20 INSANE Horror Movie Moments You'll Never Stop Thinking About
9. Lawn Work - Sinister
In 2020 a study of viewer heart rates during horror movies saw Sinister ranked as the scariest film of all time, and whether you agree with that or not, it does tout one magnificently terrifying scene which delivers a jump scare almost on par with The Exorcist III's.
Soon after crime writer Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke) moves into his new house with his family, he finds a series of Super 8 reels containing unspeakably disturbing murders of entire families.
Oswalt watches the tapes out of morbid curiosity, including one called "Lawn Work" - a mostly silent video where the person filming spies on a family, breaks into their home, and then fetches their lawnmower.
From here, we see the lawnmower mowing the lawn for a few beats, before a person is suddenly visible on the ground out of nowhere and we hear a loud screech.
As jump scares go it's perfectly deployed, ingeniously exploiting the silence leading up to it and making quite the horrendous implication even while we don't actually see what happens.