The floor creaks, the music turns ominous and an uneasy quiet sets in. Then BAM! It’s the classic jump scare. This staple of horror movies, when done well, is instantly memorable. With Times film writers, filmmakers and stars weighing in, we ranked the 25 jump scares that still get us every time. WARNING
This article contains spoilers and may include intense scenes that could be disturbing for some readers.
No. 25
‘Repulsion’ (1965)
“The mirror jump scare is easy to see coming. In Roman Polanski’s hallucinatory thriller, a figure appears for a split second, then disappears as Catherine Deneuve closes a closet door. It’s a disorienting knockout.” — Erik Piepenburg
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No. 24
‘Get Out’ (2017)
“Until now, Chris has been unfazed by his white girlfriend’s wealthy family. He was ready for racism. But he’s rattled by their groundskeeper’s midnight sprint — a surreal jump scare that deepens when it’s revealed he was body-snatched by Grandpa, who resents losing a gold medal to Jesse Owens.” — Amy Nicholson
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No. 23
‘Psycho’ (1960)
“Sure, the shower scene is iconic. But when the fully dressed corpse of Norman’s mother wheels around, the gruesome close-up still makes me yelp.” — Stephanie Goodman
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no. 22
‘Phantasm’ (1979)
“The greatest mirror jump-scare of them all features multiple shocks, a devilishly charismatic villain and a deliriously creepy three-act soundscape: a familiar synthesizer lulling you into a sense of safety, a metallic shriek and a growl haunting your dreams.” — Jason Zinoman
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No. 21
‘Seven’ (1995)
David Fincher and Andrew Kevin Walker on the Buildup in ‘Seven’
When a rotting figure gasps for breath, the reaction of Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt and John C. McGinley was so convincing, it spawned a modern myth: that they weren’t told the body was an actor, not a prop.
As it turns out, the stars did know (sorry, internet!), but the fact that the myth persists is a testament to the potency of the scene.
In an email, the director, David Fincher, credited the screenwriter, Andrew Kevin Walker: “Andy wrote it — it was a great idea — so I filmed it.”
The police pull back a grimy sheet to reveal a decomposing body …
… Brad Pitt’s detective isn’t so sure what he’s seeing …
… and when John C. McGinley’s SWAT leader leans over the body, they all get a shock.
But in an interview, Walker insisted it was Fincher and the prosthetics and makeup master, Rob Bottin, who turned his vision into a grisly jump scare, one that shouldn’t have worked because it was absolutely expected.
“It was so much more a build, an exciting and almost clichéd action scene that kind of slowly turns,” Walker said. Their goal was “to take the audience’s expectation of the cavalry riding in, then to get a buzz saw to the face.” — Maya Salam
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no. 20
K-Fee Commercial (2004)
“This meanspirited misdirection still gets me, even though I know exactly when it’s coming.” — Annie Aguiar
no. 19
‘Audition’ (1999)
“That moment when you visit your new girlfriend’s apartment and discover she might be more interested in revenge and dismemberment than in love and marriage.” — Jeannette Catsoulis
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no. 18
‘Candyman’ (1992)
“In this clever spin on the ghost-in-the-bathroom-mirror jump scare, Candyman’s hook bursts right through the open medicine cabinet. Terrifying!” — Mekado Murphy
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no. 17
‘Hereditary’ (2018)
“It seems like an improbable time for a jump scare. They’re usually sprung during a lull, and the frights had been running at a fever pitch. But Ari Aster somehow manages, amid abject horror, to kick viewers when they’re down and cowering.” — Maya Salam
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no. 16
‘It’ (2017)
“Pennywise suddenly emerging from a screen could be a metaphor for the power of film to manifest our fears. Or it’s just director Andy Muschietti throwing the most frightening clown of all at us, fangs first. Either way, it’s a great scene.” — Elisabeth Vincentelli
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no. 15
‘The Babadook’ (2014)
Jennifer Kent on the Soundscape in ‘The Babadook’
A bedroom door slowing creaking open. The scuffling of what sounds like cockroaches. A gravelly voice uttering the dreaded “Babadook, dook, dook.” And Amelia, a mother who’s mentally unraveling, trembling under a blanket.
In “The Babadook,” directed by Jennifer Kent, the soundscape is both classic haunted house and modern nightmare.
The scene was intended to mimic what anyone would feel lying in bed as footsteps approach. “All the sound is sucked out of the moment,” Kent said in an interview. “It’s like we become hyper-aware. I hoped to draw the audience in and have them become her.”
Kent didn’t follow tradition and incorporate most sound in postproduction. “What I tend to do is make sure that the sound is in there, enough temporary sound is in there to make sure all this visual stuff works,” she explained. “So it’s very important to rhythm. Cutting a film is much closer to music than many people probably realize.” — Maya Salam
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NO. 14
‘A Quiet Place’ (2018)
“Though the slightest noise here can draw alien killers, the film’s best heart-attack-on-a-stick is visual: a beast unexpectedly materializes behind a deaf girl (Millicent Simmonds). Startled into terror, we are now inside her world.” — Elisabeth Vincentelli
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no. 13
‘It Follows’ (2015)
“The menace constantly following Maika Monroe takes many forms, but this extremely tall version appearing in a doorway is by far the creepiest.” — Mekado Murphy
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no. 12
‘Jaws’ (1975)
“That is such a beautifully timed jump scare … just masterfully created by Spielberg.” — James Wan, filmmaker
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no. 11
‘Smile’ (2022)
“In a movie stuffed with slow-burn scares, this one stands out for its ingenuity and unexpectedness as a woman’s body is terrifyingly rearranged by a supernatural virus.” — Jeannette Catsoulis
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INTERLUDE
Don’t Underestimate the Power of a Jump Scare
By Jason Zinoman
After seeing Lon Chaney’s monstrous face unmasked in the 1925 silent “The Phantom of the Opera,” a 9-year-old Robert Bloch peed his pants and became hooked on horror. He also grew up to write the novel “Psycho,” the source for the movie with a jump scare so effective it transformed, for many, the experience of taking a shower.
Jump scares are considered the fart jokes of horror: cheap, easy and lowbrow. But that gives short shrift to a long, potent legacy. Of course, they can be crude, overdone and shoehorned in, but they can also be refined, mysterious and emotionally integrated. And as Chaney demonstrated a century ago, even the simplest ones have a power that should not be underestimated.
The stakes are high because success is binary: A jump scare produces a jolt or it doesn’t work. That puts a premium on novelty. You can’t just place another figure in a rotating mirror and expect shudders. It’s been done too many times. To really unsettle, you must subvert expectations, add misdirection, a wilder image, perhaps a disorienting sound cue. More ingenuity goes into certain jump scares than entire movies. Far from simple to pull off, a truly great one is a feat of pure cinema.
Jump scares have an advantage online, where context shifts rapidly. They can not only work independently of the movie, but also sometimes find a more popular second life outside it. In recent years, a canon has emerged, picked apart and debated by fans yet inspiring to filmmakers. In a genre more crowded than ever, where every kind of abrupt shift of camera angle, music cue or creepy image seems to have been employed to find a new way to shock, jump scares have become increasingly elaborate. At their best, they are ambitious set pieces, operating like showstoppers in musicals.
The director James Wan is a contemporary master of the art, and one of his most bravura examples is from “The Conjuring” (2013), a haunted house movie in which Lili Taylor is terrorized by a clapping sound in the cellar. Patiently established over several scenes, this ingeniously startling fright involves no special effects or monsters. There’s a bouncing ball, two hands and the oldest scare of all: fear of the dark. The result doesn’t just judder nerves. Like the most thrilling art, it rattles you into seeing old things anew while reordering your sense of the possible.
NO. 10
‘Drag Me to Hell’ (2009)
“This expertly constructed bedroom jolt from Sam Raimi combines classic violins and gross-out high jinks with a victim who might deserve to be doused in worms: She’s been cursed for callously repossessing a Hungarian immigrant’s house.” — Amy Nicholson
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NO. 9
‘Shock’ (1977)
“Running to hug your mother. How could that be anything but wholesome? Italian master Mario Bava shows you in this twisted, much-imitated shot that literalizes the fear of turning into your parent.” — Jason Zinoman
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no. 8
‘Mulholland Drive’ (2001)
“David Lynch’s scare is unusual because it takes place in daylight and we know it’s coming. A diner tells his companion there’s a sinister man outside behind a wall. Sure enough, a dirt-faced oddball steps out, shocking them, and us.” — Erik Piepenburg
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no. 7
‘Paranormal Activity’ (2009)
“All the ingredients of a perfect jump scare: the darkness, the empty bedroom, the sound of slow footsteps, then BOOM!” — Mekado Murphy
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no. 6
‘Insidious’ (2011)
“When a red-faced demon suddenly appears behind Patrick Wilson as his character’s mother recounts a sinister dream, I screamed. Sharp cuts, a bang-up makeup job and strategically placed actors: It’s a feast of scary made simple.” — Erik Piepenburg
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no. 5
‘The Exorcist III’ (1990)
“A master class in pace, lighting, choreography and WTF imagery deftly integrated into a campy sequel. Most jump scares are hectic and explicit; this is still and withholding. It follows a cheap shock. Then shows you how it’s really done.” — Jason Zinoman
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no. 4
‘The Thing’ (1982)
“John Carpenter’s Antarctic chiller is renowned for its oppressive dread and splattergore. But save some applause for the shock of a comatose heart-attack patient cracking open from collarbone to belly button to reveal a flesh-mouth that brutally chomps up a defibrillator and his panicked rescuer’s hands.” — Amy Nicholson
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no. 3
‘Carrie’ (1976)
Amy Irving on the Scream in ‘Carrie’
When Amy Irving hysterically screams at the end of this Brian De Palma classic, moviegoers’ nerves were forever jangled.
In a dream sequence, when Sue Snell (Irving), lone survivor of the prom massacre committed by Carrie White (Sissy Spacek), lays flowers on her friend’s final resting place, a bloody arm (it really was Spacek’s) juts from the ground and grabs her. As she shrieks, Snell’s mother, played by Irving’s real mother, tries desperately to quiet her.
It was an emotionally intense scene to shoot, Irving said this month. “So I’m screaming and screaming and screaming, and my mom got so upset. At one point, she called me Amy. It was really hard to see her daughter so upset.”
Irving was skeptical about whether the film would work when she read the script (“I went, ‘That’s the ending?’”) and first saw a screening. Then she watched it with moviegoers: “The entire audience jumped out of their seats and scared the [expletive] out of me.” — Maya Salam
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NO. 2
‘The Descent’ (2005)
“Playing brilliantly on our primal fear of deep, dark spaces, this nerve-twisting shocker traps a group of friends in an unexplored cavern before releasing its unholy terrors.” — Jeannette Catsoulis
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NO. 1
‘Alien’ (1979)
“When the Facehugger bursts from a mysterious egg during a routine space mission, it changed the course of Ridley Scott’s film along with both science fiction and horror. It was shock, then awe, and nobody saw it coming.” — Elisabeth Vincentelli
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Bonus: Top 5 Non-Horror Jump Scares
“Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” (1985)
“Mean Girls” (2004)
“The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” (2001)
“Resident Evil” video game (1996)
“Citizen Kane” (1941)
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
