“The final scene scared me so much I couldn’t even scream.”

"In the theatre, it was no joke when that first came out."

"Saw this in the theatre and had to drop my friends off at home first since I was the only one with my licence.

Ran home and immediately put a Disney movie (VHS) on in the background to help my nerves. I got sidetracked on the computer, and next thing I know, I look up to see the movie had finished and all that was playing on the TV was the static snow.

"It’s wild how many people have stories of the phone ringing, their VCR frying, or the TV going to static after they watched that.

Statistically, all those things were (relatively) common at the time. That movie just hit in the perfect era with the perfect plot and got every fear touched on.

There’s not a chance I’m going into my basement tonight to change the filter. Suck it, Ashmath! I’m not risking that well-dwelling girl."

"At the time, everyone really believed it was found footage, there were missing flyers of the actors that looked real, and the internet wasn’t as advanced for people to cause spoilers. Saw it opening night, and the final scene scared me so much I couldn’t even scream."

"For me, it was the scariest as a parent. It’s the worst thing imaginable, and it’s portrayed in such a visceral way. The scream that Toni Collette made felt real, like I was witnessing something private."

"It’s about a writer who sleeps in a hotel room because he writes about ghost stories. Everybody warns him not to sleep in that hotel room, but he doesn’t listen. He can’t get out of that hotel room anymore, no matter what he does. In the beginning, you think, ‘Just smash a window, dude.’ But everything I would think of, he tries, and nothing works. Scary as fuck."

"I started watching this alone at night and had to turn it off and continue watching the next day. In the light."

"The fact that it didn’t require an actual triggering event beyond simply entering the house, the fact that it followed outside of the house without restriction, the infectious aspect where people who die to the curse become more curses, the unorthodox ways it could pop up, etc."

"It’s the most actually scary one, to me. It doesn’t rely on shocking and grossing out the audience with gore and the typical horror gimmicks. It is so scary because it is realistic and speaks to the dark impulses within mankind."

"The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre is an absolute masterpiece. I’m pretty desensitised to most ‘disturbing’ content by this point, but TCM still makes me feel unsettled for days after each rewatch."

"Watched that at 18 and legit became afraid of the dark again for like a solid week. Great film."

"Event Horizon is the only movie to elicit true fear from me. Everything else was just jump scares or suspense."

"After the first time watching it, I couldn’t sleep, and then when I did, I got nightmares."

"Green Room legit fucked me up as someone who had played venues such as those and didn’t realise the possibility of anything horrible happening was not 0%.

to avoid replying individually to everyone, I’m just going to add: even beyond the realism of creating a very believable environment, the arm scene is one of the few in any film that legitimately is too real, even for me. The reaction is so brutally realistic that it is overwhelming, and even after a few years, it still sticks with me in a way that few things ever have.'"

"The last shot of Saint Maud still gives me the creeps. I’m still working up the nerve to rewatch it."

"That last shot was one of the worst jump scares I have ever experienced... I felt like I was having a heart attack."

"It Follows really got me for a few reasons: the very realistic fear that a man you allow to be intimate with could hurt you horribly, the mundanity of the entity allowing it to camouflage itself among the general public, the way it is constantly changing so it is even more difficult to spot, and the way it tends to take on the form of people the target knows as it closes in."

"`it is the only movie that has ever genuinely scared me as an adult. I find cults and groupthink conceptually very frightening, so seeing a character succumb to that had me on the edge of my seat. The ritual with the elders was also very difficult to watch because of how brutally realistic the practical effects were. I thought the film was a masterpiece."

"Smile had this effect on me. I left the cinema while it was still bright outside, and I couldn’t fall asleep until 2 am because of the lingering adrenaline. That movie is like being psychologically tortured. I only started feeling comfortable turning off my hallway lights a week later."