Boo! The 40 Scariest Movie Moments Of All Time

30.”Scream” (1996)
Call it its mid-90s provenance, or chalk it down to its inferior, diminishing-returns sequels, but “Scream” had fallen a little out of favor of late. But with Wes Craven‘s sad passing giving us all a reason to rediscover the horror maestro’s canon, the luster is restored to the meta-slasher’s reputation, especially this first section. Combining pin-sharp timing, choreography, self-reference and a terrific turn from the terrorized Drew Barrymore, this perfect opening is basically a witty slasher ballet unto itself.

29. “American Werewolf in London” (1981)
John Landis’ defining werewolf movie balances monster horror and comedy in a way that really only the John Landis of the early 80s ever could — even his “Thriller” video (moon)walked that line perfectly. But if there’s one scene that assures this film of its place in the pantheon, it’s the transformation scene, which even more in the era of weightless CG monsters, has a real-world thrill to it. We watch poor David Naughton transition from man to wolf in what seems like unflinching real time — and just when we think it’s settled into a slightly disappointing guy-in -a-hairy suit, the face/jaw bit happens and we’re howling all over again.

28. “The Wicker Man” (1973)
In the culmination of one of the best-executed bait-and-switch maneuvers in the history of horror cinema, we discover, probably not long before the hapless protagonist (Edward Woodward) just who it is who is intended to be the virgin sacrifice who will guarantee the harvest for the uncannily backward island of Summerisle. Directed by Robin Hardy, from a script by the inestimable Anthony Schaffer, it took a while for this film to gain traction as the unassailable cult classic it now is, but even the clodhopping remake cannot detract from its status today.

27. “Last House On The Left” (1972)
A second appearance here for the late Wes Craven, appropriately it’s for his very first film, notorious “video nasty” “Last House on the Left” (an inexplicably brilliant, scary title too). Loosely a remake of Ingmar Bergman‘s “The Virgin Spring,” recast in the immediate post-Manson era, the film was subject of immense controversy over its violence at the time. And this scene in particular is one that it’s still hard to see how they got away with, it’s the queasy, vacant enjoyment the psycho murderers take in stabbing their victim to graphic death that is particularly shocking. Well, that and the bit with the guts.

26. “Let the Right One In” (2008)
Tomas Alfredson‘s scary/sad/beautiful child-vampire love story is an extended exercise in mood and menace, but perhaps no scene encapsulates all the parallel tracks it runs on as well as this one, where Eli answer’s Oskar’s mischievous question “what happens if I don’t invite you in?” with a simple demonstration. The undercurrent of childish one-upmanship and then of remorse and devotion makes this one of the most psychologically rich scenes ever to feature a child bleeding from the eyes.

25.”The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (1974)
For a long time regarded as the death knell of “proper” horror, the slasher film has attained a degree of cinephile respectability more recently. And Tobe Hooper‘s sine qua non slasher has been flattered by comparison with its many subpar remakes and sequels. Funny thing is, for a film with such a gruesome reputation, you see very little in the way of gore, yet everyone remembers it as being insanely graphic. We’ll chalk that down to our first glimpse of Leatherface, which is both terrifyingly other and also weirdly prosaic — even happening in the daytime.

24. “Un Chien Andalou” (1929)
It is ridiculous how hard this sequence of cuts is to watch even now, 85 years after Luis Bunuel first concocted it — even more so when you’ve seen it a few times and understand that despite the weird image continuity that goes on in your brain between the moon, the woman’s eye and the blade, the damage is actually inflicted on an already-dead horse. Still, any combination of cutthroat razor and eyeball is bound to make us squirm, and it remains to this day one of those scenes that we get all tense and shrinky even thinking about.

23. “Hidden” (2005)
Horror? Thriller? Long, boring, inexplicable, foreign-language arthouse puzzle? What even is Michael Haneke’s “Hidden”? We’ve had a decade to work it out and are still no closer, but one thing we are sure of — this is one of the most jawdropping scenes we’ve ever been totally perplexed by. Perhaps because it comes without warning in the middle of a long, atmospheric but largely uneventful segment of the film, its impact is magnified, but to say this beat out “Funny Games“‘ torture sequences and anything in “Time of the Wolf” for a spot here should speak volumes.

22. “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968)
A lot of moments from Roman Polanski‘s eerie (but also immensely funny — people do forget that) masterpiece could have made it on here, indeed the “What have you done to its eyes?” scene came very close. But as an exercise in sustained all-out creepiness with the added queasiness of sexual violence in the mix, in which all of Polanski’s considerable filmmaking skill comes together, the dream-that’s-not-a-dream in which Rosemary (an outstanding Mia Farrow) is impregnated by the devil as the coven watches, takes some beating.

21. “Les Diaboliques” (1955)
Believing erroneously that anything black and white, in French and on TV couldn’t be that unsuitable for a young child, my parents let me stay up late one night to watch Henri-Georges Clouzot‘s mesmerizing mystery/horror/thriller hybrid and I’ve never been quite right since. In honesty, the most memorable single moment for me is the glimpse of the photograph in which a ghostly image appears in a window, but that’s hard to find online, and this scene, in which the dead man rises from a bathtub, is probably more stand-alone frightening anyway, even as it plays out and you discover the non-supernatural explanation.