I assume you must have seen it on DVD at home? That scene was even scarier, i’ll bet, for those of us who saw it in the cinema.
Actually, the scene in that movie that made me jump the most was the one wherethe policewoman gets sucked up into the sky.Freaked me right out.
I thought the movie itself, though, was total crap.
Not a horror movie, but in Adaptation, when
Laroche is backing out of his driveway and the car plows into him out of nowhere.
That scene still runs over and over in my head every time I’m… well, doing the same thing as in the spoiler box.
I’ve seen it (unfortunately), but don’t know which one you’re referring to. I don’t remember any “jump out of your seat” moments, just lots and lots of “sink lower down into your seat cringing and covering your hands and asking yourself why you’re still watching this” moments. Was there a “BOO!” in there I’ve forgotten?
Equipoise, you beat me to it. When that hand popped up from the ground, I pulled a muscle in my thigh. Of course, I rarely saw that type of movie, so I was more susceptible. I wouldn’t think a film about menarche would make the best date flick, but she held on to me pretty tightly during the scary parts.
Another vote for Carrie.
Oh, man! Agreed. I almost wet my pants when that happened. Of course, you eventually start thinking about what actually happens in that scene and realizing how ridiculous it was, but at the moment it happens…whoo…
The Alien ain’t a third as scary as that fucking cat is!
Wait Until Dark when Alan Arkin’s character jumps out of the darkness.
The Ring,
When we quickly flash to the dead body in the closet
Preview, preview, preview, dangit!
Clicked the wrong danged button.
Damn! I was just scrolling down to say that. Best. Jump. Ever. For some reason I still can’t explain, they showed us that movie in my middle school during the last week before summer vacation. Why that movie? A brilliant oversight on their part (consider, for example, that the next year we saw An American Tale with that stupid cartoon mouse).
First, a comment as Moderator: I’ve fixed some of the spoiler tags. I know that it says “Spoilers” in the thread title, but this isn’t about one movie. If a thread’s about one movie, then saying “Spoiler” in the title alerts folks not to read the thread if they don’t want to learn the surprises in that movie. Since this is about many movies, a reader of the thread won’t know exactly what movies are being spoiled until it’s too late. So, I’m requesting that you use spoiler tags – type {spoiler} at the beginning and {/spoiler} at the end, but use square brackets [ ] instead of curly brackets.
[/Moderator hat off] OK, now just as a regular poster:
It’s not just horror movies. Alfred Hitchcock once said (I’m paraphrasing from memory) that lots of movies shock you with surprise. He prefers suspense. He defined the difference with an example:
Well, the “jump moment” does not occur during the “sinking lower and lower” final act of the movie. More on that in a minute.
Before I go on I must say that I really hated this movie. I thought it was vile. You can show me anything, as long as the internal logic holds. But the guy was having flashbacks to things that there was no way he could have seen. I watched the ending twice and again with the commentary. I understand that some of the flashbacks were supposedly his point of view and some were from the director’s omnipresence. But it got all tangled up.
I found myself on more than one occassion thinking, “he can’t be flashing back to that! He wasn’t there when it happened!”
As I said before, a director can show me anything, as long as he earns the right. I don’t believe he did. The ending seemed gratuitous. If it was set up better, I’d be all over it. But don’t jerk me along and then throw something like that at me.
Even in the commentary, the director says something along the line of “Here, the screenwriter must have been on drugs.” Meaning, I guess, it’s happening but don’t even try to figure it out linerally or literally.
But I digress. The jump moment I’m talking about is not during the famed final sequence. If you recall, the movie starts off and proceeds along fairly normally. You’ve met the guy and see what his plan is for getting a date. You’ve met the girl, seems a liitle shy but nothing really off-kilter about her. Seems sortof sweet, actually. THEN, you get the scene that marks the transition (i.e., descent into hell):
He calls her on the phone, there are having a normal conversation. You don’t even notice the burlap bag sitting on the floor behind her. Just a sack of rice or something–until it jumps! My God! There’s someone (or what’s left of someone) in the bag! That jump, along with the music cue put me on the ceiling.
The two I opened the thread to say were already menioned, so I’ll just second them:
Exorcist 3 nurse scene
The Ring quick flash to closet. The way her face moved, I guess just “settling” into death, and the twisted position of her jaw… Sent an “Ahhh!” through my spine.
When I saw that movie in the theatre, they turned off all the theatre lights during that scene. It was pitch black, and people literally jumped out of their seats.
gahhh, shudder. I was just about to mention this exact scene.
The original version of The House on Haunted Hill as well as the remake both featured one ‘jump’ scene for me, and strangely enough, it was the original that made me jump higher:
From the remake
The brief scene where Geoffery Rush visits the guy at the monitors and discovers that his face has been cut completely away. This was a fantastic movie, save for the end, and while there were a great many creepy scenes, the monitor guy gave me a great jump.
From the original
The plot was great, but like most old movies, there were few scares. But there was one scene where the female lead was in the basement and she hears a scream or feels something and turns around and there is this creepy crazy looking old woman just staring at her. We’ve never seen this woman before and she glides across the room quickly into a doorway never to be seen again. The combination of her disturbing and sudden appearance and her quick and creepy exit had me awake later than I wanted to be.
Two that come to mind for me:
In The Pirates of the Caribbean:
At the very end, after the credits, when the monkey jumps/screeches
In Poltergeist:
When the clown doll comes up over the side of the bed and grabs the kid. An oldie, but a goodie. Clowns! ::shudder::
Mine have already been said, but both the Seven moment and the Carrie one are the only times I’ve ever felt my skin crawl - or jump, rather, as in off my body about an inch in all directions, it seemed. I only saw Carrie in high school, long after everybody else in the world had seen it, so I don’t know why I didn’t know what was coming - but I didn’t, and it was not pleasant.
Since these are all timeworn classics, I’m not going to bother with a spoiler box:
the Shining: 1. the twin girls (although that has been ripped-off so often that it has lost a lot of it’s original effect); 2…Jack realizing the “gorgeous babe” he’s kissing is in fact a hideously deformed hag; 3. Jack axes Halleran.
Halloween: Laurie has just discovered a houseful of her murdered friends and is in tears. Michael seems to almost materialize out of the darkness in the doorway behind her.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1979 remake): The final scene.
Nightmare on Elm Street: 1. Nancy falls asleep in class; 2. Johnny Depp gets sucked into his bed.
and for a non-horror movie jump:
Live and Let Die: The New Orleans funeral procession. (Secret agent: “Whose funeral is it?” Killer: “Yours!”)
I saw Alien when I was 11. I was very glad I emptied my bladder before I sat down in my seat because when the
“facehugger” leaps out of the egg directly into the camera
I peed myself, but only a few drops came out. No other movie scene, before or since, affected me like that.