Horror's ability to weave several genres together and bounce between binary themes makes the genre superior to other categories like comedy and drama. Many films intersperse horror elements in a scene to carry the story or infuse the plot with traditional horror components to elevate the storytelling. Here are 25 films not labeled as horror that dip their toes into scary territory.
1. Nocturnal Animals (2016)
As a family man drives down a country highway with his wife and daughter, a car full of locals terrorizes the family. They run the car off the road, and Aaron Taylor Johnson's character interrogates Jake Gyllenhaal's character, asking him why he refused to pull over when they asked him to.
2. The Green Mile (1999)
“The dry sponge execution in The Green Mile is the most horrifying scene in any piece of media I have ever seen (I'm a horror movie coward), and nothing comes close. The music is terror and hopelessness personified, the visual of Eduard's body spasming and burning is chilling, and the reactions of the characters are horrific: Everyone knows exactly what's happening and understands the horrible nature of what they're seeing, but nothing is done to stop all of it.
3. Mulholland Drive (2001)
A lot of fans stated the diner scene from Mulholland Drive never sat well with them and that the complicated movie often left more questions unanswered. The movie isn't a jump scare movie, but more a of physiological scare movie.
4. Neverending Story (1984)
Atreyu and Artrax begin a quest through the Swamp of Sadness and stick true to its name. The swamp delivers a swath of tears. Artrax, the horse, ends up sinking into the quicksand while Atreyu tries to save his best friend. The horrifying part is the slow sink the director subjects the viewer to. As the horse slips further under the sand, Atreyu cries and screams out, attempting to save his companion.
5. Fire in the Sky (1993)
While most of this movie isn't scary, it's only when they show what happened to the main character when he was abducted by a UFO. The movie is mostly about the aftermath of that abduction, but the actual abduction is the most terrifying thing about this movie.
6. The Fourth Kind (2009)
The Fourth Kind claims to report true stories of alien abductions in Nome, Alaska. A psychologist hypnotizes her patients who report having come into contact with aliens and all recognizing a creepy barn owl before their kidnappings. The scene that freaks out most commenters is where a man dealing with an alien abduction undergoes possession and utters words in Sumerian. The scientists in the room translate the remarks into “I am God.”
7. Zodiac (2007)
I watched ten minutes of this film at a sleepover in middle school before pretending to fall asleep so I didn't have to witness the unfolding terror of Zodiac. A cinephile on the thread reports the creepiest scene of the thriller occurs when a reporter, Robert Graysmith, meets up with Bob Vaughn, who has crucial information about the case. Without a score, jump scares, and special effects, the reporter and Vaughn create a tense scene once Vaughn invites Graysmith to the basement for a closer look at his evidence.
8. Trainspotting (1996)
Ever seen a baby with a twisting head crawling on the ceiling? As Renton withdraws from substance abuse, he hallucinates about his friends present in his room and a baby lurching toward him from the ceiling. At one point, the baby rotates its head to meet Renton's gaze and appears to fall on top of him until Renton wakes up.
9. The Brave Little Toaster (1987)
Everyone's favorite animated feature about a toaster featured several horrifying scenes that sparked nightmares in young viewers. One scene shows the Toaster encountering a creepy clown who tells the Toaster to run before chasing him with water and sending fork-shaped waves after the brave little guy. The Toaster hangs above the bathtub, knowing if he lets go, he'll suffer a brutal end, but thankfully, he wakes up and realizes it was all a dream.
10. Spirited Away (2001)
While overall, people love Spirited Away, one of the scariest scenes of the film is when the parents turn into pigs after eating all the food. The half-human, half-pig hybrids are terrifying, even after watching the movie a number of times.
11. Unbreakable (2000)
According to a few movie critics, the home invasion scene stirs up the most tension in this M. Night Shyamalan film. But then again, a lot of M. Night Shyamalan films scare us in ways that they really shouldn't.
12. The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Forty-something years before Return to Oz stunned a generation with shock therapy and a room of heads, The Wizard of Oz traumatized watchers with life-size, flying monkeys who carried Dorothy and friends through the dark skies, guided by the wicked witch.
13. American History X (1998)
Edward Norton plays a hateful individual determined to rain hate upon two black men, one of whom he curb stomps in a harrowing sequence. The lineup of the assault builds tension and suspense as Norton instructs the young man to assume the position on the curb. Viewers claim that the scene still haunts them, and the sound effects evoke more empathy for the wounded character.
14. American Animals (2018)
This crime movie stars Evan Peters and Barry Keoghan as they attempt to pursue the biggest heist in Kentucky History. Four Kentucky locals familiarize themselves with the rare books inside Transylvania University while concocting their plan. The boys figure out how to break in and successfully steal the artifacts and decide to use a Taser on the security guard. However, none of the boys can bring themselves to taser the woman, which leads to a grueling scene of Peters tackling the woman and holding her down while she repeats that he's hurting her.
15. Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Stanley Kubrick's anti-war film focuses on a group of Marine Corps recruits in The Vietnam War. The story shines a light on the experience of training for war and the reality of living through war. A blood-curdling moment appears when one of the central recruits, “Pyle,” sits alone in the bathroom, cleaning his weapon, and angles his head toward the camera with a sinister sneer to say, “Hi, Joker.”
The scene points out the descent into madness war thrusts young men into.
16. Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark
None of us can forget the scene in Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark when the heads all melt and explode. While being a treasure hunter isn't a career we're all following, the idea of this happening sometime would be terrifying to use when we were younger.
17. Adaptation (2002)
There's a car crash sequence in Spike Jonze's Adaptation that I haven't been able to forget since I saw it in the theater when it came out. It's so abrupt and out of the blue, and the consequences are life-altering,” a film fan fangirls.
Someone else purports they can't remember anything else from the movie.
18. Room (2015)
Brie Larson, Ma, and Jacob Tremblay, Jack, live in an 11×11 square foot room for five years before orchestrating an escape plan. Ma rolls Jack in a rug and places him in the back of their captor's truck before the man sets out for the day. While driving, Jack swallows his fear and jumps out of the truck. As he runs, a man walking his dog notices that Jack has a slip of paper in his hand and needs help. The abductor drops Jack and speeds away from the scene, leaving the little boy with someone to call the cops.
19. Free Solo (2018)
Alex Honnold chases his lifelong passion for scaling mountains sans rope or any material to protect them from falling. This true story showcases Honnold's ascent up El Capitan, a nearly 3,000-foot cliff, with chalk on his hands and climbing shoes. Numerous climbers state the film stirs discomfort within them, and others believe they haven't perspired that much in a movie screening ever.
20. The Empire of the Sun (1987)
A young Christian Bale, Jim, stars in this 80's flick about World War II: Jim lives in Shanghai, China, when Japan invades the country and imprisons citizens. Jim confesses that he doesn't remember what his parents look like. He only knows his mom by her smell.
21. Whiplash (2014)
The worst (and best) part of the musical drama Whiplash is J.K. Simmons. The Academy-award-winning actor steps into a role as a maniacal band director, determined to whip his students into the best young musicians in the business. He mentally, physically, and abuses his students to draw out their finest performances, and never smiles until the final scene.
22. Shiva Baby (2020)
Rachel Sennott is one of the best actresses in today's industry. She stars in Emma Seligman's 2020 dark comedy as Danielle, a college-aged Jewish woman struggling to find a job. At the shiva, her parents and family members speak about her post-college plans, and her sugar daddy ends up showing up to the shiva with his wife and daughter.
23. E.T. (1982)
The scene in E.T. where Elliot first meets E.T. in the grass, and they're screaming at each other was a pretty terrifying scene as kid for some of us. I mean, imagine meeting an alien one day. Overall, this feel-good movie did give a lot of kids nightmares back in the day.
24. Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985)
Most film fanatics remark that Large Marge is the creepiest horror scene in a non-horror movie. Pee-wee hitchhikes and hops into Large Marge's semi-truck. The woman strikes up a conversation with Pee-wee and alerts him that she witnessed a horrible car accident on the same road a few years back. As she speaks to him, her face contorts into a claymation face of bulging eyes and missing teeth.
25. Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
Doom picks up a red shoe that trusts him. So, the shoe experiences the ultimate betrayal when Doom walks over to a barrel of acid and slowly immerses him into the vat, as the acid shifts from green goop into red liquid. The animators accentuated the shoe's pain as he burns.
Source: Reddit.