Most frightened you've ever been watching a movie

I accidently/on purpose sneak-watched An American Werewolf in London when I was about 5.

Fucked.

Me.

Up.

Seeing Jaws in the theater when I was about 8-9 years old and was so amped up that I had to watch the last half of the movie literally standing against the wall on the aisle.

I'm deathly afraid of sharks so I had to run from the theater during the final scene of Open Water when she's starting to sink and you can see the dozens of sharks underneath her.

I mean the rest of the movie was pretty frightening but the final shot did me in. Couldn't handle it anymore.

The Shining still really freaks me out but I love it to death.

Poltergeist: same thing.

The first time I saw the ending of Phantasm really got to me too. I heard that "BOOOOOOOOYYYYY" every time I closed my eyes that night.

Oddly enough I remember vividly two moments from Star Trek movies that scared me when I was a kid.

In The Motion Picture when the first energy discharge from the cloud hits the Enterprise and it short-circuits the computer burning Chekov's hands his scream really frightened me.

In The Wrath of Khan: ear-worms. I think a lot of people shared that one.

Some random shit when I fell asleep with the TV on (TBS) at around five years old - I woke up and there was a young girl bludgeoning someone's head in with a rock in black and white. Scared the piss out of me, and I slept in the same room with my mom on an inflatable mattress on the floor for a couple of years afterward.

I had to leave American Werewolf in London in 1981 during one of the nightmare scenes. The Thing and Creepshow freaked me out the following year.

Twenty years old, my room mate is out of town, so I have the place to myself. I worked the closing shift that night, so by the time I left everyone was already at a party, etc, etc, so there wasn't a lot to do.

On a whim, I decide to buy The Exorcist on DVD. I'd seen it before, but it's a movie I felt that I needed to own. Plus, on a night with nothing else to do, why not watch a classic movie?

Throw the movie in and start pounding the whiskey.

That movie is pretty freaking scary anyway, but mix it with a lot of alcohol, and you have one fucking terrifying experience. I slept with the lights on that night... The next night a friend decided to crash with me and got pissed at me when I kept on getting out of bed to turn on the light.

Inland Empire the second time. I don't even know why- it just felt like the film itself was some kind of malign influence.

REC's last 10 minutes were really fucking scary.

The Birds. Of course being six at the time helped too. To this day, although it's nothing major, there's always this fear deep in the back of my mind of birds pecking my eyes out every time I see them flying low.

28 Days Later got to me. The scene where they vist the parents home and the neighbours break through the window after spotting the light. At that point the thought of an empty city full of infected crazy people became totally believable and extremely scary.

That fucking dog-man in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Shit=lost.

I still don't think I've ever seen the movie all the way through, but the trailer for Magic scared the shit out of me when I was four or five. They probably don't even show much in that trailer, but just the intimation that there was a killer dummy on the loose pretty much did it.

14 years old watching the original Night of the Living Dead at home alone at about 2AM while coming down off booze & drugs. I was so freaked out by the end that I couldn't even sit through the closing credits. Switched the TV off and realized that there wasn't a single light on in my house and booted it to bed, too scared to look out any windows, just in case there was a zombie out there.

Demon nazis?

crystal skull

Poltergeist caused months of sleeping with the closet closed, the hall light on with my bedroom door open, and me desperately trying not to imagine horrible things pressing up against the closet door, trying to get out.

As an adult, Communion and Fire in the Sky fucked me up pretty badly.

They were pretty terrifying, but by the time Meat Loaf Jack showed up, I had pretty well lost my shit. Crying and stuff.

Sweat dreams, Keith!

I was taken by my cousin to see Pet Cemetary when I was 7-8. I don't even know where to begin on how that film fucked me up, but it probably begins with the story Fred Gwynne tells.

Watching 'Alien' on HBO, alone, when I was 10 years old. I had nightmares for months after that.

I still hate spiders because of Tarantula.

The Sixth Sense spooked me - it had just come out on video. I was like 9 though.

14? You sure got an early start. I atleast waited till the age where my Mom didn't have to come pick me up.

I remember catching a late night Stephen King marathon on HBO years back by myself (Junior High maybe) that consisted of PET SEMETARY, THE SHINING, and one other (maybe CUJO). I was a little unnerved to say the least.

9 y/o old and I went to see Darkman with my dad. Everything would have been great if we were a little late and had missed the trailers but no such luck. Child's Play 2 hits and I am scared for life.

The Zelda scenes from Pet Semetary. Easily the scariest thing I've seen in a film. Apparently when my wife was a kid she had the same experience with it.

Ditto. This still gives me a shudder:

GAHHH! I came to post about this very trailer. I was 3 when it came out, and watching that puppet talk in close-up scared the bejeezus out of me. I distinctly recall running and hiding behind a chair when the commercial came on.

Some older applicable threads:

The Single Scariest Scene
Movie Moments that will ALWAYS Freak You Out...

God, yes.

I can remember exactly where I was when I saw Pet Semetary, because Zelda FREAKED ME OUT.

I will always love that movie for Fred Gwynne's Maine accent. "The soil in the ground, Louis! It's souwah!"

I feel this way about most of David Lynch's work. It's as though his films are tapping into the pure dread/foreboding of my nightmares. For a director who has never shot a 'horror' movie, he's creeped me out more consistently and effectively than any other.

When I was around 10 we lived in the countryside in a huge house thet always creaked like a crazy if there was even a soft breeze blowing. Needless to say it wasn't the most fun house to be home alone in when you're 10, and my parents didn't believe in the whole babysitting thing.

Well I will never forget one of those Saturday nights when I was alone, and when late at night the TV presenter announced that the following movie was based on real events. They then showed The Entity. I was scared shitless after watching that and I stayed in the chair in front of the television all night long until my parents finally showed up. I had been too scared to leave my spot in front of the television and move through all the hallways to get to my room.

One more vote for Pet Sematary.

And... here... we... go.

That trailer terrified me too...saw the movie years later and it does not contain the promise of that trailer. Not a bad movie at all, mind you, but nowhere near what that trailer seemed to promise.

I must have been 7 or 8 and decided to stay up past midnight to watch the creature feature one weekend. Caught "Son of Blob" in which a guy chops part of the original (frozen) Blob, takes it home, then accidentally leaves it on his kitchen table. The Blob defrosts, and hijinks follow. I was freaked out when a kitten comes up to the newly defrosted Blob, and it sends out a pseudo pod which catches the feline on the whiskers. That was bad. A few minutes later the guys wife walks into the living room to find her husband sitting in his easy chair covered by Blob and screaming. That freaked me the hell out, mostly becuase my father would spend Sunday afternoon's sitting in his easy chair and watching football. The association was instant and terrifying. To this day I've never attempted to watch that movie again

I had to watch the last half of GREMLINS through the window from the theater lobby.

After that I stopped being such a goddamn pussy.

I watched Fire in the Sky as a kid and couldn't sleep for a year. I thought I was going to be abducted the moment I shut my eyes. The "based on a true story" didn't help matters when my parents told me it was only a movie.

Well, no shit.

I have to agree on Fire In The Sky. Those alien scenes in the spaceship freaked me out as a young kid.

I remember trailers for that and being a bit wigged out by it.

I saw Pet Sematary in a theater when I was 10. I scared the shit out of me so bad that I had to ask my Dad to take us home. It was the only movie in my whole life where I had to do that and I saw some crazy shit when I was young.

I remember having crazy nightmares after seeing the scene in Fright Night when Evil was staked by Peter Vincent.

Plus I walked in on my parents at night watching From Beyond and I was traumatized for years after.

The original Texas Chain Saw Massacre was pretty rough on me when I first saw it at around the age of eight. The raw grittiness of it made it feel more real, and thus a hell of a lot more scary.

The same thing happened when I saw Last House on the Left a couple years later. Not the best movie for a ten year old to watch late at night.

Me, 11-yrs-old or so, with my best friend and his family. His mom and sister went to see Dirty Dancing (I think) while he and I snuck in to see Hellraiser. Easily the scariest theater experience ever for me, but I think had we gone with his mom to see Dirty Dancing the scars would run even deeper.

In 1996 I was 15 and at the Outer Banks, NC with my best friend and his family. One night we decide to rent a scary movie and picked out The Exoricist. So me, him, his sister, and his cousin were all crowded around this little 13 inch TV in the guest room, scared fucking shitless. I had never seen anything that scary up until that point in my life and I've never been that scared of a movie since then. Just pure terror.

We all slept in the same room that night with the lights on.

After the movie I had to use the bathroom, and I did so reluctantly. The bathroom was down in a basement area near where the adults were sleeping. So I run quick to the room and stand at the toilet so that I can look out the door just to make sure nothing is coming for me. Suddenly I hear this loud growling sound, and to me it sounds just like possessed Regan's breathing. I pinch my piss, neglect to flush the toilet, and run upstairs. I tell my buddy what I heard and we both walk down the stairs to see if we can hear it. When he hears the sound he starts cracking up. I'm on the verge of tears. He looks at me and says "dude, that's my dad snoring."

When I was a kid it was the Oompa Loompas in Willy Wonka. Those little orange bastards scared the shit out of me with the singing and the dancing.

I always jump back a little during Jurassic Park when the Raptor shows up behind Ellie after she re-starts the power.

For me it'd have to be The Blair Witch Project. I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but the whole supernatural being in the woods at night thing isn't something I'm too fond of. Lost a little of its luster these days, but that final scene in the house still scares the piss out of me.

I don't remember what it's called, but it was so god damn alien abduction movie in the same vein as BWP. Last known footage of a family who recorded the alien attack on their house. I was...13 at the time, thought it was real and slept with all the lights on and my closet door open, with a light shining in there. In my mind, aliens were averse to light.

This. I was 13 or so when I went to see this at night at our local cinema (long since gone). I got freaked out when David was hallucinating the attack on his family by the Nazi demons, so I decided to bail. I wound up walking home, at night, full moon shining, with every little sound making me jump and hurry my pace.

Sometime later, after our neighborhood got hooked up wih cable, I made myself watch the movie all the way through. At night, all by myself. Glad I did - I beat whatever fears i had, and started my love affair with Rick Baker's special effects, as well as my pining for Jenny Agutter.

SPICE WORLD had such a traumatizing effect on me, I never went to the theater again.

I was 8 when Friday the 13th part 4 hit HBO. One night when my parents went out to eat and left me home alone (at my request), so I decided to watch it. I'd never heard of Jason Vorhees and I'd never seen a slasher movie before, so I didn't know what I was getting into.

That night when I went to bed, the woods outside my bedroom window that I'd played in since I could walk were suddenly terrifying to me. I kept imagining Jason standing somewhere out in the night, just out of my line of sight. I didn't sleep well for a few nights.

As a kid I was terrified of Charlie Chaplin. I used to have nightmares about Chaplin chasing me with the crazy penguin-like walk.