10 Horror Movies That Were Flawless Except For A Single Scene
Movies primarily depend on the suspension of disbelief. Audiences tacitly know that movies are alternative realities. The narrative fidelity closely enough resembles the real world. However, there is an undercurrent of movie logic necessary to make most anything successful (or, at the very least, entertaining). While some modern audiences fancy themselves Cinema Sins-lite, dismissing most releases for the most arbitrary of continuity errors, that's not, and never has been, how movies should be watched.
Still, some films, even flawless ones, serve up moments that feel out of step with the rest of the movie. These scenes comparatively fall flat, often undermining what's come before or after. Here, we'll look at 10 flawless horror classics with single scenes that come across as out of place. That doesn't render these movies bad. If anything, it's a testament to the strong work elsewhere. Scaring people is hard, and these 10 movies almost got it perfect.
Scream
In the DVD commentary for "Scream 6," directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett acknowledge the longstanding rules governing the franchise. Canonically, Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett recognize that, even when armed with a gun, characters leave franchise killer Ghostface to flee instead of chasing him down and stopping the killing spree in the first act. Like all horror franchises, "Scream" comes with its own brand of incredulity. The first entry's killers are expectedly as smart (or as dumb) as the plot demands scene to scene. However, director Wes Craven's mastery of tone and proximal staging ensures the seams never show. Audiences are simply there for the ride. Mostly.
A masterclass in meta slashers — and, truthfully, horror in general — "Scream" has endured for decades on account of its wit. It's intelligent, subversive, and clever, wryly willing to play by the rules when it counts and break them when it doesn't. The first "Scream" is nearly perfect, even if two brief beats seem lazy in an otherwise expertly assembled shocker. In the second act, series protagonist Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) is twice stalked by Ghostface. The camera zooms in first on Ghostface as he hides in the bushes in the middle of the day. Later, he's costumed and skulking around the aisles of a local grocery store. Proximally, the killers couldn't possibly be in either location. Even if they could, the risk would be too great. It's a hoary cliché in an otherwise perfect movie.
Evil Dead
Sam Raimi's "The Evil Dead" needs no introduction. As both franchise and career springboard, it's the kind of gritty, aspirational horror movie as successful as it is inspiring. Talented friends and creatives got together in the woods, spilled some blood, and the rest is critically acclaimed history. Throughout its decades-long run, the franchise has understood better than most what makes horror and comedy perennial bedfellows. When employed with care, both simultaneously augment the other, cultivating a grindhouse, midnighter feel unique in its capacity to endure.
However, even Raimi regrets one pivotal moment from his horror classic, a scene so tonally out of place that it mars an otherwise flawless masterpiece. Widely known as the "tree rape" scene, it begins when Cheryl (Ellen Sandweiss) flees the cabin in the woods, only to encounter a possessed tree whose branches and roots violate her graphically. Raimi has since spoken on his regret, noting how the scene is too brutal for its own good. "The Evil Dead" pushed all the right buttons, but with the tree, it skirted over boundaries it should have left alone.
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Halloween II
Rick Rosenthal's "Halloween II" is a better movie than most slasher fans remember. Sure, it's no "Halloween," but few movies are. In the decades since John Carpenter's "Halloween" premiered, few movies have come close to matching the nihilistic terror of Carpenter's stripped-down slasher opus. "Halloween II" is as close as the franchise has come, however, even exceeding David Gordon Green's rebooted trilogy. It's essentially more of the same, only this time, Haddonfield Memorial Hospital stands in for quiet suburban streets. Rosenthal's Carpenter impression is strong, and he even manages a few nifty tricks of his own, most notably during a breathless chase in the third act.
It isn't all perfect, however. Some of that is likely due to dovetailing visions. Carpenter and Rosenthal no doubt got along, though infamously, several scenes were reshot without Rosenthal's involvement, the goal being to ramp up the gore quotient and position "Halloween II" as more competitive in the eighties slasher market. Additionally, and most egregiously, "Halloween II" introduced the longstanding sibling angle. That's right. The perennial boogeyman isn't the boogeyman. He's the final girl's long-lost brother. That decision plagued subsequent entries for years, regularly backing them into a narrative corner as they endeavored to dance around a mythology that never belonged there in the first place. Green's reboot wisely did away with the familial frights, though with its origins in "Halloween II," a stellar slasher is constrained by its short-sightedness.
It Follows
There's a theory some horror fans abide by known as horror logic. It's the rationale behind going into the dark basement alone, splitting up, or, in "Scream's" case, asking "Who's there?" while a killer lurks around the corner. Notably, horror movie characters don't know they're in a horror movie. As a result, their decisions might not always make the most sense. Broadly, that's okay. If everyone behaves their absolute best, there isn't a movie. There would be no "Scream 6" if Casey Becker (Drew Barrymore) locked herself in an upstairs bedroom and called the police in the first.
Sometimes, however, that horror logic gets stretched thin. Filmmakers strain credulity a bit too much, undermining what should otherwise be a terrifying sequence of events. David Robert Mitchell's "It Follows" is a modern horror classic, a sex-infused riff on "The Ring" that sees a curse being passed along via intercourse. Once plagued, the options are to pass it along or endure a perennial "it" that follows you until it kills you. To stop the titular monster, the protagonists of "It Follows" try several options, though their last stand is a mark against the masterful command of craft and narrative Mitchell had previously exhibited. In the final act, the survivors trap the monster in a pool and try to electrocute it. They throw toasters, televisions, and all manner of electronics in. It doesn't work. There's horror movie logic, and then there's whatever that was.
The Strangers
Speaking of horror movie logic, Bryan Bertino's "The Strangers" is practically a case study. While it remains a horror classic, even receivng the reboot treatment, it's worth remembering that after a stellar first half, the latter end devolves into cliché. Structurally, "The Strangers" was disadvantaged from the start. Pursuant to the adage of what's unseen being scarier, the trio of masked strangers, often hidden at first, make more regular appearances, undermining the efficacy of Bertino's scares. It's still terrifying, but just a little more familiar.
Luckily, Bertino course-corrects, ending "The Strangers" with one of the most disturbing lines in horror cinema. When asked why they were being targeted, Dollface (Gemma Ward) replies, "Because you were home." Kristen (Liv Tyler) and James (Scott Speedman) are stabbed to death, ending the nightmarish ordeal they and the audience were subjected to. It's a brutal, unconventional way to end a mainstream horror movie, though a beat later, it's incredulously undone. As a young boy arrives at the house, Liv Tyler awakens and screams, ending the movie with Hollywood's infamous final scare. It's cheap, hoary, and, as noted, painfully cliché, pretty much the opposite of everything "The Strangers" had been trying to do up until that point.
Don't Breathe
"Don't Breathe" remains Fede Álvarez's best movie. His "Evil Dead" is a classic, no doubt, and his Stieg Larsson "Millenium" book series adaptation, "The Girl in the Spider's Web," is better than most give it credit for. With "Don't Breathe," Álvarez went full Hitchcockian, demonstrating a command of suspense most filmmakers could only imagine. While considerably more violent than its forebears, "Don't Breathe" was high-concept horror done right. It's just three thieves, a dark house, and the blind man (Stephen Lang) hunting them down.
Well, it's mostly that. In an ill-advised effort to elucidate upon the blind man's origins, "Don't Breathe" introduces a queasy subplot that, like Raimi's "The Evil Dead," crosses a boundary it never should have. Jane Levy's protagonist, Rocky, is captured in the basement when the blind man reveals his plan. To compensate for losing his daughter, he has kidnapped Rocky and endeavors to inseminate her artificially. It's "Don't Breathe's" cop-out. The moral quandary of three intruders targeting a blind man is done away with; he's a sexual predator, so they're the good guys now. Even worse, "Don't Breathe 2" turns Lang's surviving antagonist into an antihero, structuring an entire movie around his reformed ways. Simply put, it's gross. Not only that, but it's narratively unnecessary, a singular misstep in an otherwise flawless bottle thriller.
Poltergeist
While directorial credit remains a point of contention among cinephiles — was it Tobe Hooper or secretly Steven Spielberg directing? — the aggregate evidence clearly points toward "Poltergeist" belonging to Hooper. That isn't to say Spielberg's Amblin influence isn't present. Far from it. Hooper's horror sensibilities melded perfectly with Spielberg's suburban ennui, underscoring why "Poltergeist" is still one of the scariest haunted house movies ever. Not everything is flawless, however, and in trying to explain the machinations of its titular haunt, "Poltergeist" very briefly slows to a crawl.
While difficult to confirm, it has been suggested (check out Jacob Trussell's "Poltergeist") that Hooper and Spielberg regularly argued over the paranormal dialogue. Spielberg wanted something dense and scientific. Hooper, conversely, thought it was too much for an audience to digest. Hooper might have been right. When Tangina (Zelda Rubinstein) arrives at the Freeling house, she explains what likely happened to Carol Anne (Heather O'Rourke). Over three minutes long, her monologue is dense, silly, and too expository, over-explaining the haunting when a swift explanation would have sufficed. Audiences are willing to accept the unbelievable, and it's a shame "Poltergeist" didn't give them a chance to do so fully.
The Others
"The Others" stands as a perfect ghost story. Like "The Sixth Sense," it has perhaps been overshadowed by its twist, though focusing squarely on the shocking conclusion does a disservice to the gothic mastery Alejandro Amenábar exhibits elsewhere. Nicole Kidman's Grace Stewart lives in a remote Channel Islands manor with her two children, Anne (Alakina Mann) and Nicholas (James Bentley), both of whom suffer from severe light sensitivity. Religion, hauntings, and guilt coalesce into a tapestry of isolation, paranoia, and good old-fashioned scares.
Amenábar maintains tight narrative control, only regressing with a brief appearance from Christopher Eccleston's Charles Stewart, Grace's husband and the children's father. When he arrives, he maintains the war is still ongoing, spending his days locked up in the bedroom, maudlin and cryptic. He disappears as quickly as he appeared, though his presence poses more questions than "The Others" is willing to answer. Is he a ghost? How did he manifest at the manor? Even more consequentially, his appearance disrupts Grace's singular point of view. "The Others" was unequivocally her story, and it would have been stronger had Amenábar not briefly pivoted to a paternal perspective.
Hereditary
Love or hate "Beau is Afraid," Ari Aster remains one of the most singular filmmakers working today. His feature before "Beau," "Midsommar," ranks as one of the most distressing portraits of interpersonal trauma around. His debut, "Hereditary," likely needs no introduction. As the scary movie to end all scary movies, it will likely be this generation's standout horror classic. With the grit of "The Exorcist" and the provocative plotting of "Psycho," it deserves to rank among the best of the best. It's practically flawless, with Aster achieving mainstream scares within arthouse confines, while Toni Collette's terrifying performance ties it all together.
Only once does "Hereditary" risk falling apart. At the movie's conclusion, the thrust of the family's curse is explained. Alex Wolff's Peter Graham is the only family member left alive. Cornered by naked cultists, he throws himself from an attic window, the fall presumably killing him. He swiftly reanimates as the reincarnation of the demon Paimon and climbs into the treehouse. Several more cult members greet him with a recitation of "Hail, Paimon." The efficacy of the scares is retroactively dulled by Aster's insistence on literalizing what had heretofore been suggested. Like "The Strangers," it feels like an ending appended for executives. Rather than trusting the audience, it feels like too clean a bow to wrap everything up.
The Descent
While most nearly flawless horror movies are undermined by a single scene, in the case of "The Descent," it's the removal of a scene that neuters the impact of one of the horror genre's scariest movies. Famously, Neil Marshall's "The Descent" ends on a grim note. Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) ostensibly escapes the cave system, though Marshall then cuts back to the cave. Sarah is still there, sitting across from the specter of her deceased daughter. "The Descent" fades to black, leaving Sarah at the mercy of the cave's monstrous crawlers. If that sounds unfamiliar, it's likely because the United States release wholly excised the twist. Shaving the final reel, the US release does see Sarah escape. Roll credits (and roll sequel "The Descent Part 2").
The truncated ending feels like a cheap Hollywood ploy for a happy ending. More incredulously, "The Descent Part 2," which follows the US ending, didn't even get a wide release stateside. It did, however, open wide in UK cinemas despite following a different ending. It's not only strange, but thematically, Sarah shouldn't have escaped the system. That was Marshall's intent. The burgeoning grief and anger coalesce in a downer of an ending. The total impact of "The Descent" is genuinely marred by the alternate ending and the canonical sequel (though the less said about that, the better).