10 Horror Movies You Must Never Pause
Hitting pause will kill the mystique of these horror movies.
More than any other genre, horror movies can thrive on what they don't show the audience, of concealing the threat to build suspense and finally let loose with a brief burst of terror.
Countless horror films over the years have made their names by briefly flashing up haunting images sure to linger in the audience's brain forever more, but if you actually stop and examine the images themselves, they don't always hold up to extended scrutiny.
These 10 movies, many of which are classics of the horror genre, all presented images that, through their brevity, sold terrifying ideas to the audience.
But with the beauty of modern technology allowing us to pause and scrutinise a crystal-clear freeze-frame of these moments, their artifice is often laid bare.
This isn't to insult the dedicated artists and filmmakers who pulled off these scenes, but simply to note that you're better off just enjoying these moments as the fleeting flecks of horror that they are, rather than smashing the pause button to take a closer look.
In doing so, the films only become robbed of their mystique as their less-convincing effects are made howlingly obvious...
10. The Doll Of Nancy's Mother - A Nightmare On Elm Street
Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street is one of the most stylish and creative horror films of all time, and though the overwhelming majority of its reality-bending effects remain totally convincing today, there's one that's been downright laughable ever since the film's 1984 release.
The movie's ambiguous ending sees Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) driving off to school with her miraculously resurrected school friends, as the car's very Krueger-esque hood comes down.
In a final scare, Nancy's mother Marge (Ronee Blakley) is suddenly attacked by Freddy (Robert Englund), who impossibly drags her body through a small window in the front door of her house.
Even in motion, it's hilariously obvious we're looking at a doll, but paused we can see just how embarrassingly cheap and low-effort the prop really is.
Terrible though the 2010 remake mostly was, its CGI-driven reimagining of this ending is admittedly lot less goofy.