25 Scariest Shots in Horror Movies

Halloween is coming up, and us film nerds around the globe are prepping our horror movie marathons. For this blog post, however, instead of making a typical horror movie review or "best of" list to ring in the season, I wanted to focus on the smallest building block of film: THE SHOT. Movies are more or less just a series of pictures flashing by your eyes, and some of these single images have the ability to conjure our deepest, darkest fears. This blog post is a celebration of 25 iconic, unsettling, downright creepy-crawly shots that have haunted our dreams over the years and the cinematographers who helped immortalize them on screen.

* = Oscar-nominated cinematography

1. The Exorcist (1973)*
"The Face of Pazuzu"

Director: William Friedkin
Cinematographer: Owen Roizman

When The Exorcist was released in 1973, it became a cultural phenomenon, earning $441.3 million at the box office and notoriously causing light-hearted, God-fearing viewers to faint, vomit, or run from the theater. The above terrifying image occurs exactly 45 minutes into the film, subliminally flashing across the screen during a dream sequence from Father Karras (Jason Miller). The shot depicts the white-faced demon Pazuzu giving a particularly nasty stare-down, and although it's blink-and-you'll-miss-it quick, this striking, startling face haunted me for MONTHS after watching the film.

Behind the make-up is actually actress Eileen Dietz, who looks nothing like a malevolent demon in real life. The ghoulish make-up, intense expression, and disembodied presence of this head feels like some kind of invasion on your psyche. This simple little edit has an incredible impact, despite lasting all of an eighth of a second - a testament to its director, editor, and cinematographer, all of whom received an Oscar nomination for their work (which is incredibly rare for a horror film).

2. The Blair Witch Project (1999)
"The Corner"

Director: Eduardo Sánchez & Daniel Myrick
Cinematographer: Neal Fredericks

Inspiring a generation of "found footage" horror movies, The Blair Witch Project features some seriously impressive, ingeniously realistic camerawork and compositions. In my mind, the most haunting shot comes right near the end of the film, as filmmaker Heather Donohue rushes into a seemingly abandoned cabin in the woods, following the screams of her lost friends. In the basement she finds one of them facing a corner and shortly after falls over, screaming. Cut to black.

Like the best of the genre, it's what you don't see that's the most unsettling. Showing a genius case of making lemonade out of lemons, the filmmakers behind this ultra-low budget indie didn't have the funds for a scary creature made out of prosthetics or CGI - so instead they created a scenario where it's the implied horrors on the other side of the camera that end up being scarier than anything they could have shown. While that sounds like a cop out, it's because of the acting, editing, and wonderfully naturalistic "documentary" camerawork that the film has an intense, edge-of-your-seat energy throughout. Cinematographer Neal Fredericks unfortunately died young at the age of 35 in 2004 - but his haunting imagery will live on forever in horror movie history.

3. Psycho (1960)*
"Shower Silhouette"

Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cinematographer: John L. Russell

I could have chosen just about any single shot from the infamous "shower scene" for my #3 pick, but it's hard to top this one. Hitchcock understood that we're at our most vulnerable in the shower, so deciding to kill off his leading lady in this way really hits at some primal fear in all of us - being absolutely defenseless against an attacker, in a situation we experience every day!

Unlike the bigger-budgeted movies he had been getting used to (like on North by Northwest), Hitch chose to make Psycho more "down and dirty," using a smaller TV crew and shooting it on the Universal backlot. The shower sequence alone took seven days to film, and every frame was meticulously storyboarded out by legendary graphic artist Saul Bass - who some believe deserves full credit for this sequence. But whoever was the actual brainchild behind it all - this is one creepy shot!

4. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
"The Door to Hell"

Director: Tobe Hooper
Cinematographer: Daniel Pearl

It's easy to forget just how influential the cinematography for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was. When you think back on the movie, it seems as though it's a lot gorier than it is, but in reality there's very little actual blood and guts - it's all suggested through its off-kilter sense of camera placement and harsh, natural lighting. The above static shot lingers on the open doorway into Leatherface's lair, where god-knows-what happens. The red wall and animal skulls suggest a slaughterhouse, where human beings are treated like cattle.

Cinematographer Daniel Pearl shot this film using a tiny 16mm Bolex camera, providing the film a cheap, raw, grimy feel. Pearl claimed he was inspired by the news coverage of Watergate and Vietnam, and the documentary-like feel to the film gives it an eerie feeling that these events actually happened. As horror maverick Wes Craven put it: "[It] looked like someone stole a camera and started killing people."

5. The Shining (1980)
"Twins Around the Corner"

Director: Stanley Kubrick
Cinematographer: John Alcott

There are so many great shots I could have chosen from The Shining, but I love the supernatural spookiness of the "twins" reveal. As Danny (Danny Lloyd) wheels around the abandoned and expansive Overlook hotel on his bike, the camera glides along with him in a series of amazing Steadicam and tracking shots. However, when Danny turns one corner, he comes face-to-face with the Grady twins, murdered by their father.

The perfect symmetry is unsettling and unnatural. There's a concept called the "rule of thirds" taught in film classes, in which a subject is placed on a "third" to create a natural sense of depth. Here, Kubrick and cinematographer John Alcott intentionally disobey this rule to create an uneasy, unreal atmosphere.

6. Signs (2002)
"Birthday Footage"

Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Cinematographer: Tak Fujimoto

In my opinion, this is one of the most simple and effectively scary shots on this list. As Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix) watches from his closet on an isolated farm in Pennsylvania, he sits glued to the TV for any updates after a series of crop circles appears and news of mysterious lights around the world start spreading. Suddenly, a breaking news story emerges, with video evidence of aliens during a Brazilian birthday party. Similar to the infamous Patterson-Gimlin film capturing Bigfoot, all we see is a blurry silhouette of the alien, and yet it is terrifying! The music, the reaction from Phoenix, and the extremely realistic camerawork add up to one of the most spine-tingling moments I've ever seen in a film.

7. IT (1990)
"Sewer Clown"

Director: Tommy Lee Wallace
Cinematographer: Richard Leiterman

A clown in the sewer - it's just such a stark, unreal, nightmarish image. As if the clown biz hadn't suffered enough after John Wayne Gacy's serial killings and Stephen King's novel, Tim Curry forever solidified our collective fear of clowns with his iconic performance as Pennywise in the 1990 TV movie adaptation. It was one of the first legitimate horror films I'd ever seen, but I'll never forget some of the terrifying, dream-like imagery captured by Canadian cinematographer Richard Leiterman.

8. Nosferatu (1922)
"Shadow on the Stairs"

Director: F.W. Murnau
Cinematographer: Fritz Arno Wagner

In the 1920s, one of the most stylistic movements in silent cinema was German Expressionism. With its use of deep shadows, exaggerated sets, and often creepy imagery, it was a movement borne of the devastating loss and angst the country faced in the wake of World War I.  Nosferatu, an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula (resulting in all prints of the film nearly being destroyed in a legal battle), makes an amazing use of harsh shadows. The above iconic shot captures the rat-like Count Orlok (Max Schreck) ascending a staircase to "feed," suggesting the dark forces that lurk in the shadows - a very prescient idea considering that Hitler and the Nazis were "lurking" right around the corner in German history.

9. Halloween (1978)
"Curious Kill"

Director: John Carpenter
Cinematographer: Dean Cundey

John Carpenter's Halloween is easily one of the best "slasher" movies ever made. The violent, mysterious Michael Myers, freshly escaped from Smith's Grove Sanitarium, is on a spree killing promiscuous teenagers on his way back to find his childhood home. The above shot takes place after Michael stabs his latest victim and pins him to a wall. But besides the unexpected brutality of the murder, what's even creepier is the fact that Michael takes a moment to reflect on what he's done. His blank, masked face expresses no emotion, so we can "read" our fears into this reaction. Is he like an animal, curious about what he's done, but with no regret or emotion or anger. He is a pure force of evil, and this chilling shot expresses that with no words!

10. Jurassic Park (1993)
"Eye to Eye"

Director: Steven Spielberg
Cinematographer: Dean Cundey

In doing research for this blog post (aka, Googling around), I was shocked to discover that Jurassic Park was shot by the same cinematographer behind Halloween! That only reinforced my love for the film and just how terrifying it was. People forget that before Jurassic World turned the series into an action-heavy CGI spectacle, Steven Spielberg made man's foray into "Dino DNA" into a living, breathing nightmare. This shot, coming during a moment when the dreaded Tyrannosaurus Rex escapes its pen, gives both an incredible sense of scale (the head takes up the whole frame), but also an unbelievable sense of realism, as the creature's eye dilates, reacting to the flashlight being shone in its eye. That subtle attention to detail still blows me away!

11. Evil Dead (1981)
"Cellar Deadite" 

Director: Sam Raimi
Cinematographer: Tim Philo

Although its sequels Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness re-focused the series more on campy slapstick than horror, the original Evil Dead still has an eerie, low-budget rawness that's impossible to replicate. This demon-filled "cabin in the woods" flick gained a huge cult following over the years in no small part thanks to its unique camerawork, often a result of the very fast-paced, DIY, "indie" production behind the scenes. For example, to capture the sense of speed of an unseen force in the woods, a "Steadicam" effect was achieved by mounting a camera on a plank of wood and having two crew members sprint around. The special effects of the "deadites" (seen above) were also brought to life using low budget means: the contact lenses the actors had to wear were as thick as glass and could be left on for only fifteen minutes at a time.

12. The Others (2001)
"I Am Your Daughter"

Director: Alejandro Amenábar
Cinematographer: Javier Aguirresarobe

The Others, an expertly moody "modern" gothic horror tale, is filled with rich and terrifying imagery. One of its most iconic moments (parodied in Scary Movie 3) involves an elderly "ghost" making its first appearance by candlelight, talking in the voice of a child. Cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe, BAFTA-nominated for his work on The Road, makes an amazing use of candlelight in the film, since the main character's children have a condition where sunlight makes them ill. So there is no "escape" by turning on the lights in this movie!

13. Begotten (1990)
"Bleeding God"

Director: E. Elias Merhige
Cinematographer: E. Elias Merhige

This is probably the most obscure movie on the list. An experimental, low budget horror film, Begotten looks like a nightmare caught on film. With no dialogue and minimal "music," its haunting, disturbing imagery alone drives the film forward. You won't understand what's going on, but shots like the above, featuring the bleeding and twisting body of "Mother Earth," have a way of burning themselves into your brain. Shot on 16mm black and white film, to achieve the grimy, withered look of the finished film, director/ cinematographer/ writer E. Elias Merhige first ran his unshot film negatives through sandpaper before shooting.

14. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
"Tina's Death"

Director: Wes Craven
Cinematographer: Jacques Haitkin

One of the scariest and most viscerally brutal moments in Wes Craven's classic A Nightmare on Elm Street is when Tina is hunted in her dreams by Freddy Krueger. Screaming in bed, her boyfriend rushes in to help, but finds no one under the covers. Tina is then helplessly stabbed and murdered through her dream as her body, in reality, is dragged up the wall and suspended in thin air. This shot, from her boyfriend's perspective, seems impossible, which gives it a surreal quality.

15. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)*
"Nuclear Apocalypse"

Director: James Cameron
Cinematographer: Adam Greenberg

Although it's not technically from a "horror" movie, this shot is probably the single scariest depiction of human annihilation I think I've ever seen. Starting with images of a bright, sunny day in Los Angeles, with children frolicking in a playground, the scene shows the nightmare of a nuclear holocaust come to life as peoples' bodies literally disintegrate from the blast. The miniature effects team 4Ward productions lent a hand to help create the nuclear bomb blast, using a combination of miniatures, matte paintings, and body doubles. It remains an alarming, visceral reminder of what might happen if a nuke is headed straight for us!

16. Mulholland Drive (2001)
"Dan's Nightmare"

Director: David Lynch
Cinematographer: Peter Deming

David Lynch's Mulholland Drive - one of his best films - is a surrealist take on Hollywood that actually started its life as a pilot for ABC. As a result, there are certain characters and plot lines that are shown once only to never be mentioned again. Perhaps the creepiest of these one-off "side stories" in the film is the infamous diner scene. In this simple sequence, a man eating at a diner with a friend describes a vivid nightmare he had in which there was a horrible figure lurking behind the very restaurant they're eating in. When the two leave to investigate, the above figure suddenly appears behind a dumpster, causing the man to collapse. End scene.

While I'm not a big fan of "jump scares" in movies, for some strange reason this one really sinks in - it's the dream-like randomness of it, and the ethereal way the sound design and camera lead you into the eventual scare. I credit David Lynch and cinematographer Peter Deming (Evil Dead II, Drag Me to Hell) for turning such a simple scene into a masterpiece of tension-building.

17. The Ring (2002)
"The Tape"

Director: Gore Verbinski
Cinematographer: Bojan Bazelli

The Ring has a simple hook: anyone who watches this one cursed videotape will be killed in seven days by a ghost. So knowing its reputation, it's doubly terrifying when we, the audience, watch "the tape" along with the main character! The unassuming VHS tape contains a demented series of random, nightmarish pictures - from a crawling centipede to twitching fingers - but strangely enough I find the creepiest one of them all is the above image. In one shot we first see a woman combing her hair, but in another shot, we see the same woman turn and look directly into the camera. This sudden invasion of the fourth wall is very unsettling, as well as the uncanny detail that there's a mirror with no camera reflection in it.

18. The Sixth Sense (1999)
"It Gets Cold"

Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Cinematographer: Tak Fujimoto

In my opinion, The Sixth Sense is the best movie about ghosts ever made. Period. It's elegant and suspenseful and dramatic in all the right ways - and not to mention shot incredibly well. One of my favorite shots in the film comes during a moment where Cole (Haley Joel Osment - nominated for an Oscar at just 11 years old!) is in his house, hiding from a seemingly aggressive spirit. It had previously been established that when ghosts manifest, the temperature gets cold, so as Cole is hiding, terrified under his little tent in his bedroom, we see his breath.

Just through this single shot, we understand how this character feels: trapped, violated (the red color evoking blood or danger), cold, scared, and alone. Considering how perfectly chilling this shot is, it's hard to believe that cinematographer Tak Fujimoto - frequent collaborator with M. Night Shyamalan - also shot such comedy classics as Ferris Bueller's Day Off!

19. Meshes of the Afternoon (1943)
"Mirror Face"

Director: Maya Deren & Alexander Hammid
Cinematographer: Alexander Hammid

I first watched this 14-minute surreal short film in a college film class, and for the rest of the day I had a lingering creepy, paranoid feeling. Delving into a woman's subconscious dream, there are a lot of stark, strange images in Maya Deren's experimental classic - including a mysterious cloaked, reaper-like figure with a mirror for a face. The symbolism here is so thick and ripe for interpretation I won't pretend like I'd be able to accurately decode it in a paragraph here, but this still remains a very creepy shot from an unsettling short film that heavily influenced the work of nightmare-giver David Lynch!

20. Day of the Dead (1985)
"Hands"

Director: George A. Romero
Cinematographer: Michael Gornick

The third, and most underrated, of George A. Romero's original iconic zombie trilogy features among the best, most inventive uses of special effects of all time. With Night of the Living Dead, Romero may not have had the budget or know-how to make amazing zombie effects (they look more or less like grey humans), and Dawn of the Dead suffers from very bright, unrealistically red blood, but the special effects team really reached a peak with Day of the Dead - with legends Greg Nicotero and Tom Savini making every set-piece an amazing triumph of blood and guts! But my favorite moment comes during a dream sequence, when Sarah (Lori Cardille) imagines a deluge of zombie hands bursting through the wall.

20. Twin Peaks: The Return (2017)
"Face Off"

Director: David Lynch
Cinematographer: Peter Deming

Last year's 18-part Twin Peaks: The Return straddles the line between "movie" and "TV series," but it's undeniable that this bizarre, full-on Lynchian experiment left us with some truly terrifying imagery. In this scene, a messed-up Sarah Palmer finds herself at a bar when a biker dude starts picking a fight with her. Then, in a completely nightmarish, unexpected turn, she lifts off her face, exposing a black void with a large smiling grin underneath it. I had no clue what was going on during The Return, but it was certainly unsettling!

21. Demons (1985)
"Theater Invasion"

Director: Lamberto Bava
Cinematographer: Gianlorenzo Battaglia

Demons is one of the best, most underrated 80s horror movies you'll ever see. Not only does it have a heavy metal soundtrack featuring Iron Maiden, not only does it boast some of the creepiest "zombie" effects of all time, but it's also a terrifying meta-experience because the demons attack a movie theater!

Although you're probably watching at home in 2018 - it's a cool concept that as you're watching a horror movie, the characters are too - and are just as unprepared for a zombie outbreak. That fear is perfectly encapsulated in the above shot, showing a horde of bloody, glowing-eyed monsters rushing their way into the theater, the light from the projector creating a kind of otherworldly luminescence. This one is a real gem from Italy - if you love monster flicks check it out (and its just-as-good sequel)!

22. Fantasia (1940)
"Night on Bald Mountain"

Director: Wilfred Jackson

While this entry technically isn't an example of "cinematography," this shot from the Disney animated classic Fantasia is creepy for adults, let alone kids! This nightmare of epic proportions depicts Chernabog, a giant, black, winged demon with horns, collecting the souls of the dead. Set to the intense sounds of Mussorgsky's "Night on Bald Mountain," this audio-visual masterpiece feels so perfectly evil - who knew that one of the scariest pieces of animation ever would come from Disney?

23. Friday the 13th (1980)
"Jason's Revenge"

Director: Sean S. Cunningham
Cinematographer: Barry Abrams

With 11 sequels, at this point the Friday the 13th series has more or less become fodder for memes online, but lest we forget its terrifying roots. In the first film, the story revolves not around the hockey masked Jason Voorhees, but his crazy mother, bent on revenge against the camp counselors who let her son drown. However, we do get one major scare with Jason himself in the first movie - one final "gotcha" moment towards the end of the film, where the drowned corpse of Jason rises from the depths of Crystal Lake to claim the seemingly escaped victim. It's so unexpected, coming at a moment of catharsis for the main character, lazily floating on a scenic lake; it's a popcorn-flying moment!

24. Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (1922)
"The Devil is Everywhere"

Director: Benjamin Christensen
Cinematographer: Johan Ankerstjerne

Häxan is an interesting silent horror film that presents itself as a kind of pseudo-documentary, using little scary vignettes to explore how the supposed "witches" of the Middle Ages likely suffered the same hysteria as psychiatric patients. Unconventional and genre-bending, there's really no other silent film like it, with the horrors coming not only from scary, demonic figures like the one in the shot above, but also from the fact that these horrifying passages are based on human history!

25. Strangers on a Train (1951)*
"Tennis Match"

Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cinematographer: Robert Burks

I think this might be in the running for my all-time favorite shot from a Hitchcock movie. In the film, Guy (Farley Granger) has a chance encounter on a train with Bruno (Robert Walker), casually chatting about the "perfect" murder by swapping victims. While Guy considered the conversation funny, it becomes clear that Bruno was not joking when he murders Guy's wife and he begins to stalk Guy, wanting him to kill his father!

This point of view shot happens during a tennis match, where Guy is set to play. While the rest of the spectators' heads swivel back and forth to follow the tennis ball, the antagonist leers at the main character, staring ahead perfectly still. A simple, chilling, effective moment that says so much and provides so much tension with literally no words. Strangers on a Train is another masterpiece from the master - one of Hitch's best!


So that wraps it up! Hope you enjoyed this post, and if you were in the mood for a scary movie this Halloween, this list might give you a decent place to start for suggestions! Let me know in the comments if you'd like similar posts like this in the future or if there were any scary shots I may have missed! 

Again, as always, thanks for reading!