“What’s A Single Shot From A Film That Will Haunt You Forever?”: 30 People Reveal The Scariest Single Shots In Films They Will Never Be Able To Shake Off
Oftentimes, a horror movie is nothing but a bunch of cheap jumpscares. You know how it goes, the character is slowly walking into a quiet dim room, then they look at the mirror and bam, a loud, jarring sound blasts from the speakers as a ghost suddenly appears in the reflection. It's an effective technique if you want to spook the audience for a second.
But to truly traumatize them, to plant a nightmarish seed into their mind, filmmakers need to craft a tension that lasts for the entire script, chilling set design, costumes, and make-up as well as plenty of other details. It's difficult and expensive, but every now and then we get such a gem.
Interested in which productions have frightened people the most, actor Elijah Wood recently tweeted a question, asking everyone to share stills from the screen that continue to terrify them long after seeing the credits. Here are some of the replies he has received.
Image credits: elijahwood
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This is from Jojo Rabbit. He knows this is his mom by the shoes. She actively resisted the Nazis and this was herpunishment.
But have you wondered that what makes horror movies scary might be... us?
"We are the monster," said James Kendrick, Ph.D., associate professor of film and digital media in Baylor's College of Arts & Sciences. Kendrick has authored three books: Darkness in the Bliss-Out: A Reconsideration of the Films of Steven Spielberg; Hollywood Bloodshed: Violence in the 1980s American Cinema; and Film Violence: History, Ideology, Genre.
He believes that the themes of horror films have changed and developed over the years to capture the zeitgeist and adapt to societal fears.
"Character and story, atmosphere and the monster. That’s all you really need," Kendrick said.
"Interesting, engaging characters in an effective setting pitted against some kind of monstrosity. That is the core of the genre, and anything and everything else grows from and functions to support those three elements."
The audience must be able to relate to characters and empathize with them. The atmosphere must engage the audience and provide an effective platform for fear.
According to the professor, the 2017 film “Get Out,” written and directed by Jordan Peele, is a good example.
For me it's the scene just after this. Once of the best film endings of all time.
This was pretty ewwwy but the part that creeped me the most was her in her nightgown saying to the astronaut 'You're going to die' and then peeing herself
took me years to watch the scene of her coming down the stairs all upside down crawling...big nope
That's the most unsettling scene for me too! Maybe because my parents covered my eyes for many of the other scenes.
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I remember seeing this, maybe on tv, when I was little. I think I only saw one scene, and what with it being out of context, not for kids and one of the more disturbing scenes, I think it made a bigger impact on me. It's the scene where they place a cross on her head (or maybe the sash) and she rolls her head to the side and slowly barfs up some thick, snake-like substance.
I knew this would be about somewhere .. omg this film ruined my life 🙄 I was about 12 begged Mt dad to watch it .. loved scary films then .. yes wierdo .. but I never recovered from this film and can't watch it .. it's literally f****n terrified me
My friend and I saw this, at a time when everyone was getting sick. We laughed all the way through this movie. By the end the entire audience was laughing with us. It started with the bed shaking. My friend leaned over and said " get Mom to sit on it, that'll stop it" this was a reference to SpecialK cereal commercials at the time. When she vomited it looked like pea soup. At first other audience members were looking at us when we laughed. But this movie was too camp and too hilarious for us to care. Probably the only showing where the entire audience ended up finding it funny. We were 17.
i have not seen the movie sis there a reason she is no were near proportionally correct with that tiny head.
Naw man!! Its definitely when she scuttles down the stairs all bent over head backwards...that was scary as s**t
I'm 40, seen whole lotta horror movies, & still close my eyes on some of The Exorcist scenes, even though I've seen the making-of and work on movie sets.
This scene definitely freaked me out but the one that really made me jump off the couch was a scene that is usually cut from television (it was years before I saw the uncut version on DVD). The scene where she spider crawls upside down on the stairs and blood is coming out of her mouth just made me freaking LEAP out of my chair!
That’s the directors cut, she crawls down the stairs but there are images throughout the movie of the demon, they show up when the mom walks into the kitchen from talking to the doctors,it was when Reagan was left alone with Ellen Bernsteins friend and he got tossed out the window, it’s also in a few more scenes.
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the part where she yells about jesus coitus whilst stabbing herself with the relevant symbol.
“The film intelligently mixes its various horror conventions, including stalk-and-slash scares, fears about secret cults and medical horror, with both comedy and social satire to make a point about troubled race relations in our ‘post-racial’ nation,” Kendrick explained.
"The protagonist is an African-American who finds himself increasingly concerned about the intentions of all the white people around him. In effect, polite, wealthy white society becomes the film’s raging monster."
ugh! I'd forgotten this one... now will have a nightmare tonight...
Nope. I had nightmares of this movie as a child. That sound he made when he screamed. Still can't watch it as an adult. Please don't down vote me for this. Just relaying an experience I had as a small kid that to me was very traumatic.
In the same way that characters and settings have developed throughout history, so has the monster. Kendrick pointed out that a great monster will capitalize on the existing fears of society and use these for a greater scare factor.
"The monsters are more often than not simply an extension or elaboration of what we fear due to our mortal condition. At the heart of horror is always the fear of death – physical or spiritual."
Isn't this return to Oz? If so yep made me feel freaked and I was watching it with my daughter who was younger then.
Fear is so effective because it is able to play with human empathy, Kendrick said. By using current trends, directors and producers are able to generate characters and settings that their audience can relate to.
"The best films, the ones that really stand out in our memory, are the ones that we connect with emotionally through characters and that we sense have a deeper purpose than just causing anxiety," Kendrick said.
Consider the 2014 film 'The Babadook.'
"‘It is grounded in real, recognizable human emotions, which makes it as dramatically compelling as it is scary," Kendrick said. "The film is not so much about a shadowy supernatural figure lurking in the corner as it is about very real parental fears about inadequacy and conflicted love."
that makes me question every time i watch it, so say you have a bit of skin you peel it off are you really going to carry on and oops my face is in the sink lol
Also, despite the few successes in recent years, Kendrick believes today’s horror films are often dull and one-dimensional, relying on an increasingly tired set of visual and audio clichés.
According to him, they lack connection to the characters, the circumstances in which those characters find themselves, and any sense of social or cultural meaning.
Watched this age 10. Scared the bejeezuz out of me. watched as an adult. Actually quite funny.
Note: this post originally had 52 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
"If you don’t care for or identify with the characters whose mortality is at stake, it is just a hollow exercise in style," Kendrick said.
"We all fear death and are aware of our human mortality, and the best horror films engage that fear in complex and challenging and – yes – artful ways."
when Christopher Lloyd had the googly eyes in Roger Rabbit i hid behind my hands
I came here to say I can't believe the scene where he lowers that poor shoe into the acid isn't on here!!! My mom had to carry me, screaming at the top of my lungs, out of the theater. I still haven't finished that movie. RIP, poor little shoe, you deserved better.
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No one mentioned Watership Down. It's more than 40 years since I watched the cartoon, but nothing in the world would make me watch it again.
It’s a beautiful film. Been meaning to watch it again recently. Love the novel, too.
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Psycho. No, not the shower scene. When mother's face is revealed. I watched the film just yesterday for the umpteenth time and I STILL hid my face under the blanket!
For me it's the end shot of Norman smiling. Makes me shiver.
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I can't watch that movie. Can't do it. I know it's a good movie with a great story, but the violence and cruelty makes me wanna puke
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For me (please allow for the fact that I was born during the Truman administration), none of these comes within a mile of Vera Miles descending into the cellar and calling out, "Mrs. Bates? Mrs. Bates?". Then Mrs. Bates turns around, with that bare lightbulb swaying overhead...for me, much scarier than the shower scene. And in case you young people have all been living on Mars, the movie is "Psycho". 1960.
"Trilogy of Terror" with Karen Black. The Doll. Those who are old enough to have seen this thing on TV back in the '70s, like me, will attest to its horror! Trilogy-of...d5b38f.png 
They have it on display at one of the movie studios. I was working there and it's under glass. Still scared the s**t out of me, lol
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I was a kid when this came out so I know it's not the scariest film but the suspense jumps really got to me: M. Night Shymalan's Signs, like any shot that showed the alien, especially the news report birthday scene when you just see the thing stride across the alleyway.
The IT scene when Georgie's arm gets ripped off. The eyes and the teeth just freaked me out. Also in the second movie when Patrick's zombie comes crawling out from under the bed at the camera.
The resconstructed final log from the Event Horizon (film name the same). That shot of a guy holding out his own eyeballs…
Do any of the State of the Union speeches from the previous administration count?
I came here to say that. Even after having seen it many times, even knowing what the actress (Bonnie Aarons) normally looks like and knowing it’s her, I still feel like I’m going to get a heart attack together with the guy during that scene.
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Mine will always be the sequence in original Toy Story film at Sid's bedroom. Those toys gave me horrors.
For me it was W***y Wonkas boat ride through hell...my god it still makes me cover my eyes!!
thank you bp for censoring a famous kid's book character's name, we would have been traumatised without you
Load More Replies... A lot of great entries here, and a few more for my queue. A couple not mentioned. When they found the dead girl in the closet from The Ring. When Billy Crystal's hand became a monster and ate Fred Savages homework in Little Monsters. I'll remember those forever. Oh, and Little Foot finding the body of... no, no I can't relive that. Too soon...
Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Last ark - melting nazi faces
Mines the bugs carrying the man off in crystal skull I think. Gives me shivers
Load More Replies... For it was in the Horror flick "Mirrors" with Kiefer Sutherland. About a parallel world, next to hours, a mirror world so to speak. And there was a kid, which talked to his mirror reflection. His mom comes into the room and sees his son speaking. Then he gets up and his reflection in the mirror remains sitting on the floor.
The bird getting its head chopped off during the boat ride scene in W***y Wonka And The Chocolate Factory, that scene literally traumatised me for life (I was watching it whilst eating mashed potatoes when I noticed the bird for the first time and had to run to the toilet as I started throwing up, to this day 30 odd years later I can't even be in the same room as someone eating mashed potatoes without me being physically sick).
My condolences, that's a serious bummer of a fear trigger. Mashed potatoes are one of my favorite easy-to-make side dishes.
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Salem's Lot: the scene with the brother floating just outside the window, scratching at the glass asking to be let in. I was about 8 when I saw it. (My babysitter let me stay up to watch it, and no, my mother was not pleased.) glick-6312...0b80ab.gif 
Because I am a total wimp I am going to add any scene where Vecna is killing one of their victims in Strange Things Season 4. I know that the show is "horror light", but I was not prepared for the amount of pretty graphic body horror in this season, especially considering they are teenager.
The one in the original tweet? It's from the film "begotten" https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0101420/
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for me it’s more like sad than scary: the ending of The Book Thief. I’m not going to spoil it though, so read the book or watch the movie. (Fellow pandas, PLEASE DO NOT SPOIL IN THE REPLIES. There may have been people who haven’t read the book and don’t want spoilers.)
The Looney Tunes portion of the Twilight Zone movie. I cannot watch any old Bugs Bunny type of toons anymore, even decades later
One that haunts me still isn’t because it’s scary (at least, not in a horror film way), but because it’s so sad. Titanic still hits me hard during the “Nearer My God to Thee” scene, where you see Isidor and Ida Strauss holding each other close as their room fills with water and the mother telling her children a story, knowing they won’t be able to make it, and when the lifeboats return and Fifth Officer Lowe sees the mother and her baby who have frozen in the water and he says, “We waited too long.”
That scene in Coraline(The whole movie).
This scene in hereditary horror-631...219bac.jpg 
The babadook
Large Marge from Pee Wee's Big Adventure. I'm in my 40's and I still can't handle seeing her. 👀
Honestly. I'm gonna go old school and it's the alien out if the toilet in Species. Relieved when watching DreamCatcher and they had one of the worms trapped in the toilet.
Never actually seen the movie but clicked on one of those movie scene things about it, mistakenly thinking there’d be a demon or something scary. Nope. Dude got his toes cut off with a wire cutter and projectile vomited with a ball gag in. Still have nightmares about that one. (This was Hostel)
Sadako's freaky looking eye in Ringu in that single closeup frame with it all twisted. Yikes.
The Birds (1963). The lifeless, eyeless body of the farmer on his bedroom floor.
I saw that as a child and even today that part creeps me out!
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Grendel's reveal in the CGI Beowulf. That scene took something from my soul, and I'm pretty sure Crispin Glover has it hidden in an amulet somewhere.
That dog from Invasion of Body Snatchers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2ah2mwo1oM
The little smirk on Elijah Wood's face when he's being strapped up with barbed wire in that scene of Sin City will haunt me until the end of time.
Haunting in a scary way: When the Pale Man reveals his eyes in Pan's Labyrinth. That, or when Coraline's parallel-world mother reveals her true nature. Haunting in a good way: Just after, "On your left," when the first portal opens on the battlefield in Avengers: Endgame
One of the Freddy Kruger when all the veins come out like a puppet 🙈🙈
There were a half dozen scenes in Poltergeist that scared the bejeebus out of me when I was a kid. A few years ago my wife and I saw it at a kind of pop-up drive-in theater, and the kids watching were laughing at it. Times change.
Hey Pandas! I need your help trying to remember the title of a movie - it came out in the early 2000s I believe. The scene I remember took place at night in a bedroom, the protagonist was in some sort of a panic (can’t remember why) and he fell somehow and ended up lying at the side of the bed, face up. The scene cuts to his point of view - looking up from where he fell - and this ghost/scary thing sloooowly starts to appear from over the bed looking down at him. The scene scared the shït out of me. I cant remember the title of that movie!
Do you have any more details? Anything else you remember? Honestly for a moment there I was thinking of Trainspotting but that was '96 and it was a baby/doll on the ceiling while he was going through dt's from heroin
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Horror, meh. Worst scene for me , in GOT when The Mountain chopped his horses head off.
Sounds like The Godfather, the movie producer waking up to a horse head in his bed.
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when Christopher Lloyd had the googly eyes in Roger Rabbit i hid behind my hands
I came here to say I can't believe the scene where he lowers that poor shoe into the acid isn't on here!!! My mom had to carry me, screaming at the top of my lungs, out of the theater. I still haven't finished that movie. RIP, poor little shoe, you deserved better.
Load More Replies... No one mentioned Watership Down. It's more than 40 years since I watched the cartoon, but nothing in the world would make me watch it again.
It’s a beautiful film. Been meaning to watch it again recently. Love the novel, too.
Load More Replies... Psycho. No, not the shower scene. When mother's face is revealed. I watched the film just yesterday for the umpteenth time and I STILL hid my face under the blanket!
For me it's the end shot of Norman smiling. Makes me shiver.
Load More Replies... I can't watch that movie. Can't do it. I know it's a good movie with a great story, but the violence and cruelty makes me wanna puke
Load More Replies... For me (please allow for the fact that I was born during the Truman administration), none of these comes within a mile of Vera Miles descending into the cellar and calling out, "Mrs. Bates? Mrs. Bates?". Then Mrs. Bates turns around, with that bare lightbulb swaying overhead...for me, much scarier than the shower scene. And in case you young people have all been living on Mars, the movie is "Psycho". 1960.
"Trilogy of Terror" with Karen Black. The Doll. Those who are old enough to have seen this thing on TV back in the '70s, like me, will attest to its horror! Trilogy-of...d5b38f.png
They have it on display at one of the movie studios. I was working there and it's under glass. Still scared the s**t out of me, lol
Load More Replies... I was a kid when this came out so I know it's not the scariest film but the suspense jumps really got to me: M. Night Shymalan's Signs, like any shot that showed the alien, especially the news report birthday scene when you just see the thing stride across the alleyway.
The IT scene when Georgie's arm gets ripped off. The eyes and the teeth just freaked me out. Also in the second movie when Patrick's zombie comes crawling out from under the bed at the camera.
The resconstructed final log from the Event Horizon (film name the same). That shot of a guy holding out his own eyeballs…
Do any of the State of the Union speeches from the previous administration count?
I came here to say that. Even after having seen it many times, even knowing what the actress (Bonnie Aarons) normally looks like and knowing it’s her, I still feel like I’m going to get a heart attack together with the guy during that scene.
Load More Replies... Mine will always be the sequence in original Toy Story film at Sid's bedroom. Those toys gave me horrors.
For me it was W***y Wonkas boat ride through hell...my god it still makes me cover my eyes!!
thank you bp for censoring a famous kid's book character's name, we would have been traumatised without you
Load More Replies... A lot of great entries here, and a few more for my queue. A couple not mentioned. When they found the dead girl in the closet from The Ring. When Billy Crystal's hand became a monster and ate Fred Savages homework in Little Monsters. I'll remember those forever. Oh, and Little Foot finding the body of... no, no I can't relive that. Too soon...
Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Last ark - melting nazi faces
Mines the bugs carrying the man off in crystal skull I think. Gives me shivers
Load More Replies... For it was in the Horror flick "Mirrors" with Kiefer Sutherland. About a parallel world, next to hours, a mirror world so to speak. And there was a kid, which talked to his mirror reflection. His mom comes into the room and sees his son speaking. Then he gets up and his reflection in the mirror remains sitting on the floor.
The bird getting its head chopped off during the boat ride scene in W***y Wonka And The Chocolate Factory, that scene literally traumatised me for life (I was watching it whilst eating mashed potatoes when I noticed the bird for the first time and had to run to the toilet as I started throwing up, to this day 30 odd years later I can't even be in the same room as someone eating mashed potatoes without me being physically sick).
My condolences, that's a serious bummer of a fear trigger. Mashed potatoes are one of my favorite easy-to-make side dishes.
Load More Replies... Salem's Lot: the scene with the brother floating just outside the window, scratching at the glass asking to be let in. I was about 8 when I saw it. (My babysitter let me stay up to watch it, and no, my mother was not pleased.) glick-6312...0b80ab.gif
Because I am a total wimp I am going to add any scene where Vecna is killing one of their victims in Strange Things Season 4. I know that the show is "horror light", but I was not prepared for the amount of pretty graphic body horror in this season, especially considering they are teenager.
The one in the original tweet? It's from the film "begotten" https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0101420/
Load More Replies... for me it’s more like sad than scary: the ending of The Book Thief. I’m not going to spoil it though, so read the book or watch the movie. (Fellow pandas, PLEASE DO NOT SPOIL IN THE REPLIES. There may have been people who haven’t read the book and don’t want spoilers.)
The Looney Tunes portion of the Twilight Zone movie. I cannot watch any old Bugs Bunny type of toons anymore, even decades later
One that haunts me still isn’t because it’s scary (at least, not in a horror film way), but because it’s so sad. Titanic still hits me hard during the “Nearer My God to Thee” scene, where you see Isidor and Ida Strauss holding each other close as their room fills with water and the mother telling her children a story, knowing they won’t be able to make it, and when the lifeboats return and Fifth Officer Lowe sees the mother and her baby who have frozen in the water and he says, “We waited too long.”
That scene in Coraline(The whole movie).
This scene in hereditary horror-631...219bac.jpg The babadook
Large Marge from Pee Wee's Big Adventure. I'm in my 40's and I still can't handle seeing her. 👀
Honestly. I'm gonna go old school and it's the alien out if the toilet in Species. Relieved when watching DreamCatcher and they had one of the worms trapped in the toilet.
Never actually seen the movie but clicked on one of those movie scene things about it, mistakenly thinking there’d be a demon or something scary. Nope. Dude got his toes cut off with a wire cutter and projectile vomited with a ball gag in. Still have nightmares about that one. (This was Hostel)
Sadako's freaky looking eye in Ringu in that single closeup frame with it all twisted. Yikes.
The Birds (1963). The lifeless, eyeless body of the farmer on his bedroom floor.
I saw that as a child and even today that part creeps me out!
Load More Replies... Grendel's reveal in the CGI Beowulf. That scene took something from my soul, and I'm pretty sure Crispin Glover has it hidden in an amulet somewhere.
That dog from Invasion of Body Snatchers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2ah2mwo1oM
The little smirk on Elijah Wood's face when he's being strapped up with barbed wire in that scene of Sin City will haunt me until the end of time.
Haunting in a scary way: When the Pale Man reveals his eyes in Pan's Labyrinth. That, or when Coraline's parallel-world mother reveals her true nature. Haunting in a good way: Just after, "On your left," when the first portal opens on the battlefield in Avengers: Endgame
One of the Freddy Kruger when all the veins come out like a puppet 🙈🙈
There were a half dozen scenes in Poltergeist that scared the bejeebus out of me when I was a kid. A few years ago my wife and I saw it at a kind of pop-up drive-in theater, and the kids watching were laughing at it. Times change.
Hey Pandas! I need your help trying to remember the title of a movie - it came out in the early 2000s I believe. The scene I remember took place at night in a bedroom, the protagonist was in some sort of a panic (can’t remember why) and he fell somehow and ended up lying at the side of the bed, face up. The scene cuts to his point of view - looking up from where he fell - and this ghost/scary thing sloooowly starts to appear from over the bed looking down at him. The scene scared the shït out of me. I cant remember the title of that movie!
Do you have any more details? Anything else you remember? Honestly for a moment there I was thinking of Trainspotting but that was '96 and it was a baby/doll on the ceiling while he was going through dt's from heroin
Load More Replies... Horror, meh. Worst scene for me , in GOT when The Mountain chopped his horses head off.
Sounds like The Godfather, the movie producer waking up to a horse head in his bed.
Load More Replies... 