Do you ever see a particular scene in a movie that keeps replaying itself off and on in your mind? I imagine horror movies evoke a lot of these “eyeworms” as one might call them (as an analog to an earworm, or a song stuck in your head). The one I can’t stop thinking about is in the first Saw movie:
The scene where Amanda reaches into the other guy’s stomach to find a key she needed to undo the “reverse bear trap” attached to her head. As she reaches in she pulls out his bloody intestines.
The scene in No Country for Old Men in which Anton Chigurh chokes a man to death on the floor, all the while keeping his eyes open and fixed on the ceiling.
That really drives home the point of his sociopathic nature–he doesn’t even look at the person he’s dealing with. In fact, I don’t think he blinks at all during any of his scenes.
In Bruges:
The scene where the little boy is shot in the back of the head and we see the gaping exit wound in his forehead. I keep seeing that when I’m trying to fall asleep and it still squicks me out. If it had been an adult shot exactly the same way, I don’t think it would have bothered me so much, but I’m not used to seeing violence against children portrayed in such a graphic fashion.
To go completely against the stream, after I saw the miniseries of Elizabeth Gaskell’s “North & South”, the scene at the end where John and Margaret the scene at the train station at the end stuck in my head. Why? Because it’s quite possibly the best movie kiss ever.
You can watch the short version here or the long version here.
I’ve still never forgotten the final shot in Blair Witch Project, where the kid is facing the wall right before the camera goes dark.
An oldie but a classic: I have never completely forgotten the shower scene in Psycho, or the final scene where it’s just that long, slow closeup.
Also, the opening scene of A Clockwork Orange.