15 unforgettable horror movie jump scares
From the original Cat People to Alien to Smile, we're tracing the history of a favorite horror film tactic
Film Lists Richard Dreyfuss
You might love them or you might loathe them, but you cannot deny that the jump scare has flourished, developing into a cornerstone of modern horror moviemaking. Their presence (or lack thereof) has the power to dictate a film’s entire pace, and can ramp it up from a slow burn to a tense, thrill-a-minute rollercoaster.
Like all movie conventions, the jump scare has evolved over the decades—and it has only grown more commonplace as audiences demand more terror for their money and advances in sound design, special effects, and editing have allowed filmmakers to deliver on those demands. So for Halloween, the scariest of all days, we’ve charted the history of the jump scare. This way, you’ll know the full backstory of what’s making you soil yourself.
146 Comments
The greatest that’s ever been done is Nell’s scream in the car from The Haunting of Hill House. Not only is it absolutely terrifying in the moment, but it actually serves a purpose beyond that momentary scare, being fully rooted in the characters and leading to big understandings between them.
I need to rewatch that.
I screamed so loud my dog started jumping up and trying to calm me down. lol! “Daddy don’t be scared, I’m here!”
Agree with this 100%. Best jump scare ever–because it’s both scary and also integral to the plot and characters.
I screamed so loud I almost fell off the couch. Then I started crying.
The jump scare in Exorcist 3 was so awesome that the whole theater in Queens NY in which I saw it either screamed and let out a loud gasp. It was awesome as everyone started laughing at themselves after it.
Horror movies and comedies are almost always better in the theater
One of the better ones I remember in recent history was in The Invisible Man, the scene when they’re at the restaurant shocked the entire audience when I saw the movie.
I watched it; loved the movie, have no idea what you’re talking about, which means it’s time for a rewatch.
I’m a little bummed The Descent didn’t make the list. It’s a rock solid movie, and the jump scare at the end of the first act consistently made friends scream when I showed it to them.
Yeah, that one’s an all-time great. A friend of mine sat next to me in the cinema literally fell out of his chair at that moment.
For people like I who don’t really love incredibly tight, closed spaces, the entire damn movie (The Descent) is one big jump scare…
Talk about underrated gems-The Descent was a really great theater experience, and one I’d recommend to anyone to see in a theater should they get the opportunity….or at the very least on a big TV with all the lights in the room out to really get the feel of what Jordan was going for. The tight, isolated shots lit only by their gear made for such a claustrophobic feeling it was almost panic-inducing. Watching it play out you get really wound up so that when the jump scare happens it felt like it had been building so long it was almost a relief.
Which version? I recently saw the Claude Rains version for the first time, and while it doesn’t have anything I would a jump scare, I was fairly shocked at its violence, considering the time it was made.
It was the 2020 one, went in not expecting much and the movie ended up being great.
Damn, the still of the upside-down head is kinda more creepy than watching it move.
I saw Friday the 13th on Preview with my best friend’s awesome older brother at 2AM Sunday morning. He said, “Oh I guess I was thinking of the wrong movie…” Then Jason jumped out of the water. I, literally, jumped back in the recliner so hard I rolled it over on myself.
That one had me freaked throughout my childhood in the 80s. Parents back then had no idea what kids were watching late night on thier new cable boxes.
Off the top of my head? Escape from NYFriday the 13thShe’s 19 and ReadyConfessions of a WindowwasherEmmanuelleThe ThingMad MaxQuest for Fire
The Exorcist III is one of the most underrated films ever. That jump scare is an all timer. It’s drawn out for so long and then you’re given the false scare. Really catches you off guard when it finally happens.
That one terrified the hell outta me. Sincerely, I still think about it to this day when I’m in a hospital hallway. It made quite the impression (read: scar).
Not kidding, I saw the movie in the theatre, and that’s the only time, so like over thirty years ago. And I still saw the clip up there of that scene and…naw, I’m good. Literally the only time I can think of that I got scared again later the same night, after a movie – in a dark parking lot, wind blowing, and fuck. Scared all over again.
I’ve never seen Exorcist III, but I’ve watched this scene time and again:
You should watch it. George C. Scott gives a very believable performance as an exasperated, cynical detective. And Brad Dourif is so unsettling.
I’m sure I’ve mentioned this here before, but my brother saw Exorcist III in the theater, and he says not only did everyone scream at the jump scare, most of the audience was so freaked out that they screamed twice.
Agreed on both counts. Brad Dourif is SO wildly good in that movie. What a performance.
The end is a bit oddball, but in a way that almost works.
It was not the original ending. In the original version, after the nurse attack, Kinderman just goes to Patient X (Karras) and shoots him. The end. But the studio insisted that a movie called The Exorcist HAD to feature an exorcism, so they invented Father Morning and rewrote the end sequence. It works but feels forced, although knowing the original end, it seems less bleak.https://collider.com/the-exorcist-iii-reshot-ending/
I have seen the original ending, and while I appreciate what they were going for, it’s just a little too anticlimactic for me. The Father Morning stuff is pretty separate from the rest of the film (which is especially obvious if you know that it’s reshoots), but I think this is one of the rare exceptions where the studio was kinda right (not that it needed an exorcism full stop, but that it needed SOMETHING else).
Where did you see it? I have always been curious.
I can see how it might be anticlimactic (and BLEAK!), and I fully expect it might not necessarily be better, but I love the rest of the movie so much I’d love to see Blatty’s original ‘vision.’
Shout Factory put out an “original”-ish version, but it uses a lot of stepped-on shit for its different-cut footage. It’s interesting archeology, but it isn’t a real movie. What it is, is a reminder that however compromised the theatrical version was (they spent more money on the new ending, got Blatty to make it, and it does turn out to be a bitchin’ exorcism scene), it is the version that made so many of us fall in love with this movie.
What I saw wasn’t a total recut or anything like Tyrannorabbit is describing, just literally the original raw footage from the last scene. I think it was in a Red Letter Media review of Exorcist III.
Cool. I’ll hunt that down. Thanks!
I pass Brad Dourif on the street now and then and I always, always get a little jolt. Exceptional actor, fascinating to look at.
It’s a great jump scare (almost a shame for it to be spoiled in a listicle), but what really makes it work is… well, the whole movie up to that point. It has such an amazing atmosphere, kind of a weighty dread throughout, that by the time that scene happens, the audience is both keyed up to ‘something bad is going to happen’ and at the same time to ‘maybe it won’t,’ and then BAM.
It would honestly be one of my favorite horror movies of all time (instead of just an ‘underrated gem’) if it weren’t for that screwy ending. There were a couple of really disturbing scenes in general, but yeah I still recall almost jumping out of my skin at the theater.
I’m glad The Thing From Another World is getting some play. I feel like everyone only talks about The Thing, but its predecessor is gold. Snappy dialogue, scary. It’s just great.
It’s probably my favorite movie. I watch it a few times a year. I love its relentless optimism. And I like Carpenter’s version too.
I’ve never even seen Carpenter’s version. I have no excuse for that. I’m not boycotting it or anything. I’m sure it’s great. But I will say I’ve had it saved on my DVR for the past like three years so one of these days I’ll get on it. lol
It’s very different, obviously, and much closer to the source material, which would have been unfilmable in ‘51, and not just for technical reasons. I think the original is superior in two respects (and I don’t think I’m spoiling anything)- both groups are heavily armed, but the original at least explains this by having some of them be military. It makes zero sense that a group of scientists would have a flamethrower (although it’s needed for the best scene in either film)- the camaraderie of the original is utterly absent from the remake. You get the sense that the characters didn’t like each other much even before the monster attacked. It works to a degree, but I personally find the character’s reactions in the original not only more enjoyable, but more realistic. I think there’s plenty of evidence that people in crises generally come together, rather than apart.
Okay I didn’t even know there was source material, which I have now looked up. I’m going to have to find that because I’m a big fan of mid-century science fiction.Yeah the weaponry made sense in the older one, and they did a good job of weaving in the civilians and making them part of the action, not just standing around screaming. The camaraderie is the biggest selling point for me. How they all get along, and the snappy dialogue I mentioned before is the way people talk to each other when they know each other really well and have adopted each other’s rhythms, like the “I think you’re right, sir” inside joke. I have watched a scene or two from The Thing and I found it a bit dour. Kurt Russell was so grim, which was not something you saw in the first one.I think I’ll make my project for this month finally watching The Thing and getting my hands on this “Who Goes There?” business.
It’s excellent. Also look up The Things by Peter Watts, but only after you see Carpenter’s version. The camaraderie between groups of working men was Hawks’ trademark (along with overlapping dialogue). Further evidence he didn’t just produce the original.
Will do!
I love the exchange at the end of that scene:“Did you get your picture?”“No, you were in the way.”“Do you want me to open the door again?”“No!”
It’s so funny all the way through! And not like hacky, obviously jokey stuff. The real kind of stuff you’d say with your friends.
The best jump scare that I can think of is Large Marge in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure.
It’s only dimished by people posting fake memorials to her on Facebook every goddamned January 11th. Oh goodie, that’s this coming Wednesday.
I see them on her death day, which is also my birthday. I appreciate seeing it.
Good call.
The Twilight Zone Movie: “Wanna see something REALLY scary?”
I appreciate the examples you’ve used here, but man, the jump scare in its modern state is one of the most annoying gimmicks in all of cinema, not just horror films. Aside from cruelly graphic gore, it’s the one thing that turns me off a film faster than you can say “boo”…
I feel the same about modern horror movies using this trick, but only when it’s a false jump scare (e.g. someone taps someone on the shoulder, a friend pops up from offscreen, a cat jumps and yowls at the potential victim). That feels like a cheap and lazy way to get a response out of the viewer (who was most likely dozing-off by that point).
Ugh the cat thing HAS to be the most over-used jump scare technique in horror. Cats are shitheads for sure and it’s totally in their wheelhouse to do that shit on purpose, but does it need to happen in every horror movie?
They can be good, the problem is most of them are so lazy that if you’ve watched enough horror, you can see them coming a mile away: soundtrack goes silent, 1… 2… LOUD NOISE, SOMETHING JUMPS OUT. That’s why I really appreciated the It Follows one from above, it’s almost a sort of reverse jump scare. It really telegraphs it. It’s slow motion, the soundtrack is building, you can see the look of terror on the characters face, and it just ratchets up the tension in a really smart way.
Ahem.
Periodically, everyone on the internet seems to lose their shit over this scene, but I don’t get it. The scare is so endlessly telegraphed that I wasn’t at all surprised by it, and the dude looks like Old Gregg from the Mighty Boosh. I was thankful it didn’t make this list. Most overrated jump scare of all time in my opinion.
The fact that it’s telegraphed for five minutes is the reason it’s effective. Sometimes knowing that you’re about to be jump scared, but not exactly when, makes it worse. This goes even further, making you doubt that there will be a jump scare. The whole reason they go to the dumpster is to prove there’s nothing there. So now you have the tension of expecting it but also questioning whether it’s going to happen at all.
What it looks like doesn’t matter. Most of these are pretty unscary in a still. The sudden appearance/loud noise is what gives them a scare. But in this case, he’s described how terrible it looks in his dream. So as it builds, you’re dreading what you’re going to see — if you see anything, which you still don’t know.
To be fair, a lot of this is defused by knowing that yes, there is a scare.
Count me on the list of underwhelmed by that scare as well. When I later learned half the film was shot as a TV pilot, the cheap production quality of the scene made a lot more sense.
My lingering memory of it is the scariest thing. It definitely lingered after the first time I saw the movie. But I was also…well, apparently fourteen years old, so, I dunno. The dumpster man still holds power over me.
I had a huge crush on the dumpster man when I was 14.
I don’t know how familiar you are with Lynch but that’s kind of his thing. The world is a cheap façade barely masking cosmic and existential terror.
My familiarity with Lynch is definitely undercooked. All I’ve seen is Dune (puts me to sleep), Lost Highway (love it), The Straight Story (it cracks me up that Lynch calls this his most experimental movie), and Mulholland Drive (mixed-to-good feelings about it).As a side note, I thought Lynch’s guest appearance on Louie was funny as hell.
I’d forgotten about him on Louie but yeah, I loved that.
And on the current topic, the nightmare episode was legitimately terrifying.
Old Gregg was an amazing charachter!
I didn’t even remember it having a jump scare scene. I just watched that clip and I have only an extremely vague memory of it but I remember the rest of the movie fine.
As for the scene itself, the jump scare is predictable, but it uses the Lynchian aspect of dragging it out with impending dread so long (and with that background hum) that you start to doubt anything will happen. Then it does, and it’s bizarre and fleeting.And also, the scene is kind of the key to the whole movie (along with the scene with the actual key)
This movie sucks far too much to feature even a single scene on a best of anything countdown.
Look, I was a grown ass adult watching it in my home in the middle of the day and this upset me so badly I had to pause it for like fifteen minutes. Different things work on different people and this one absolutely nailed me to the wall. I’m never going to watch it again or even play that clip. Ugh.
I never would have believed a jump scare can happen in print, but I recently found myself jolted by a book I was reading. Not even a horror story. It played out a lot like the Thing From Another World one on this list. Two characters were talking about the villain, then they start to worry that he’s listening at the door, they open the door, and he’s standing there. I can’t explain why it was so effective, but it was.
That sounds really interesting. What were you reading?
Surprisingly: The Once and Future King. Not something you’d expect a jump scare from.A short time later I was reading an actual horror book — You Should Have Left — and something in there got me, too.
There are a couple for me in Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast books. Lord Groan’s suicide by death owl haunted me for a bit after I read it.
Funny you say this, I recently had what I’d consider my first written jump scare too. What made it even dumber was the character says it’s about to happen. Like, “I’m going to look out the window and see something horrible” and then she just does but it still freaked me out so much I had to put it down for a bit. Lol. (It was The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher.)
I’m becoming convinced that this is the secret to a solid jump scare, or at least one kind. It’s a big part of why the Mullholland Drive one works. I’m sure it can be done poorly, too, but I know of several cases now where this method really delivers.It kind of brings to mind the classic “The Raven” bit from The Simpsons.
“You know what would be scarier than nothing?”
“What?”
“Anything!”
Kingfisher is in my book pile but haven’t gotten to her yet. I’ll need to accelerate that.
Oooh The Twisted Ones legit freaked me out.
H.P. Lovecraft was good at that. Especially Pickman’s Model and The Strange Music of Eric Zahn (?) and The Statement of Randolph Carter.
I got jumpscared by Ursula Vernon’s “The Twisted Ones”, although admittedly that’s a full-on horror novel.(I made faces like the faces on the rocks and I twisted myself about like the twisted ones and I lay down flat on the ground like the dead ones)
The Shining was my jam for a true jump scare…and sorta thanks to my mom as a kid.Danny escapes from the bathroom and basically stands there convincing himself the woman isn’t real and just as he starts to calm down, he is grabbed from behind, spun and gazes directly into her laughing face as she seizes his neck…..I remember that one because I was so engrossed in the book, I didn’t notice my mother had walked into the room and she literally shouted my name. She said I literally levitated from a seated position on my bed in fright. The perfect timing….she had scared the piss outta me and I sat there with my heart thundering.
The scene at the end of “Silence of the Lambs” played out the same way in the book, with the reader having no idea the agents were at the wrong houses. That was one of the most-tense sequences I can ever remember reading in any novel.
The new Host had some great jump scares. Also, think it’s the granny of the cupboard in the Conjouring. Great bait and switch one
how does the original conjuring not end up on this
Smile doesn’t deserve credit for the neck scene. It was stolen from the far superior 2017 Argentinian film Terrified — much like most of Smile is stolen from far better films.
Glad someone said it. Terrified is great!
Jaws had a second great jump scare. When Sherriff Brody is distractedly chumming off the back of the boat the shark suddenly appears. People went bananas in the theater because no one was expecting it.
that was a very subtly, tastefully done jump scare. extremely rare in movies.
Yeah when they mention a jump scare in Jaws, THAT’S the scene I think of, way more than the severed head. Unexpected, subtle but horrifying, kinda funny too.
Why stick to horror? My favorite jump scare is from Kingpin:
Nightmare fuel.
John Carpenter’s The Thing wasn’t a remake, and even though the movie has a few jumpscares the defib scene doesn’t really count as one. I’m surprised the blood test wasn’t here instead.
That’s the scene that got me.
The thing (no pun intended) about the scene listed is that the character saying WTF is later revealed to be an Alien. So the Alien itself is as surprised as anyone else at the walking head.
I like to think that when Palmer said “you gotta be fucking kidding” he was thinking ‘I could have had spider legs this whole time?!’
Thanks for that perspective because now I can see all the Aliens in the movie trying to top each other. Chest monster? Ok Spiderhead! Ok Headclaw!
Um, has anyone watched “Alien?” Dallas didn’t die then.
The Director’s Cut? Because he dies in the vents in the theatrical cut.
IIRC, if you only watch the original cut, and never read the novelization, you might assume he was killed. That scene with Dallas as a cocooned host is only in the extended cut.
The theatrical and director’s cuts differ on this point, but I think most people agree that Dallas’ fate makes more sense in the former.
Another great entry is Wait Until Dark. An entire movie’s worth of dread and tension just springs out in one jump.
This is the first thing I think of when I hear the term “jump scare.” Gah!
“Parlor trick”? Oh well…
Man, I was not expecting the Cat People one to get me so damn hard.
edit: fuck
I was traumatized by the original Exorcist as a young teen and so when part 3 came out I had mile high expectations. I saw it in the theatre with my dad and, expecting something like the first film, was finding it quite boring (slow burn indeed). I had kind of tuned out and my mind was wandering when that nurse scene happened and holy fuck did I jump. It immediately brought me back into the movie and I was riveted from that point on. Easily the best jump scare I’ve had!
I guess I’ll need to watch this film.
It’s definitely not perfect, but it’s a fun one to watch around Halloween.
It’s honestly a shame the nature of this article requires that the scare be ruined, somewhat, by telling you exactly when it happens. I mean, the whole point is not to be expecting it.
If possible go in with zero expectations (my post may have ruined that) and do not watch the jump scare on YouTube before you see the flick.
No love for the fun Sam Raimi had with jump scares in Drag Me to Hell? He knew where we would anticipate them, so held off…then held a little longer….just a bit mo-BANG! He’d hit it so hard! It was a fun experience with a packed crowd on opening weekend.
I’m one of those people that doesn’t watch horror films but enjoys reading about them. The exception are films based on Steven King novels (which you could argue are more of thrillers, depending on the book/movie).I read Carrie in 9th or 10th grade, and coincidentally it was on television not long after. So I watched it in our family room, my parents going about their business. Until the last scene. I’m riveted, so much so that I don’t notice my dad sneaking up behind me. He grabs my shoulders when the hand shoots out of the grave and I’m still not sure how I didn’t hit the ceiling, with how high I jumped off the couch.
“doesn’t watch horror films but enjoys reading about them.”I’m the exact same way with baseball. I try to watch it but it’s so slow. Reading about it however is fascinating what with all the history, lore, culture, strange/monumental characters, etc.
A thing I’ve noticed more in modern horror is sort of the evolution of the jump scare, where the whatever (monster, bad guy, etc) is just in the frame, lurking in the background of the scene. And it’s not a telegraphed jump so much as a “if you notice this, it will scare the shit out of you”. That’s how I remember most of It Follows being like.And let me say this, I always find that genuinely upsetting. Jump scare, meh. That’s just startling. There’s a difference.
Signs always gets crapped on, but one of the things I thought it did really well was the footage of some kids birthday party with the blurred-out alien that just lopes by in the background.
Would love some examples outside of the creepy peripheral business in Hereditary
One that doesn’t get mentioned is that damn tiger in Apocalypse Now. The way that’s put together is just brilliant.
Obligatory mention for Hell House LLC where you spend the entire series doing nothing *but* watching for the jump scares you know are coming, and the g*#damn clowns still get you every time.If you want to talk film history though, you have to mention the mirror scare, e.g. American Werewolf in London, Candyman, whatever. You can’t even put a mirror in any horror or horror-adjacent movie now without every single eyeball being glued to it like “I’m on to you you sonofabitch.”
The lawnmower scene in Sinister. That is all.
Genuinely shocked this didn’t make the cut.
I haven’t seen it but I bet you should have put “no pun intended” after “cut”.
How about the lawnmower scene in Mad Men?
Or the mad scene in Lawnmower Man?
Sinister. That damn movie was so much scarier than it had any right to be.
Yeah, fuck that. The jump scare is a lazy hack and I give almost every movie I see with more than a couple of jump scares an F. Being startled is not the same as being scared. Scaring someone truly is an art, and going “BOO” ain’t it.
a character being stalked by an unseen panther, only for its “hiss” to turn out to be a bus braking as it slides into the shot. Or.. not! It might be a panther, even after you see the bus.Man, I love that movie. (I liked the 80s remake but it didn’t have any of that what-if-this-isn’t-true attitude, which I think was a smart move for a remake actually. No way to top the original, why not just take its plot as literal?
The Ring?
I love Alien but that scene doesn’t work for me. Effective in it’s time, but it’s so clearly a guy in a suit doing jazz hands that it doesn’t fail to make me giggle.
I like jump scares where the characters are also reacting like ‘what the fuck just happened!?’ Someone already mentioned Jaws and the chum scene, which is a great example.I also think there was a good one in Alien 3, when the leader of the prison colony is suddenly snatched from the cafeteria ceiling by the Xenomorph while in the middle of a speech. It isn’t really telegraphed at all, and it is surprising to see the Xeno go for a kill in front of a large group of people in bright light versus its usual tactics of lurking in the shadows. Then, in the next scene, we find out that – not only have the prisoners neatly stacked up and put away their chairs in the cafeteria, but they are making one of the colonists mop up the blood underneath the kill spot.
This played really well on the laserdisc I saw it on; IIRC there’s the jump scare, a beat, someone yells “Shit!”, and then there’s a side break (aka cut to black).
This is such a prevalent technique that collating even a top 50 would still have lots of missing examples. My favorite jump scare is Samara in The Ring. That movie has so many types of scares and even multiple jump scares that work without (IMO) being gimmicky. The one that is my favorite is after (spoilers for a 20 year old movie) she crawls out of the tv, she almost stands fully upright before she flickers and has jumped forward towards the dad. It works because the timing is wrong, the mood has been building to this, and the visual effect of her being staticky helps sell it.
The “Boy in the Lake” from the end of Friday the 13th fucked me the fuck up back in the day!
Obviously not as iconic as The Thing, but The Fog has a great one that’s surprisingly effective since it’s not really much of a scare: Father Malone steps out of the shadows where Kathy (and the audience) can’t see him and startles her. I saw The Fog in a Carpenter triple bill with The Thing and Halloween a few years back and that was the scare that got the biggest reaction from the audience.
Wait Until Dark would like a word.
I always thought Insidious becomes a lot less scary after seeing the thing with The red face
One of the better ones I remember in recent history was in The Invisible Man, the scene when they’re at the restaurant shocked the entire audience when I saw the movie. Jagung Hibrida Adalah Jagung Hibrida, benih jagung hibrida, bibit jagung hibrida digital marketing , cara instal game pesmasakan , resep, berita, kesehatan
Jason in the lake, the Snakeman from Dreamscape, and the cave troll in Fellowship Of The Ring are three jump scares that I have never, ever been able to not jump at.
I despise jump scares more than I can even explain. I would like more suspense/thriller movies if it weren’t for the jump scares. I REALLY enjoy psychological thrillers too, but I barely ever see them anymore because I’m just so bad with jump scares.Honestly, I think the movies that use “jump” scares most effectively are the ones that aren’t “in your face” and literal jump scares. Even though it’s no horror masterpiece, the two jump-scares that left me scarred were in Signs; the alien walking past the birthday party, and the alien on the roof of the barn at dawn. I’m now 36 years old and to this day I cannot look out a window at that particular time of day without getting unnerved.
I’m a huge horror fan but I hate jump scares, as a general rule; most of the time they just seem like a cheap way of getting a reaction from the audience without actually doing anything interesting or creative. That said, effective use of jump scares is a key component in one of the scariest movies I’ve ever seen in the theater–which, ironically, isn’t actually that good of a movie: the American remake of The Grudge/Ju-On. As a film it’s pretty lackluster, but the way they keep those jump scares coming so RELENTLESSLY is what makes it work; people who are used to the standard horror formulas, like myself, have been trained to expect that after a jump scare happens you get a little while to calm down before the next one. But the Grudge keeps them coming at you rapid-fire, and it actually wears you down psychologically (or at least that’s the effect it had on me) until you’re more than just startled–you’re in a state of acute terror. I was a grown-ass adult when I saw that movie, and I still didn’t sleep at all that night. I felt like an idiot, sitting alone in the bedroom of my apartment with the lights on, but any time I tried to lay down I imagined that scene of the ghost under the covers, and, welp, there goes any chance I had of relaxing…
No ending jumpscare from Wait Until Dark? What, that one is fantastic. You wouldn’t expect an intense film from Audrey Hepburn but it sure is.
I totally get the criticism of him overusing them, he totally does, but James Wan still does some damn good jump scares. Even though it was in the trailers, the clapping game scene from The Conjuring still got me.
Surprised that the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) isn’t here, for the scene when Leatherface first appears.
The Descent had one of my favorites ever. Should have been mentioned
The one that really got me was Audition (Ôdishon 1999). My friend sitting next to me at the cinema actually jumped out of his seat and to his feet!
The Exorcist III jump was INCREDIBLE in the theater! I must have caught at least 2 feet of air when that happened- including the entire theater. It’s an agonizingly suspenseful scene. You KNOW something terrible is about to happen- why else would the camera be hanging at the other end of the hall from all the activity. Then you get the teaser small jump scare after you FINALLY see the nurse up close. But then it goes back to that LONG shot you saw before… then out of nowhere… BANG!!! I beleve the best jump scare of all time- nestled in this HIGHLY underrated suspense “horror” movie. (ignore all the stuff with the exorcism. It’s completely unimportant to the story. It was forced in there by the producers.)
Whilst the majority of these are classic horror films i think a lot of recent films in the genre rely too heavily on the jump scare to the point where thats basically all they have. That and some gore. Problem is when you start filling films with too many jump scares start to lose their effect because you start expecting them.
I like how in the opening scene of Jason Goes to Hell, they set up a cheap bathroom mirror scare… and then it doesn’t happen.