The Scariest Scenes Of 2022

As one half of /Film's Scariest Scene Ever Boyz™ with Chris Evangelista, it's my pleasure to present the scariest movie moments of 2022. Yes, they're mostly horror films — but terrifying sequences can exist outside rigid horror boundaries. You might not be shocked to find "Smile" or "Barbarian" mentioned below, but what about the awards contender that starts things off? Or my favorite film of 2022 that no one's talking about coming in at the top spot? It's been a rock-solid year for being scared senseless. Let's go ahead and recount all the extra nightmares that cycled through my head.

"Olga?"

"Tár" stars an all-but-locked Best Actress in Cate Blanchett as Berlin Philharmonic composer-conductor Lydia Tár. Her life throttles off the rails as indecent accusations tarnish her good name, leading to faint breaks in storytelling that might be Lydia's projected fractures or actual reality. Writer and director Todd Field pushes Lydia to the brink, even into horror genre territory. So well, in fact, I'm fully invested in a Todd Field horror movie someday.

My favorite breakout occurs when Lydia follows virtuoso cellist Olga (Sophie Kauer) home to her slummy apartment, a dilapidated complex with dingy subterranean floors where Lydia descends. It's something out of any haunted asylum movie where a character investigates dripping and desolate passageways where no good lurks — and then Lydia starts hearing pitter-patters. Then, a dog appears at the opposite end of the hallway, which causes Lydia to bolt upstairs from the beast before smashing her head. It's Horror 101 suspense in a hunt-versus-prey scenario, drawn to the razor's edge.

"Mr. Webber made a complaint with us today about a neighbor who has been harassing him."

Chloe Okuno's "Watcher" is all about the horrors of unbelieved women with stalkers, and plenty of lurking in shadows shoots a sour tingle up spines — but the scariest scene, to me, happens inconspicuously. Maika Monroe is the victim here (Julia), and Burn Gorman's neighborhood creeper Daniel? A serial killer known as "The Spider."

Maika's shaken housewife abroad finally knocks on Daniel's apartment door, but she flees — Gorman's master manipulator shows up later that night at Julia's door with a policeman. Daniel so expertly twists the scenario to be interpreted that Julia is the stalker — the policeman presumes the dilemma is a misinterpretation on both parts. The whole while, Daniel plays his role as a socially awkward hermit to divert attention from his slasher behaviors — Julia equated to another overly emotional woman waiting to become a slain statistic. Julia is finally made to shake her harasser's hand in front of witnesses. The horrors of humanity are always worse than fictitious monsters.

"We just want to go home."

Christian Tafdrup's "Speak No Evil" is one of the year's crowning feel-bad horror flicks, exploring the horrors of vacation friends and trusting strangers. A Danish couple meets a Dutch family on their Tuscan getaway, which prompts the Dutch clan to invite their newfound Danish companions for a visit to their homestead. Danish father Bjørn (Morten Burian) loves the idea of doing something rustic and breaking the monotony of their city malaise. Bad idea.

The scare in question happens well after the Dutch hosts out themselves as the evilest of criminals. Dutch father Patrick (Fedja van Huêt) has taken Bjørn's family hostage in their car, and Bjørn has become submissive. Patrick's associate arrives and hops in the car, turning his attention to Bjørn's daughter Agnes (Liva Forsberg) — cutting her tongue out and abducting her as both parents utter useless words of comfort. We can presume what comes next — child trafficking, abuse, etcetera — but true horror exists in the bleakness of witnessing it all happen, with no one stopping the depravity.

"This is all because you decided to stand the f*** up for yourself."

Beth de Araújo's "Soft & Quiet" is a repugnant horror-thriller about despicable hatred bred by white nationalism — a title I can't blanket recommend but can commend as effective. What starts with a gut-turning pie decoration unveiling devolves into caucasian women discussing antisemitism, xenophobia, and Aryan greatness before acting out their racist fantasies. The like-minded women encounter minority persons to whom they decide to teach a lesson, breaking into their house as a scare tactic — until it becomes more.

De Araújo treats "Soft & Quiet" as a one-take film, which heightens the worsening sense that there's no stopping the action on-screen as the home invasion scene unfolds. We can only watch as innocent townsfolk whose violation is looking different are "accidentally" harmed and murdered by these Daughters of Aryan Unity who show what making America great again really means — violence, dehumanization, and eradication without any real plan. Chaos turns to a kidnapping laced with slurs and derogatory insinuations, as the "practical joke" becomes an outright assault. Take your pick of timestamps from when the women enter an empty house to them leaving, it's all domestic horror.

"He says he's happy to meet you."

Andy Mitton uses the COVID-19 pandemic as a backdrop for "The Harbinger" so well. It's a film about the horrors of isolation and the island feeling of social disappearance, except with a Plague Doctor demon with Freddy Krueger powers.

How we meet said demon is the scariest scene in "The Harbinger." Monique (Gabby Beans) is quarantining with her friend in an NYC apartment, where she hears a sick child coughing upstairs. There's a ruckus, and within seconds, the infected child comes crashing through their ceiling. Monique is petrified, first by the possible viral infiltration and child's body, then as she looks towards the doorway and hears a clicking noise (subtitled as "dark chattering"). The titular Harbinger lowers itself head-first into the front doorway, revealing its raven-black beaked mask. The undead child is now standing upright and makes an unfortunate introduction to Monique that will haunt her for the film's remaining duration.

"Baby, put the knife down."

John Ross's online cryptid meme-horror flick "Grimcutty" is scary for one scene — that's the first time Grimcutty crawls from a "Death Note" mold and enters a suburban home. I'm not a fan of the movie, but Grimcutty's grand entrance is a thing of nightmares. The camera focuses on an empty doorway after a wooden creek, only for a hand to grasp around the frame and a head to appear. Grimcutty's Slender Man size means he has to lean through the doorway, only adding to the imposition factor. It's a shame that the more we see of Grimcutty, the worse he looks because his introduction is textbook horror amplification. If only the next 100ish minutes held firm.

"I'm going to have a lot of fun with you."

Rob Jabbaz's "The Sadness" is a movie about monsters without morality — The Purge meets 28 Days Later. An outbreak where civilians turn sadistic and act on their worst impulses becomes a disgusting parade of extreme atrocities. "The Businessman" (Tzu-Chiang Wang) is a recurring figure who stabs out eyes and is sick of being called a subway pervert — so he becomes the ultimate evolution of his called-out self.

In a hospital, after The Businessman finds the woman whose eye he removed in a wheelchair, The Sadness reaches its height of depravity with maddening disgust. The Businessman can infect his one-eyed victim any way he chooses, but left alone, and corrupted by thoughts that suggest only the worst, he shoulders off his suspenders, unzips his pants, removes the eyepatch and — yup. They don't show everything, but sound design is enough to cause turned heads. The kind of scene you can't stomach and sure as hell earns a "horrifying" classification.

"What if I told you that today you'll leave here different. I'm talking to you. Right here, you are going to witness an absolute spectacle. So what happens next?"

I already wrote about what I dare anoint the scariest scene of Jordan Peele's sci-fi western "Nope" as part of Scariest Scene Ever. When Jean Jacket descends on Ricky "Jupe" Park's (Steven Yeun) Star Lasso Experience, everyone's sucked into the extraterrestrial's mouth. To this point, we only know what goes in usually doesn't come out — but then Ricky's wife Amber (Wrenn Schmidt) is shown inside Jean Jacket's esophagus, slithering upward along the slimy tissue track while she's being eaten alive. It's claustrophobic and confirms that what happens to victims is just as bad as we'd imagine. NOPE!

"I unleashed her. I unleashed Mildred."

Oh look, another Scariest Scenes Ever nomination! Joseph and Vanessa Winter's "Deadstream" is often funnier than frightful, but that doesn't stop a hanging woman only seen on livestream footage from nailing the film's top scare. Disgraced YouTuber Shawn Ruddy (Joseph Winter) attempts to maneuver around the swinging ghost of Mildred Pratt, who only appears on his stream, which he holds in front of the camera as he approaches the supposed location of her dangling corpse above the exit staircase. Shawn keeps lifting and lowering his livestream view, inching closer to the inevitable jolt we see a mile away — he drops the tablet once more, and there's Mildred! She cackles, lunges toward the camera, and causes quite the jump scare. Who said fear couldn't be fun?

"Laura? [fainter] Roooooose."

As Parker Finn's "Smile" proves, the existence of jump scares is not an immediately deplorable horror scenario — it's all about execution. As Dr. Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) scrubs over an audio file, replaying the same snippet looking for clues, she leans closer to the screen. I would presume that a digital blur in the shape of something unsettling would burst in Rose's face, but Parker hits us harder. As Rose focuses on some rogue voice in the clip, a ghoulish figure right next to Rose suddenly shouts her name, breaking the silence. Is it the opposite of surprising? Maybe. Does it impact like a Mack truck doing 80mph? Scary is scary, y'all.

"Just be brave."

Johannes Roberts' "V/H/S/99" segment "Suicide Bid" is a laundry list of phobias crammed into an anthology segment. College freshman Lily (Alexia Ioannides) accepts a sorority hazing ritual that involves being buried in a graveyard, jumping into a coffin in the name of Greek popularity. The found footage perspective means we're watching via a camera with Lily, all cramped in a wooden casket, and then she opens a box — full of not-so-small spiders. Lily freaks the hell out as the arachnids crawl over her face — supposedly confirmed by the V/H/S/99 production crew to be practical — as claustrophobia, arachnophobia, and taphophobia create this terrifying trifecta of terror. Nah! Just ... nah.

"There are no wolves, it's the shrooms."

Addison Heimann doesn't hide "Donnie Darko" influences throughout "Hypochondriac" with a reinvention of Frank the Rabbit. Zach Villa stars as a potter confronting deeply-rooted traumas, which brings about this entity in a wolf costume eerily similar to Frank's figure. Villa's character sees the wolf repeatedly, with a specific hot tub visualization tipping the scare factor scales. Villa's Will glimpses the wolf-thing while soaking for relaxation, its beady eyes piercing through nighttime blackness from afar as its head tilts, and we can hear disembodied dialogue like, "I'm stuck." Will's fixation presents the two in a standoff until the thing bounds toward Will on all fours with a snarling purpose. It's straightforward, obvious, and it works — it's a scary scare!

"Someone bit me."

In Zach Cregger's "Barbarian," the first full-body scare happens unpredictably. Tess Marshall (Georgina Campbell) books a rental in a rundown Detroit neighborhood that's already occupied by Keith Toshko (Bill Skarsgård) — a double-guest snafu. Cregger wants you to think there's something nefarious going on as Keith welcomes Tess inside, Tess making sure to lock every door after entering rooms alone. Surely Keith is a psychopath luring Tess into his trap with alcohol and charming banter ... right?

Wrong! As my partner Chris Evangelista writes in a recent Scariest Scenes ever column, the scariest scene of Barbarian happens to Keith in the rental's basement. Tess reveals suspicious rooms and a camcorder downstairs, which Keith goes to investigate. She ventures after Keith when he stops responding to find another opening and a pitch-black tunnel system. Keith screams for help, emerges wounded, and then the duo is attacked by a naked mutant-like woman who bashes Keith's head to smithereens against the wall. It all happens so quickly, which makes for quite an unexpected fright as "Barbarian" proves its outward presentations are deceptive facades.

"Are you scared? You should only fear Allah."

Joko Anwar takes a simple formula of lights-on, lights-off scaresmanship into the top ranks of 2022's most terrifying scenes. The surviving family from "Satan's Slaves" moves into a North Jarkarta apartment complex only to have their past follow on the night of a major rainstorm that cuts the power. Frightened child Toni Suwono (Endy Arfian) finds himself in a unit with two dead wrapped bodies waiting to be buried (Indonesian significance), which definitely won't come alive — right?

Toni must explore the unit with matches as his light, and the flame continuously flickers out. Each time the room becomes illuminated again, we wait for the bodies to stare wide-eyed at Toni, or worse, to come alive. Anwar teases, prods, and draws out the scene until delivering his spooky payoff when the expected happens — but it's about execution, not familiarity.

"What was that? Was that a gun?"

Megan Park's feature debut "The Fallout" is traumatic, terrifying, and maybe not classifiable as traditional "horror," but features the most horrific scene of the year. Trigger warning, but it's a no-punches-pulled movie about the aftermath of a school shooting that we witness happen. Jenna Ortega and Maddie Ziegler play high schoolers sharing the girl's bathroom when POP POP — gunshots are heard from the hallway. The classmates dash into a stall and stand atop the toilet, cowering as screams, panic, and the rat-a-tat of assault fire pierces through their paralyzed silence. Niles Fitch bursts in quivering, teary-eyed, and covered in blood — his character's brother is one of the shooting victims. They huddle above toilet water, send what could be their last messages, and pray they don't become another forgotten statistic.

The film premiered March 17, 2021 at Austin's SXSW film festival — the same year a record high 35 American school shootings were reported. Park is sickened by an America where outrage over pronouns trumps gun restrictions and child safety. The scene traps viewers in an active shooter scenario from a teenager's perspective because they're the ones whose innocence is stolen — real people, not pictures on a news report. The ones whose lives are at risk, friends are slain, and souls are traded for some rando's rights to own weapons that no civilian needs unfettered access to at all times. This is the scene that shattered my soul in 2022 because it's a nightmare no one should live — yet here we are, with 49 school shootings this year and another new record. Put that high score on the board, America. We earned it.

Thoughts and prayers, of course.