There are scary moments in horror movies, sure — that’s what they’re made for. But then there are moments that give you a sinking feeling. Moments where you know someone is in danger, or that something bad will happen. Moments where your heart shrivels up into a little ball and adrenaline empties into your stomach cavity. Here’s a list of top “sinking feeling” moments you won’t want to miss. Spoilers ahead!
Misery (1990)
Fandom and Stan culture can be deadly. We hear of paparazzi being a major problem in the celebrity world nowadays, but there have always been people willing to go the extra mile for their favorite artist. Take Annie Wilkes, self-proclaimed “Number 1 Fan” of Paul Sheldon, author of the Misery novel series. Annie has read every book front to back and truly understands the title character’s struggles in life and love. Unfortunately for Paul, Annie gets lucky when she saves him from a car wreck, earning the chance to nurse him back to health. She’s his biggest fan, so nothing can go wrong… right?
Wrong. The complete opposite. Everything goes wrong. Annie has taken her fandom to the extreme and unwinds from a competent retired nurse (who happens to love the Misery books) to an unhinged killer. Paul, who has been kept away from others to help him “heal” is desperate to escape Annie and the prison that is the guest room. After some attempts, Annie finds out he’s been moving around the house and decides to make some “adjustments.” We’ve been hoping for Paul’s escape, but Annie shows us she’s not only capable of kidnapping a celebrity, but killing him if she needs to.
Scream (1996)
Absolutely no one could have guessed the ending to Scream. Self-referential scares aside, Scream changed the game for horror. What could have been another forgotten slasher started a trend that lasted the rest of the decade (and even into the millennium). Today, we praise the sinking feeling that started a movement.
Two killers?! And they’re both friends of Sidney’s?! We spend the entirety of the movie rooting for Sidney and her friends to escape this crazed killer only to find it was friends killing the friends. Yeah, we could see Billy on a murderous rampage with his sultry face and unreliable alibis, but Stu too? When Sidney (and the audience) realizes she’s been dealing with a pair of psychopaths she once knew and loved, all of our worlds were completely turned upside down. She escapes and spawns 3 sequels, but the “Surprise, Sidney!” scene will forever be remembered with a surprised gasp.
Pulse/Kairo (2001)
The internet, especially in its early days, could be a very scary place. The learning curve was pretty huge and if you didn’t know what you were doing, you could get a virus, or worse. Japan’s Kairo (known in the US as Pulse) showed us exactly that, where a mysterious website claims to connect people to those who have passed on to the other side. At first we figure the website can’t hurt you if you don’t go to it. But then we see that the site can act as a sort of grudge, connecting itself to its victims’ friends and family. Yabe was one of those unlucky people.
While trying to investigate his friend’s recent death, he notices someone following him. After a painfully slow, lumbering walk toward him, Yabe sees that this person is actually a ghost coming to steal him away. With each of her clumsy steps, we get closer and closer to death’s door but are unable to move as we’re seeing exactly what he is seeing. It’s kind of like the curse is attaching itself to us too.
Chernobyl (2019)
Clearly I am still on the Chernobyl hype-wagon. If you haven’t seen this HBO miniseries yet, please watch it (and read my review) — you won’t be disappointed!
It’s incredibly hard to pick a single scene where my heart dropped, especially since every instance in every episode gives me that feeling. But I managed to pick two that stuck out to me.
Early on we are shown the amount of blatant disregard for factual information by superiors. Managers are told time and time again that Chernoby’s Number 4 reactor core has essentially exploded (and is exposed) and is leaking extremely high amounts of radiation, but they are in denial as an explosion of that magnitude is “impossible.” Plant managers Bryukhanov and Fomin tell Anatoly Dyatlov to physically go to the core and confirm it is intact, but as Dyatlov becomes violently ill (radiation sickness) all of a sudden, the task is given to Aleksandr Akimov who knows full-well that the core is kaputt. But he has no choice other than to look into the core; Akimov is choosing his death, a fatal dose of radiation, or a Soviet bullet to the back of the head.
But the death doesn’t stop there. Once the radiation problem has been (sort of) fixed — as in, cleanup crews are given minuscule “protection” against it — a massive effort must be done by human “bio-robots” to clean the roof so it can be covered. The piles of debris, emitting so much radiation that it kills machinery meant to remove it (hence the bio-robots), are removed in a sequence timed exactly to the real-life effort. We follow a crew member as he struggles to throw graphite pieces over the edge. There is a certain time limit that is considered safe to be on the roof, which this crew member sadly goes over — all while accidentally ripping the top of his boot open. Seeing the deaths of the reactor crew before that tells us this man will see the same fate in perhaps even less time. We know that he knows he is dead.
The Ring (2002)
The Ring was my entry into J-horror and remains one of my favorite films of all time. When remaking a foreign film for an American audience, things are bound to get lost in translation; but The Ring manages to capture the despair of having watched a cursed tape just as well as in the original. Which brings me to this scene:
We’re nearing the end of the movie where the heroine/final girl typically explains how she helped the ghost and now everything will be OK and her son will live. Aidan, our heroine Rachel’s son, is confused, then appalled. Apparently no one told Rachel that she was in a Japanese remake where vengeful spirits cannot be helped or destroyed — and no one told the audience either. We were so prepared to see the typical ending where everything is put right in the world. Instead, we see the tape live on to kill Rachel’s ex and wreak havoc just as it had with her.
What other scenes made your heart fall into your stomach? Leave a comment below!
