Most Shocking Moments in Film?

I was watching that with my girlfriend! We watched that and Martyrs in the same movie-watching session. I was never allowed to talk about that day afterwards.

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"I am your Father."
"No...no...that's not true...that's IMPOSSIBLE!"

The opening in "Chilldren of Men".

The ending in Kieslowski's 'Blind Chance'. One of the greatest endings in cinema history.

There's quite a few Lars von Trier moments. I'll go for the demise of the red hat wearers in the House that Jack built.

The bodies in 'Come and See' shocked me on first viewing.

The ending to Jeanne Dielmanne

An early death scene in the fantastic film 'Submarino'

Quite a few shocking scenes in 'The War Zone'

There's a great death scene which shocked me in Haneke's 'Cache' l 'Hidden'

There's a few scenes in 'Vengeance is Mine' which are shocking as it's all so real. See also the film 'Angst' for the same reasons.

Good scene. When considering jump scares, I always think of the famous "Lewton Bus" scene from 1942's Cat People. Val Lewton was the director, although editor Mark Robson actually created the scare. It's one of the very earliest jump scares in film:

There are quite a few Human Centipede-related shocking scenes. I'd rank the second of the trilogy as the most shocking, and the scene in that which I often look away from concerns the breakage of legs, with gristle, cartilage etc lovingly focused on by the camera.

Todd Solondz film Happiness is one that features a lot of comedy - but what isn't funny is the scene where Bill Maplewood (Dylan Baker) explains to his child why he sodomized his drugged friend, and how much he enjoyed it.

An American Werewolf in London. Those friggen nightmares man. I watched this at the movies when I was young, and ended up kind of traumatized. The worst one is where we we see him in bed, eyes closed, peaceful - then suddenly he's this horror demon snarling. Yikes.

Saving Private Ryan - if it's that scary to watch the landings on Omaha Beach from the comfort of your living room, how the hell scary was it being there??

Yeah; the concept of it is solid, but the execution needs work, with the camera slowly zooming in shortly before it happens being too much of a giveaway for it to be as shocking as it was meant to be.

You don't get the full shock without the sound design of the jump scare and the tension the builds up to it:

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I think that this is one of those shocks that is hard to explain. It just works.* If so, the best approach may not be to investigate the instance looking for clues, rather than proceeding deductively (top-down) with "off the top of our heads" standards. Why is the crone outside the restaurant so effective?



*Here I have made a claim which bears empirical scrutiny (if by "works" means, "for the audience"). We could investigate whether this was a shocking moment through audience research.

Would have been even scarier for the men if they knew most of them would die as soon as they hit the beach.

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Good Lord! I've seen that clip before, which is scary enough without sound. But even though I knew what was coming, watching your clip for the first time with sound still made me jump out of my chair!

I was a George C. Scott fan since 1959 (Anatomy of a Murder), but I won't watch horror movies anymore. So I didn't see Exorcist III. Just don't enjoy being tense and getting scared..

I see what you mean. (Jeebus CRIPES!)

The last two thirds of Threads?

No way am I watching that clip. I don't need anymore bad dreams! The movie I watched last night gave me enough bad dreams already

Has anyone mentioned The Crying Game? If you haven't seen it you should, but I bet you'd see the shocking scene coming.

You don't see the Staff of Ra in Stargate (1994), but Jaye Davidson has better outfits in that film. Also, Sleepaway Camp (1983) did that scene better.