When Were You Most Scared During a Movie? (Our Staff Answers)

November 8, 2009 · Posted in Lists

Halloween makes us think of horror movies and regular frightfests. But
if you’re like me, you steer clear of the horror genre altogether,
because blood and shrieks may be scary, but do not entertainment make.
Instead, I’d like to think of those movies that still frightened the
bejeezus out of you, sometimes in unexpected ways, by using good
old-fashioned suspense, timing, mood music, and acting not done by a
twentysomething nubile woman who forgot to put on a bra.

Case in point: Back in 2000 I attended a press screening of What Lies Beneath, an underrated thriller that (SPOILER ALERT!) ended up with Harrison Ford as the killer. The Robert Zemeckis film, about a woman (Michelle Pfeiffer)
who suspects the ghost of her husband (Ford)’s former lover is haunting
her house, featured a lot of jumpy moments: A corpse in the water
suddenly coming to life, a cell phone that will not get reception
(apparently before Verizon plans came along), and, in the clip below,
Pfeiffer trying to save herself from drowning in the bathtub. Drowning
is my very worst nightmare, and her character’s been injected with a
paralyzing serum by Ford (he’s a scientist, he does it to rats, just go
with it).

Possibly even more frightening was what happened afterwards: I went back to my car, shut the door, turned the key, and for no reason whatsoever my glove compartment door popped open.
Luckily no one could hear my shriek, but it was nothing compared to the
out-of-town journalists the studio had put up in the Four Seasons that
night; after watching the film, they returned to their rooms to find
that their bathtubs had been FILLED WITH WATER (a prank by the
DreamWorks publicity team). One critic reportedly fainted, another
refused to sleep in his room. No word on what review they gave the film.

I asked around our movies editors for their most frightening cinematic moments ; below are their responses.

I know it is often mocked, but that end scene in The Blair Witch Project
with the guy standing in the corner facing the wall freaked me out, and
I can’t even see a second of that scene without it giving me the chills
still. –Lisanne

Wait Until Dark in two spots. The first is when Alan Arkin makes an unexpected entrance into Audrey Hepburn’s
apartment, and the second I can’t say anything about it if you haven’t
seen the movie. The audience gets completely wrapped up in Hepburn’s
blind character, and knowing that she can’t see what they can see is
what makes it so terrifying. –David

The scene I have in
mind doesn’t necessarily rank very high on the scare-o-meter for me
these days, but it certainly left a lasting impression throughout a
childhood spent watching and loving The Wizard of Oz.
Forget tornados or even the Wicked Witch—they’ve got nothing on those
flying monkeys! After watching them chase a screaming Dorothy through
the haunted forest and swooping her and Toto into the night sky, I’d
have nightmares for days. –Daniel

The scene from The NeverEnding Story
with the black wolf in the swamp. There’s thunder and lightning, and
the lightning lights up his teeth. That really freaked me out as a kid.
–Kelsey

To me, the scariest movies are the ones that I somehow internalize to the extent that I alter my behavior. After I saw Jaws for the first time, I, like every other kid I knew, made a habit of avoiding the deep end of a swimming pool. When I saw The Ring
later as an adult, I had to avert my eyes from the television screen
any time I passed through the living room. Good thing I never made it
all the way through Psycho, or I’d be one slatternly gal today. –Kellie

The Cell – the way that Vincent D’Onofrio
was able to capture the girl in the parking garage with his dog had a
lasting effect on me. I think I had a hard time breathing throughout
most of that movie. –Kira

when I was 16, I was forced to watch The Exorcist–a movie that I had
been avoiding like the plague. There wasn’t just one scene that scared
me, the entire movie, from the creepy backwards crawl down the stairs
to the horrifying scene with the crucifix, scared the crap out of me
and I lived in a state of terror for a month afterward. Even the
slightest mention of it still freaks me out and I can already tell that
I will be sleeping with the lights on this week. –Amanda

The first 10 minutes of The Dark Crystal.
I was only 5 or 6 at the time. My dad saw how much it upset me so we
left my Mom and my older brother to finish the movie and went to see Peter Pan instead. I’ve never forgotten because my older brother still loves to bring it up. In fact, two years ago he bought me The Dark Crystal on DVD for my birthday. I watched it again and I must say that first 10 minutes is still pretty scary. –Mike