10 Moments That Literally Stopped Horror Movies
These movie moments are enough to stop us in our tracks.
It's the sign of a good twist if a movie moment can stop you in your tracks, but other than by introducing a giant surprise it turns out there's lots of ways to bring a film to an absolute standstill.
Whether it's a moment of silent reflection, a weird awkward few seconds of unnatural pausing or even a short time in which the characters themselves prevent the story from moving forward, the possibilities are endless.
There are bad examples of moments that stop movies, usually where an unnecessary or irrelevant scene is inserted for the sake of run-time. But aside from these there are god moments too.
Even if it's not necessarily done for that reason, there's something about these moments that is unavoidably meta - where the audience feels perhaps a bit too close the movie and its characters for just long enough to break the illusion.
If you want to stop the story for any amount of time, it takes guts. You don't want to lose your audience, don't want to ruin the atmosphere or momentum of your movie.
When you manage to do it well though, the pay-off is fantastic.
10. I See You - A Sudden Change Of Perspective
I See You has a pretty interesting gimmick that comes into play halfway through the movie.
For the first half, we think we’re watching a pretty regular horror; there’s a middle class family with a lovely suburban home, some strange kidnappings in the area that have everyone on edge - pretty standard stuff.
Then a few weird things start happening, items start moving or going missing, we start to wonder what exactly is going on in the house. Things begin to escalate until we reach a dramatic climax: with a boy being restrained in a bathtub by an unknown assailant and a basement attack.
It looks like it’s all kicking off and then suddenly everything stops dead - and we’re taken back to the start of all the events, but with the perspective switched.
The progression of the plot itself is forced to a halt as we re-explore how everything has unfurled up to that point, with the home’s intruders being revealed and a new light cast on our humble homemakers.
Having everything stop just as we reached the initial climax was a risky move, as it could be jarring to some audiences to lose all the momentum, but in the case of I See You, it definitely paid off.