, as he moves his family to Pennsylvania, chasing inspiration for a new story that will bestow the same accolades and riches he gained for his first book. The new house is actually the sight of a gruesome murder that Oswalt has decided to write about. Oswalt finds a projector in the eerie attic and a box filled with old Super8 tapes spanning decades, all inconspicuously titled home movies, and all depicting a frightening juxtapose of several families enjoying their normal lives, followed by their grisly murders. The scariest is ‘Lawn Work ’86’, where viewers join the silent creepiness of the voyeuristic killer eyeing his next victims, that eventually cumulates into a giant jump scare involving a lawnmower. It’s a scene that’ll make anyone’s heart rate go up.

Alien, 1979 – Chestburster

In last month’s blog post about Best Deaths in the Alien Movies, I picked the chestburster scene in Alien as best death scene in the whole franchise, but it’s also the scariest. It’s a shocking, gruesome, bloody death scene that not only changed the tone of the film, but the entire genre, securing Alien as the greatest SciFi Horror film ever made. The scene often parodied and duplicated by its own sequels, it’s probably the greatest jump scare of all time too.

Jaws, 1975 – Opening Scene

Considered the first summer blockbuster ever, one of Steven Spielberg’s turned Peter Benchley’s commissioned best-selling novel into a sleek thriller about the seaside town of Amity Island terrorized by a man-eating shark over the July 4th weekend. The movie follows police chief Brody as he, a young marine biologist, and a colorful professional shark hunter track down the beast. Jaws is a study of fear and it all starts with the movie’s opening scene of a girl swimming naked in the ocean. This classic opener sets the tone of the movie and eventually becomes the catalyst of a fear of open water for millions of people worldwide.

The Shining, 1980 – Room 237

I had a hard time picking the scariest scene from Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King’s best-selling horror novel, The Shining. The movie follows a writer Jack Torrance, who moves his wife Wendy and their son Danny to Colorado for the winter to become the caretaker of a magnificent haunted hotel. Between the ghosts and the cabin fever, this not so loving family slowly begins to unravel, espcially for young Danny who has the gift of telepathy, aka the Shine, which brings out the hotel’s former guests who never got a chance to properly checkout. There’s no jump scares, only a constant state of dread and mounting tension, accentuated by the unforgettable score. Nearly every scene is nightmare inducing, but if I have to pick the scariest, it’s gotta be Jack’s visit to the notorious Room 237.

The Exorcist, 1973 – Headturner

Deemed by many as the greatest supernatural horror film of all time, William Friedkin’s adaption of William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist, a story about an actress Christine MacNeil trying to save her young daughter Regan from demonic possession. Considered disturbing, shocking, and utterly vile by some viewers, the movie had people fainting and vomiting in the theaters. There was no doubt the movie was a cinematic masterpiece, as it won several Oscars, influenced pop culture, spawned sequels, influenced a new subgenre horror about demonic possession, and became the highest-grossing R-rated horror film until It in 2017, grossing a whopping $193 million with its theatrical run, a miracle considering how plagued the production was. The Exorcist went over budget and suffered several delays, including several crew deaths, leading to rumors that the film was actually cursed.

The infamous headturn scene, which has been parodied a thousand times over, is like nothing you’ve ever seen or heard. For all the foul-mouthed obscenities that are so commonplace nowadays, there’s just something morally reprehensible about the dialogue of this scene, the brutal violence shown, and the emotional agony from Christine trying to rescue Regan from a crafty demon. I’m not a particularly religious person, but it’s understandable why some people hate this film. My mother once said movies like this invite real evil into our world. I’m not sure if that’s true, but if it were, this is the movie that opened the floodgates.

You can find the Exorcist screaming on Max and AMC will air an edited version at 8:15 PT on Wednesday, October 2nd.