20 Scariest Horror Movie Moments Of The 21st Century
7. Through The Window - Insidious (2010)
It’s not the most famous scene from Insidious (that would be the startling first appearance of the fire-faced demon) but it is the most lucidly eerie, unpleasant scare in the film.
Conjuring memories in the viewer of lying awake at night, unsettled by some unexplainable feeling, the sequence finds female protagonist Renai in bed alone in the dead of night after quarreling with Patrick Wilson’s Josh, resigned to the sofa. Already driven to tension by strange bumps in the night and worse of late, she notices an apparently human figure pacing back and forth on the other side of her bedroom window.
With all the initially queer feelings present in a bad dream, the sequence suddenly erupts into a heart-stopping nightmare as the figure solidly emerges in the bedroom itself, turning to lunge at Renai. Playing out without fanfare or any relative buildup, the sequence is completely unexpected and impossible to prepare for.
With the scare playing on the unshakeable fears we’ve all had in the dead quiet of night, the terror easily pervades the screen to linger long in the mind.
The film goes slightly off the rails in the second half by diving more obviously into the phantasmagoria of supernatural terror, but the first half is renowned for its taut tension. Part of the reason for that is its scenes like this one, that open the window between the real world and the unknown and let in our deepest, psychological fears, where they can take an uncanny physical form.