10 Horror Movie Sequels With ONE Great Scene
5. The Hospital Jump Scare - The Exorcist III
The Exorcist III is an undeniably huge improvement over the wretched second movie, though it's also still relatively rough around the edges - in large part due to good 'ol executive meddling - and its more subdued tone certainly isn't for everyone.
It is absolutely a film that flirts with greatness many times, though only quite gets there in one single scene.
We're talking of course about the iconic hospital jump scare mid-way through the movie, in which writer-director William Peter Blatty - who also penned the original Exorcist novel - spends the better part of five minutes setting up an all-time great fright.
The scene is defined by the seemingly ordinary shot of a camera trained on a hospital hallway. We know something bad's about to happen, but not quite when. There's an almost detached banality to the sequence that makes it that much more unsettling.
After one of the nurses locks up a patient's room and returns to the hallway, we're caught totally off-guard when a robed figure immediately emerges from the room and chases after the woman with a pair of shears. The subsequent shot of a decapitated Jesus statue makes it clear what just happened.
There's not a drop of blood shown during the sequence, but the utterly hellish tension chord that rings out is nevertheless the stuff of nightmares.
This is a masterful example of setup and payoff, of how a skilled filmmaker can take a potentially cliched, even hokey moment and make it brilliantly artful.