Five horror movie scenes that will still be remembered in 100 years
In general, horror movies aren’t exactly going to calm your blood pressure or make you feel at ease when you’re home alone, but there are always going to be a few in particular that never leave the back of your mind, certain scenes replaying like a stuck VHS tape, freezing in the most unnerving of places.
You see, we get desensitised to horror movies after a while; even gruesome scenes of stabbing and shooting and hacking and ripping of skin start to become easier to watch the more we consume. That’s not to say that horror movie lovers need psychological help, but the more you watch, the less shocking your average horror movie becomes.
Thus, only a select few scenes might actually linger in your memory, so much so that you’re certain they’ll be remembered for hundreds of years by whoever stumbles upon them. They might not be the goriest, per se; rather, these are scenes that completely play with expectation, twisting the whole narrative inside out, becoming all the more shocking for their intense and psychological toll on the audience.
So, from classic cuts like Psycho to modern entries to the canon, such as Hereditary, here are five great horror movie scenes that will certainly be remembered a century from now.
Five horror movie scenes to last a 100 years:
POV opening scene: ‘Halloween’
John Carpenter’s legendary slasher Halloween, released to instant success in 1978, begins with a POV shot, giving us the perspective of a ruthless killer.
We witness a teenage couple through the window, with the girl heading upstairs, only for the camera to follow her, and the person obscured behind the lens eventually stabbing her to death in her bedroom. It’s brutal and shocking enough as it is, and few horror films have used a point-of-view shot like this before, but what’s even worse is the revelation that comes a few moments later.
Carpenter plays with our expectations straight away as we’re then shown the culprit, a small child dressed as a clown, no older than six years old, setting us up for an unpredictable and tense viewing experience. It’s one of the most legendary opening scenes in the horror genre, and it certainly won’t be forgotten any time soon.
Shower sequence: ‘Psycho’
When Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho was first screened, nobody knew what they were getting themselves into as for the first chunk of the movie, we follow Janet Leigh’s Marion Crane as she stops by Bates Motel, and the last thing we expect is to witness her being stabbed in the shower by an unknown assailant, blood circling the drain as quick cuts of her terrified face and the knife hitting her stomach are edited swiftly to the sound of Bernard Hermann’s iconic jolting score.
It’s a scene that has been referenced so many times in pop culture, and that’s because it truly changed the horror genre for good. This 1960 film came at a time when the standards for the genre were still rather tame, and you couldn’t get away with anything very graphic at all. However, not only did Hitchcock completely throw audiences off guard with the shocking murder scene, but he delivered something that pushed the permissible limits, with the black-and-white film stock allowing more bloodshed onscreen, which prevented the film from being heavily censored.
The decapitation: ‘Hereditary’
The most recent film on this list is the 2018 modern horror classic Hereditary, the debut film from Ari Aster that quickly put the filmmaker on the map, with one scene that really cemented his status: the decapitation of 13-year-old Charlie. After being taken to a party by her older brother, Peter, and mistakenly eating a piece of cake containing nuts, he frantically drives her home as she gasps for air, going into severe anaphylactic shock.
In this terrifying state, Charlie panics and sticks her head out of the window as Peter’s reckless, panicked driving sees them swerve past a deer and go straight towards a telephone pole, which takes Charlie’s head clean off. It’s one thing watching a scene that intense, but another when the victim of such a grisly death is a child, and it all happens incredibly fast. The film only gets more intense from here as the characters grapple with her death, but her terrifying decapitation scene is undoubtedly the movie’s most indelible moment.
Subway scene: ‘Possession’
Isabelle Adjani is a heavyweight actor with her performances always so full of passion and energy, and in that, Possession is arguably her most impressive offering. Andrzej Żuławski’s horror-fuelled divorce drama makes the argument in Marriage Story look like child’s play, and driving the film’s ferocity and relentlessness is Adjani’s performance as Anna. The film captures her and husband Mark amid a messy break-up, which leads to several brutal acts of violence and even the discovery of a bizarre creature, with one of the most unforgettable scenes involving Adjani in a blue dress, walking through the subway, bags of groceries in hand.
She begins to throw herself against the walls, eggs and milk flying everywhere as she screams and wails, animalistic and totally unrestrained, like she has tapped into the deepest, most raw part of her soul to get to this level of derangement, flinging herself about and spewing liquid from several orifices. It’s a crazy scene, and even if you find it revolting to watch, you can’t say it doesn’t stick with you.
Torture sequence: ‘Audition’
What starts as a widower staging a television audition in the hopes of finding a new wife descends into pure terror as the woman that Ryo Ishibashi’s Shigeharu begins a relationship with turns out to be a psychopath. Audition, directed by Takashi Miike, took many viewers by surprise when it was released in 1999, with few people anticipating the level of disgusting and graphic violence that would take place in the final scene.
Shigeharu’s new girlfriend, Eihi Shiina’s Asami, has many skeletons hiding in her closet, which he soon discovers when he becomes the victim of her torture. We see her vomit into a dog bowl and feed it to a man missing several body parts, whom she soon decapitates, before paralysing and further tormenting Shigeharu. She slices off his foot and sticks needles in him, ruthlessly taking out her frustrations on the guy, and if you’re able to watch the screen without covering your eyes, those images will certainly stick with you for a long time.
