10 Most Terrifying Horror Movie Dream Sequences
6. Hereditary - Ants And Self-Immolation
Staying on the theme of bugs being where they shouldn’t be, we have Ari Aster’s 2018 masterpiece, Hereditary. Revolving around a grieving family with a dark, mysterious secret, the film has no shortage of horrific moments.
Traumatised mother Annie gets out of bed one night and walks silently to her son’s room. She sees ants pouring in through the window and swarming over him, covering his face. Suddenly she is snapped out of her horrified trance as her son reminds her she is sleep walking, but before we know it things have descended into a shouting match and the two of them are doused in lighter fluid- the amber glow of a flame nearby.
As her son sobs, asking her why she in the past tried to kill him by setting him alight, flames begin to engulf the frame around her face, contorted by grief. Once again she jolts awake, but for real this time she wakes up.
Her dream inside a dream saw her own son being eaten alive by bugs, and then when she thought she was safe and in the waking world she had to relive a horrible previous trauma. Ants and self-immolation certainly make for one nasty dream.