20 Anxiety-Inducing Moments That'll Terrify You Senseless

14. No Country For Old Men - "Call It"

This is another scene that'll have everyone holding their breath, and again, it's largely thanks to the performance at its centre. As the sociopathic hitman Anton Chigurh, Javier Bardem was one of the scariest movie villains of all time, and thankfully, unlike with Jesse Plemons in Civil War, Bardem was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. In fact, he won, and it couldn't have been more deserved. 

At this point in the movie, he's already killed two innocent people, and soon after those deaths, a gas station attendant (Gene Jones) is unfortunate enough to come across Chigurh next. Chigurh demands that he call a coin toss, and it quickly becomes clear that if the man gets it wrong, he'll be murdered too. 

Thanks to Bardem's hauntingly detached, almost-alien performance, this tripwire-tense scene is the stuff that nightmares are made of. It's made even more gut-wrenching by the fact that the attendant never realizes the mortal danger that he's put himself in. 

Thankfully, he does call the coin toss correctly and, unlike the majority of the people who encounter Chigurh throughout No Country for Old Men, he's allowed to live. Still, even when you know how it ends, this scene doesn't get any less scary, which is always the sign of a great movie moment.