The 40 Scariest Shots in Horror

Scared yet? You will be. We’ve compiled forty (40) of the most ookie spookie, scariest shots from horror films we could dredge up. It was no easy task. You might think an image is scary by itself, but it might only be frightening in the context of a scene it’s placed in.

These images, on the other hand, stand on their own as the stuff nightmares are made of, so pucker up and get ready to feel that adrenaline flow as you pour through our gallery below. Oh, and spoilers beware…

40 Scariest Single Images in Horror

28 Days Later (2004)

There's a lot of ocular damage anxiety in the genre. Add on paranoia about viral infection, multiply by a zombie rage virus and the product is one of the most heart-wrenching moments in horror when poor Brendan Gleeson gets an eyeful of Z-blood.
Alice Sweet Alice (1976)

As if this figure wasn't creepy enough in a rain slicker and translucent mask, they're about to totally murder a 9-year-old Brooke Shields! One of the all-time great "bad seed" evil child movies.
Alien (1979)

The scene of Dallas (Tom Skerritt) crawling through vent shafts in order to blowtorch a xenomorph into the next life is tense stuff, and climaxes with the jarring image of said alien reaching out to give him a big ol' hug. This pose is borderline German expressionism, and beautifully scary.
Altered States (1980)

Only the bent mind of Ken Russell could conjure some of the sense-shattering visions experienced by William Hurt's abnormal psychology researcher in this devious headtrip. While dunking himself in a sensory deprivation tank, Hurt receives images of Jesus with the head of a multi-eyed goat being crucified, intercut with this shot of a desiccated man in front of a blazing sky with a burning cross on his chest. Trippy!
A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984)

Freddy Kruger became an icon of fright over the course of comic books, video games, a TV series and nine feature films, but as originally conceived by Wes Craven he was less a figure of homicidal fun and more of an incarnation of pure evil. This shot of the Fredster reaching his impossibly long arms out is Craven tapping directly into our subconscious fears.
Begotten (1990)

Experimental auteur E. Elias Merhige shot this movie on black-and-white reversal film and then rephotographed every frame to give images like this one a visceral sense of otherness. The bleeding, bandaged man in the chair is meant to be God disemboweling himself with a straight razor. Pure nightmare fuel.
Black Sabbath (1963)

Mario Bava's twisted anthology film features three classic campfire stories, including the terrifically tense "The Drop of Water," which features perhaps the creepiest corpse make-up in history.
Cabin Fever (2002)

You can see clearly the promise of Eli Roth as a filmmaker in his wildly unhinged debut about a flesh eating virus that wrecks havoc on horny campers. The scene where Cerina Vincent shaves her legs to uncover a gruesome sight is embedded like a razor blade in the minds of every viewer who has seen it.
Candyman (1992)

"Oh, no, not the bees! Not the bees!" Director Bernard Rose took Clive Barker's short story and translated it through a dream logic filter that gives the proceedings a distinct chill, none more than when the titular urban legend played by Tony Todd gives Virginia Madsen a kiss she'll never forget.
Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

This is, in fact, the only shot on this list that nearly got the filmmakers thrown in the slammer. Italian filmmaker Ruggero Deodato was arrested on allegations that they had actually skewered an actress to get this shot, but after providing evidence of its creation (the woman merely sat on a bicycle seat), the charges were dropped.
Don't Look Now (1973)

Although many people remember this film for the infamous (and allegedly unsimulated) love scene between Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie, but it's that shocker of an ending that gets us every time. Convinced he's seeing a lost girl that reminds him of his daughter, Sutherland discovers a little too late that it's an old ugly dwarf woman with a penchant for slashing throats. Yikes!
Dracula (1931)

A leering Renfield (Dwight Frye) discovered as the only passenger aboard a ship that used to have a crew and a coffin containing his undead master is quite a sight. It's one of several images from this Universal classic that will remain with you, along with that demented laugh of his.
The Exorcist (1973)

The use of (nearly) subliminal imagery is just one of the many innovations that elevates William Friedkin's possession tale to legendary status, and when isolated this shot of the demon Pazuzu is nearly as effective as it is at a quarter-of-a-second.
Halloween (1978)

It may be hard for audiences today to appreciate the level of fear generated by John Carpenter's masterpiec,e as many of the scares have become cliché. But the image of Michael Myers coming after Laurie Strode in the closet is still as claustrophobic and terrifying as ever.
Hellraiser (1987)

Jesus wept indeed. The sight of ultra-masochist Frank Cotton (Andrew Robinson) flayed open by the Cenobites and loving every minute of it is enough to put anyone on edge.
I Walked With a Zombie (1943)

Before the Romero-created contemporary zombie, there was voodoo and the zombies who were essentially living people transformed into slaves through drugs and/or witchcraft. The most famous might be Darby Jones as the towering Carre-Four in Val Lewton's haunting 1943 film, a role the actor actually parodied two-years later in Zombies on Broadway.
Jacob's Ladder (1990)

You might remember this movie for its innovation of the blurry-faced creatures shaking their heads insanely fast, and that's cool, no question. For my money, though, the scariest part is this one depicting a floor-level shot of a gurney careening down a grimy hospital floor splashed with bloody entrails, injecting us with the same anxiety the eponymous Vietnam vet is riddled with.
Jaws (1975)

Perhaps the biggest shock in Steven Spielberg's classic beach-bound suspense tale comes when Richard Dreyfuss scuba dives down to examine poor Ben Gardner's abandoned fishing boat. Let's just say Spielberg was trying to stay one step a-head of the audience.
Lake Mungo (2008)

This sadly little-seen Australian mockumentary culminates in a deeply disturbing image of young Alice (Talia Zucker) capturing blurry cell phone footage of her future drowned corpse approaching her from out of the darkness.
Manhunter (1986)

Before it was remade under original title Red Dragon, Thomas Harris' first Hannibal Lecter novel was brought to bone-chilling life by director Michael Mann. The best shot? Tabloid reporter Freddy Lounds (Stephen Lang) turned into BBQ on wheels by serial killer Francis Dollarhyde (a frightening Tom Noonan).
Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Bill Hinzman has the honor of being the inaugural zombie in a film that would forever redefine the creatures, and his first appearance coming to get Barbara (Judith O'Dea) in the cemetery is still potent stuff to this day. This creature is shambling, relentless, and ugly.
Nosferatu (1922)

The great silent star Max Schreck played Dracula knock-off Count Orlok with such unnatural gait (not to mention those rodent-like chompers) that the mere act of him standing still and staring at the camera (i.e. us) is enough to give audiences the willies.
Onibaba (1964)

The Japanese have a particular flair for theatrics in their horror films, as in Kaneto Shindo's classic in which an older woman dons a frightening mask to terrify her younger counterpart from having sex. Mission accomplished!
Peeping Tom (1960)

The image of film camera as both voyeuristic tool and instrument of death invokes primal associations in an age of media bombardment. Perhaps it's that very potency that provoked such revulsion in the UK that director Michael Powell's career effectively ended with this now-classic.
Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986)

It's bad enough that bug nutty deceased preacher Kane is threatening the Freeling family, but to top it off the actor who played him (Julian Beck) was at death's door while shooting, and in fact died of stomach cancer before completing his role. That lends his screen door appearance and extra air of disturbing.
Possession (1981)

Isabelle Adjani strikes a decidedly frightening pose for the camera as a woman locked in strange psychological tug-of-war with her spy husband, played by Sam Neill.
Prince of Darkness (1987)

John Carpenter is known for his minimalism. It makes sense then that if he was going to depict the second-coming of Lucifer on earth, it would be through fuzzy video footage and a mere silhouette that lets your mind conjure horrors far greater than any make-up man could.
Repulsion (1965)

Roman Polanski struck a nerve with this visual dissection of a young woman named Carol (Catherine Deneuve) entering the throes of madness during self-imposed isolation in her apartment. The hands reaching out of the walls is a particularly telling (and terrifying) moment of mental disintegration.
Ringu (1998)

Another entry in Japanese horror, this time a modern film that inspired sequels and American remakes, but remains most potent in its original, undiluted form. When the ghost of demonic little girl Sadako crawls through a TV screen into the living room of Ryūji (Hiroyuki Sanada), the site of her—punctuated by this icky eyeball—induces a cardiac shock in the poor guy.
Sleepaway Camp (1983)

This gender-bending slasher ends on a high note, of sorts, with the killer little girl revealed to be a boy who's been brainwashed by his demented aunt into being his deceased sister.
The Blair Witch Project (1999)

Nobody puts Baby in a corner… unless you're the Blair Witch. This cinematic haunted house attraction played on primal fears of "what you don't see" and let the audience's imagination run rampant as the shaky handheld camera dashed through each decrepit staircase in the prototypical abandoned home in the woods, capped by this suggestive final image.
The Fly (1986)

David Cronenberg took a Vincent Price creature classic and transformed it (with a dash of genetic engineering) into a mid-eighties AIDS analogy that still stands as a stomach churning work of body horror. Jeff Goldblum's final transformation is the stuff of Greek tragedy, and possibly necessitates a barf bag.
The Innocents (1961)

The eerie tone established by director Jack Clayton and the exacting eye of cinematographer Freddie Francis turned this spook story into one of the most haunting, atmospheric ghost tales ever burned onto celluloid. This shot of the drowned Miss Jessel (Clytie Jessop) standing among the reeds is truly jolting.
The Sentinel (1977)

The filmmakers' use of genuine disfigured people to represent hell's denizens has been called tasteless by some, but you can't argue with its effectiveness. Despite being made nearly four-decades ago, this "make-up" will never age.
The Shining (1980)

So much of the supernatural in Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece can be argued to be taking place solely in the Jack Nicholson character's head… that is, until we get to this sequence where Shelly Duvall is bombarded with all kinds of ookie spookies, including a flapper-era furry giving scary head in a hotel room.
The Strangers (2008)

Home invasion was never so invasive as it is in this film in which a couple is terrorized by masked assailants. This scene in particular, in which a masked man lurks menacingly in the background made audiences squeal in horror.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Tobe Hooper's original massacre celebrated it's 40^th anniversary last year, and those watching it might have been surprised by how little gore actually occurs onscreen. The malevolent Leatherface works his magic behind closed doors (for the most part), which is why this long shot of him in the doorway is so damned effective.
The Thing (1982)

At the tender age of 24, makeup effects artist Rob Bottin created what many believe to still be the apex of the artform with his work on The Thing, the standout scene being when Norris (Charles Hallahan) head rips from his body and crawls away.
Un Chien Andalou (1929)

This is a terribly convincing shot that actually proves the power of suggestive editing, with surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel showing a young woman (Simone Mareuil) with her eye held open (by Buñuel himself) only to cut to a close-up of a dead calf with its skin bleached white having its eye sliced.
Xtro (1982)

Sometimes a bad movie can have one amazing shot that stays with you. For the incomprehensible rubbish that is Xtro, that shot is the one of our title alien illuminated by the headlights of a car traveling down a dark country road. Maybe it’s the backwards walk, or the fact that the bad make-up is blurred, but either way… Happy travels!