10 Great Movies That Scared You Without Showing Anything
5. The Descent
Following in the footsteps of Jaws, The Descent spends the first half showing virtually nothing before finally revealing the monsters. And, like Jaws, this first hour of not even seeing anything is actually the scariest part.
The film follows a group of women exploring an underground cave system, but they're quickly trapped inside and must search for a way out. Much of the movie is shot with very limited lighting, and Neil Marshall surrounds the women with oppressive darkness and extremely cramped spaces. Slowly they realise they're not alone, and when they discover a bunch of abandoned equipment, it becomes clear that somebody else came down here and was killed by... something. What's out there hiding around the corner?
Like Jaws, the creatures are revealed about halfway through, but they're not the scariest thing about the movie; the early sequences where you don't see a single thing are the ones that stay with you even more. A less skilled director would have had the monsters kill someone in the first 20 minutes, but Marshall understands that making the cave feel mysterious and endless results in a far more terrifying film.