10 Terrifying Moments In Terrible Horror Movies

Is there anything better than a surprisingly effective sequence buried in an otherwise run of the mill or even outright atrocious flick? Yes, there is, and it’s a series of effective sequences combined in order to create an actually good whole film. But we all know good horror movie exist, and lists of those rare gems are a dime a dozen. Even lists of “Surprisingly Good Horror Remakes” or “Unsung Horror Comedy Gems” are ten a penny (even if none reach the lofty heights of those offered here at WhatCulture).

So what we’re here for today is a rarer beast, that being a brilliantly terrifying scene which is somehow snuck into an otherwise awful horror film. Heaven knows why these sequences see the light of day, since the directors and producers of these films seem incapable of staging a solid scene if their lives depended on it, but nonetheless all of these two star or below films managed to feature five star set pieces which stood head and shoulders above the surrounding crud and elevated otherwise laughably bad flicks into just about watchable territory.

Call it Ghost Ship Syndrome if you like, named after the crap film’s stellar opening (which we refuse to include on this list since everyone’s heard about it by now)—here are ten cases of terrible horror movies which somehow featured incredibly scary scenes.

This instance of Ghost Ship Syndrome actually comes from, appropriately enough, the director of Ghost Ship, whose insistence that “CGI ghosts are going to be huge, trust me” saw them garner some incredible casts for some awful films in the early 2000’s.

Yes, Ghost Ship may have boasted the Usual Suspect himself Gabriel Byrne, but only this 2001 effort can claim to have brought together TV’s Monk Tony Shaloub and Scream’s Matthew Lillard at last for some ghostbusting.

Unfortunately, said ghostbusting occurs in an over-developed mansion filled with uninteresting characters following an unoriginal plot in a film whose editor appears to bear a grudge against the epilepsy sufferers of the world. But beneath all the headache inducing quick cuts, there’s a moment well worth watching when a sleazy lawyer is brutally bisected by the titular spooks.

Yes, you may need the aid of a pause button to see these ghosts clearly, but the design of these baddies is undeniably original—i.e utterly f***ing terrifying, even for hardened horror fiends, and this one kill wherein a pair of doors split the attorney in two where he stands, is unforgettably gruesome and inventive.

Shame the surrounding film is more notable for its insufferable editing than anything else, mind.