10 Moments That Literally Stopped Horror Movies
4. When A Stranger Calls - The Detective In The Doorway
In this film we don’t only see it literally come to a stop, but figuratively too we see what was a very strong start reach its definitive end.
The (admittedly very long) opening bit of this film follows a babysitter as she deals with progressively threatening anonymous phone calls. She goes from annoyed to concerned to outright terrified, pacing around the house looking for her faceless tormentor.
After a while, she sees a shadow moving upstairs and hastily opens the door - at which point the film does a particularly janky-looking quick zoom into the waiting police detective’s face. Here everything stops for a few seconds whilst we just stare at this uncomfortable close-up, waiting for the shot to zoom back out and the movie to restart again.
Unfortunately this point also marks where this movie stops feeling like a horror movie at all, as from then on it takes on more of a neo-noir type tone. All in all, this was one hell of a stoppage.