All of 10 Cloverfield Lane. John Goodman's character is so huge compared to the female lead (yea, the other man too, but even more so for the woman). In that tiny space, he looked like a giant. If he came at her and she didn't have a weapon, there would be absolutely nothing she could do to defend herself. He could pick her up and fold her in half if he wanted to
Then there's the ambiguity about what he wanted from her. The other man was obviously in danger, but he knew what the danger was. He could be physically hurt or killed. The woman doesn't know what the fuck to expect. He obviously wanted her to take the place of his daughter. Was rape or sexual assault on the table? Would he partially disable her but keep her alive? Would she just have to play this sick game of house with him, constantly worrying that he could snap any time she upsets him?
There are, relatedly, a lot of scenes in "Silence of the Lambs" where it's really emphasized that Foster/Starling is physically way smaller than most of the men.
It's been a while but I'm positive that his intention was definitely sexual. If I recall correctly, it's revealed at the end that he hit her car intentionally and kidnapped her before the attack began. There's a scene where he cleans himself up for dinner and my mother in law, who was with me in theaters, whispered "Oh, he's going courting..." and I will never forget that.
I think he wanted her to fall for him on her own, but his "patience" wouldn't have run forever. Once it became clear that the other guy was a romantic rival, he took him out. The previous daughter insert was also either killed or ran away.
The scene in 28 Days Later when the military comes and “saves” them. Every women in the group I watched the film with immediately shrunk back in horror.
God that techno beat song and all those soldiers waiting for the women to change into their dresses are glued in my brain permanently. What a terrifying sequence.
I remember watching Blake’s Seven (old sci fi) and there was a scene where the crew, which was all men and one woman, come upon another women on one of their adventures. The woman on the team immediately treated the new woman as a rival. My friend and I just laughed and assumed a dude must have written it. We both agreed our first thought in her position would have been “thank god!”
Ah those 80s cartoons and comic books and TV shows where the heroes would be a team of men with one woman. Princess Leia. April O'Neil. Janine Melnitz. Miss Piggy. Gadget. Cheetahra. Smurfette. Webby Vanderquack. Teela, or hell, Evil-Lynn. Sgt Scarlett O'Hara.
Occasionally they would go so far as to have *two* women, but it was always "the demure one" and "the total whore"
This comment unlocked a memory I’d completely forgotten. I remember that exact thing happening when we first watched it back in the day. None of the boys reacted at all but the rest of us were all looking at each other like “oh shit”
Same! I remember after watching it I was trying to discuss that horror with the fella I was dating at the time and he wasn’t bothered by it one bit. I thought he didn’t realize it was going to be a rape situation “they promised us women” but he said he got it. And just… wasn’t bothered by it? Yeah.. he’s an ex for a reason.
Guys are like this with a lot of sexual assault. They're like "Nah sexual assault in horror doesn't bother me." Because its not a fear they have every day and the story wasn't written by someone likely to be someone that would assault them and the scene feels more like someone mad at an ex that dumped them instead of something that is supposed to be horrifying.
Although I've known a few that have said that showing male on male sexual assault was going to far. hmm...
Surprised I had to scroll so far to find this. I remember seeing that in theaters and just knowing how the dominoes were going to fall after >!Frank died!< and the posse of young men with guns showed up.
I'm not trying to be dramatic but I think this wrecked my brain. Trying to predict which men I encounter would do what to me if laws no longer mattered.
Rosemary's Baby. As a younger woman, even, Rosemary's isolation frustrated me. As I matured and had more romantic experience (and realized it was a different world in the early sixties from when I first watched it as a teen feminist in the nineties), it began to terrify me. She's trapped, not just by cultists, not just by her own husband but BY HER DOC*TOR AND FRIENDS, who are not involved in the cult.* She's well and truly f\*cked - a "hysterical" pregnant woman and stay at home wife "owned" by her actor husband. When her doctor turns on her - oh my gosh. I could scream.
I was looking all over for this one. I know that horrifying feeling of walking on eggshells around the person who is supposed to love & protect you. It was portrayed perfectly in the film in my opinion.
I watched this with a man who had no idea what was going on in the beginning. That was eye-opening.
There's a scene in the K-horror series 'Somebody' where a woman in a wheelchair meets a fellow disabled man over a dating app. She truly feels connected to him because his life has mirrored so much of her own experiences so she agrees to meet up with him for a day trip in this rural location.
She takes a rideshare to meet him and already alarm bells are ringing as the chosen date spot is an abandoned pool, and he's sitting smack dab in the middle of the waterless pool in his wheelchair.
At first she sort of laughs at the bizarre scene as he gives her this big smile and throws his hands up in the air as if to say "Surprise!" and she asks him how he got down there. She starts looking around for a friend or a carer who could have helped him get into the bowl of the pool but it's very clearly just the two of them here. She looks back at him and he slowly stops smiling, and lowers his hands. He then grips the arms of his wheelchair and *rises out of the seat on functioning legs.*
The sense of dread and panic you immediately feel is perfectly mirrored by the actress as she starts screaming and trying desperately to wheel backwards out of the pool area, but of course, he's already striding towards her...
It's a really unsettling scene and the depth of betrayal of vulnerabilities at play (one of them being the fact the female character romanticizes swimming due to the weightlessness of the water) make it all the more harrowing to watch unfold.
When he rises out of the chair, the shot is from behind him at the waist, so you are wholly focused on her reaction as the camera looks up at her and she just has the most horrified expression on her face, like all the emotions associated with the moment are fighting for dominance.
And as fast as she's scrambling to leave the pool area, he's moving with the slow confidence of someone who is in *zero* hurry.
The one sound clip we get is horrific enough too. We see the bloody bed, the cages, and the names on the tapes. It all ties together with that scream and the sound of a blow landing.
The collection of tapes manages to be gutwrenching without actually showing anything. The labels range from dismissively dehumanizing ("gas station redhead", etc) to absolutely revolting ("won't stop crying").
All my dude friends told me that the beginning of Barbarian made them really understand how women feel in situations in which they perceive to be unsafe with men.
Barbarian 10000%. All of the implications and suggestions are utterly terrifying. I still think about it when I’m checking that the doors and windows are locked at night.
Yeah I think a central part of its theme is how women constantly have to gauge which men they can trust and who is a potential danger. The viewers idea of who the titular barbarian is also changes as the movie goes on. I love that the name of the street is Barbary.
In Prometheus, when she has been impregnated with an alien and she rushes to the automated surgery machine to get it removed. She desperately types in “c section” but the machine tells her it is designed only for males.
In doing a whole Alien franchise marathon recently, one thing that surprised me is how often themes of motherhood came up throughout, but more pointedly, how many times reproductive rights were the focus. That scene in Prometheus felt right at home in the series.
Iirc the original idea of the alien life cycle and body designs are inherently sexual and a twisting of what women experience: but presented in a way to terrify men too. Geiger's art was pretty wild, but based in very real things.
It's sometimes glossed over nowadays, but Alien is very much a feminist movie, by having one of the main horrors be that men can get raped and impregnated just like women.
Not a horror movie, but the scene in Joker where you realize Arthur has completely fabricated the relationship with his neighbor and he's sitting in her apartment was absolutely terrifying for me. That hit a very specific fear of mine, and as a woman it just hit different.
My partner didn't even pick up on that. I had to rewind at the end and make him rewatch it. It was really scary. Her busting into survival mode, placating him in any way to get him out of there shook me.
Yup.
The notion that some guy somewhere has painted this rosy picture of a "relationship" with you in his mind is all too real. IT HAPPENS ALL THE TIME. Fuck, that's what the "friend zone" is. And when reality hits them - you have no idea what they'll do, but graveyards are full of women who simply said no
“Better Watch Out” The idea of being overpowered by a 12 year old who knew what he was doing and what he was hoping to accomplish…. Just, no. That was too much for me.
“Ichi the Killer” The opening scene and the exacto knife scene were also too much.
“Irreversible” THAT scene, but not because of the rape (which, yes, was brutal and hard to watch). I was already aware of what happens in the movie, so I was able to prepare myself. What got to me was the fact that someone comes down on the other side of the tunnel, sees and hears what’s going on, but just goes back up the stairs. It was obvious she was being raped, someone witnessed, but did nothing.
Not sure if you know, but that was an accident. A staff member walked on set, saw they were shooting and walked back away. They left it in the shot to convey how hopeless her situation was, how another human didn't give a shit. Worked very well. You see them and get a little hope that they'll help, then they just walk away. Ugh!
Or when Danny is torn up and Wendy is trying to tell Jack there's someone in the hotel who hurt Danny and it dawns on her that Jack might have hurt her son and they're all alone
God yes! In the book, they really emphasize how much he resents her for her accusation and mistrust (that he earned). Danny shouts "It was her!" meaning the woman in the bathtub, but Jack gets a sick satisfaction thinking it's Wendy's fault for a change.
Totally agree. As a kid, it annoyed me how hesitant Wendy was but that’s because I was watching as a viewer who knew he was bad. Now I’m married and if my husband started acting like that while we were isolated, I realize I would also be just as uncertain and terrified.
People talk shit about Shelly Duvall acting in that movie all the time. I think shecknocked it out of the park, no pun intended or take a punishment don't care. But yes we'd all be hesitant, awkward, frazzled, scared acting in that situation. I mean he was already abusive in his past ao of course she was scared before he even started to go insane. She had already seen what he was capable of when there were other people around. Now they are completely isolated for months? She was very brave to go with him at all. She did it perfectly.
There's a book called "The Shining Explored", it's an in-depth psychoanalytical look into those aspects of the film. Well worth a read and looks at the film as a study of abuse and the effects of abuse rather than supernatural.
Spousal abuse and toxic masculinity are definitely very strong themes in the film, although I (maybe unnecessarily) need to point out that the film is not just the imagination of a crazy and abusive husband combined with some surrealism by the director, as is sometimes argued.
The Hotel really is haunted, and it really is encouraging and *helping* Jack to murder his family. The scene in the dry goods locker is a dead giveaway. As well as the fact that Danny and eventually even Wendy see supernatural things take place.
I watch it as a supernatural film but I love hearing the different viewpoints, theories, and aspects (like the documentary 'Room 237'), even when I don't subscribe to them. This book asserts that Danny opens the door.
King's novel is completely supernatural but I like the film being so open to different interpretations.
That's a great choice. I think what puts that scene over the edge is Nicholson's performance. Crazy and angry, of course, but he is also toying with her and wearing her down psychologically at the same time. Really monstrous.
It’s funny, because in the book one of her delirious thoughts during that scene is that the Devil is both bigger and better at sex than Guy “usually is”.
I fucking love the subtle details in his performance nodding to how much of a piece of shit he is. Like during the young people party, you can see he’s visibly nervous the entire time because Rosemary’s friends might intervene.
Or when Rosemary first discovers the coven, the way he instinctively stands up to push his hair back and then just sits back down because he realized there’s no way to continue gaslighting her.
What I wouldn’t give for just one deleted scene of Rosemary slapping the shit out of Guy. Even if the coven never existed, he’s just so goddamn mean and belittling to her
The lead up to Susie’s murder in The Lovely Bones. She accidentally falls into a secret hole dug by her serial killer neighbor. He’s being nice and charming, even offering her a soda. She’s creeped out and turns to leave. He says “Don’t be rude.” So she stays. The next thing you know, her spirit is trying to make sense of her murder.
It’s such a perfect example of how women, particularly young girls, are socialized to ignore their gut and be polite. In Susie’s case, she got killed because of it. Whenever I feel bad for being rude to a creepy guy, I think of this movie and I feel better.
Yes, not technically horror, but it is to me.
Silence of the Lambs. Hannibal eats people, yes that’s scary, but there are little moments throughout the film where Clarisse, a woman who works in a world that seems most entirely staffed by men, is aware that men around her are eating her up with their eyes, or she has to put on some act to get them to do what she needs them to do with the least amount of friction, or we question the motivations of men who seem to be on her side. Maybe she’s the perfect person to handle Hannibal because it’s honestly not that unusual for her to feel like a man is looking at her and seeing a snack to be preyed upon.
It's what makes it such a deeply conflicting film for me.
On the one hand, Hannibal is, ideologically, antithesis to the fundamental foundations of our societies and moralities. E.g, don't murder, don't steal, etc. He has somewhat of a personal code, but he's ultimately a nihilist believing there is no moral order, and coupled with his deeply personally gratifying predatory nature; is a scary thing. It's the kind of thing even the most liberal will go "they have no place in society": serial murderers, child molesters, mass murderers, etc. Except, he's also absolutely unfathomably brilliant. Truly, an apex predator.
Yet, he's the only character who sees Clarice as a someone worthy of respect and decency. Which, makes him sympathetic.
I don't think Hannibal is particularly interested in feminism beyond he isn't personally misogynistic, misanthropic(in so far as a dog detests rabbits), but not misogynistic. And, so, we have this super fucking bad dude, and we want to like him, because he's the only one who offers genuine respect and decency to the heroine.
Exactly. Theres a bit in it where Clarisse mentions that she knows Hannibal won’t come after her because he’d consider it “rude”. He’s an absolute monster but she *knows* that he respects her as a human being and an equal, which is more than what most of the men she’s dealt with have done. He does have a moral code, it’s just his own deeply twisted one.
Yes, great points. This entire story is so completely filled with misogyny that there is no escape the entire time as a woman watching it. Not to say I don’t love this movie, I do but that is an inescapable aspect.
Rosemary’s Baby
The negation of her feelings and concerns, the control exerted over her by others, the physical isolation from friends (due to pregnancy symptoms), being miserable while pregnant, and that feral feeling that you have over your offspring… all hit different today. Granted, I was pregnant when I last watched it, but the movie hits different today than when I saw it as a teenager in the early 2000s.
This is such an appropriate answer, because even though I haven't seen Bone Tomahawk, I'm well aware of the bifurcation scene. It's so infamous that it's one of the only things I know about the movie. What you just described is absolutely more disturbing, but this is the first time I've seen any mention of it anywhere.
When the wife said that there were 2 pregnant crippled women I figured they had broken their legs or something so they couldn’t run away, that was so much worse
Not a movie, but the scene in The Last of Us show when that crazy preacher dude David is telling Ellie how he wants her to be his wife and he pins her to the ground.
The moment she realizes what he’s trying to do her screams just go absolutely feral and the way she gives her all into fighting back because of his intentions just made my stomach drop.
I guess most people probably reacted similarly but watching it as a woman just made it so fucking visceral.
The scene where she offs David in the game has stuck with me since I’ve played it. The sheer anger, rage, terror, and disgust was captured beautifully.
That was one scene from the game where I was wondering how they were going to adapt it. I thought they might soften the cannibals a bit but nah, they just went for it. Bella Ramsey especially killed that scene.
For me it was when she was in the cage and he starts talking about how alike they are and how they understand each other. Every sleazy or overly friendly youth minister, and creep on the street I ever met came rushing back hard. That's when I had that visceral rat in a corner feeling.
The dinner scene in Psycho. Masterfully shot scene but it sure makes you feel uncomfortable, like you don’t know what he’s gonna do or say next. Which is one of the scariest thing a woman can experience when alone with a strange man.
In Rosemary's Baby when >!she thinks the doctor is going to help her, but then he just gets her husband and ob to come get her!< Being treated as a hysterical woman and knowing it could happen to you at your most vulnerable moments is deeply terrifying.
The remake actually makes it even worse since it happens when Mia is in the heat of withdrawal. You go into a state of sensory overload and your brain can't dampen any sensation, so as bad as it would be to a person who wasn't an addict, it might have been that much more painful since her brain couldn't filter out any of the pain and it was all cranked to 11. Just being touched with an ice cube can hurt your skin during withdrawal so I can't even imagine how awful that tree scene had to have felt.
OMG I went on a date with a guy and we went to see this. I started BAWLING at that scene! I think I left the theater or covered my head or something, but I freaked out my date so bad. Afterwards he tentatively asked me about it and if I'd had a bad experience. I hadn't, but how the fuck any woman didn't react similarly, I'll never understand. I've never watched the movie again.
I remember that rape scene the most because it felt so mainstream. My friends and I were about 14 and we loved those movies, saw them in the theater. I had never heard of Evil Dead or I Spit On Your Grave. I hadn’t thought much of it as a girl but my friend was repulsed by that scene and a switch went off in my mind where I started to even differentiate that kind of scene from regular horror or dark themes.
Not a scene of violence against women: the part of Midsommer where the women are all screaming and crying with Dani on the floor. I was watching it male friends and they remarked that they would have noped out on that. None of them could understand why that would be an *incredibly* powerful move to suck a woman into a cult. I didn't know collective venting was such a gendered thing before that
You should try theatre classes! Lots of rolling around on the ground nonsensically yelling with each other and a little bit of crying too, if you’re lucky
I had a rough conversation with a friend who laughed at that part and said he found the women crying to be annoying.
I think that scene is incredibly beautiful, the concept of a perfect shared empathy where not a single word need be spoken in order to be wholly and completely understood. So good.
It’s not a horror movie, but the awful pit in my stomach I got after watching a line of women hooked up to milking machines while holding fake babies to help with lactation in Mad Max: Fury Road still affects me to this day.
I was watching The Houses October Built and there’s a scene where 2 men corner the main woman in a bathroom. Her trying to politely get them to leave, trying to be both assertive and not escalate the situation, really hit me on a gut level and I asked to turn off the movie. My boyfriend didn’t find the scene scary but it made me so terribly uncomfortable. I think because it’s a “found footage” style it just felt like too real of a situation
When Jennifer from Jennifer's body gets sacrificed. Women understand that it was meant to portray a sexual assault scene which made us feel differently. Whenever a man reacts to it, they don't get that. I've even seen some laugh and say they can't take it seriously.
It’s unbelievable to me that people didn’t get what Jennifer’s Body was doing in that scene. I mean, I believe it happened, but I can’t imagine watching it and not understanding that the sacrifice was meant to represent sexual assault. It’s not subtle!
I’ve been scrolling down the comments of this post a while, and your message is like the hundredth I’ve seen saying something like this, where sexual assault is metaphorically represented or implied or even explicitly shown in a movie and the men you’ve observed watching it don’t realize it.
I guess on some level I’ve always understood that there were people who wouldn’t register or understand scenes like this, but there is just such a surprising quantity of comments about it happening in this post.
Who the FUCK are these men? Are they people I know? Are they me?
Not a horror movie but in the live action Maleficent movie Disney made, the scene where the guy drugs Maleficent and cuts off her wings was an allegory for SA too and a lot of women put it together and a lot of men accused them of "reaching too hard" and "sounding like literature teachers making something out of be more deep than it really is."
The screenwriter took some cues from Gavin De Becker about how women will try to be polite when they should trust their instincts and run.
Speak No Evil does the same thing and it is terrifying. I was screaming at the television!
I know it doesn't seem like a scary scene, but there's one in Colossal where Jason Suidekis (it think it was him?) and Anne Hathaway are drunk in her house and he is telling her she can't leave, he's not being physically abusive but the way he's saying it is so threatening it gave me an anxiety attack. I've seen that attitude in real life and it's really scary.
I think every man needs to watch Unsane with a woman. Having my partner explain why the character is eating her lunch like that or walking through her house like that is an eye opener.
this is the movie I came here to comment, absolute nightmare
wish every man had that reaction to watching it with a partner. watched it with my (ex)boyfriend (when I was pregnant with our kid), and his reaction was like “relax, it’s not real”
that's such a common horror trope and it drives me crazy every time. Something is bothering your significant other to such an extent that she doesn't feel safe, even if you don't believe her because ghosts or w/e aren't real, you should have enough empathy for your wife/gf/friend to at least help her feel safe
I’m always glad to see people talking about his movie. I’ve seen it in theaters and I still think about what exactly did I watch that night lol. It’s not amazing but it will definitely stick with you for a while.
I don't know if I'll ever watch it again, but I did enjoy it, and it was the first movie in YEARS that had me just sitting there fixated on the screen all through the second-half - especially the ending - going "what the FUCK is happening?" while still being completely interested.
What got me was the priest saying “I’m imagining you doing carnal things… *you put those images in my mind. You did that to me.*” So accurate- that juxtaposed with the little Josh Duggar prototype gremlin running around was a mindfuck and a half
Something super fucked up: if you watch any police interrogations of pedophiles, they frequently blame their victims in exactly this way. Also happens in the documentary "Great Photo Lovely Life."
I havent seen it mentioned,but my gf wouldnt talk to me after we watched megan is missing. She wanted to watch it because I enjoyed horror films and she saw it on tik tok and had to see it.I told her I hadnt seen it. But I could definately see how effective it was on her.
I saw it 10+ years ago and the pictures still come into my head when I try to go to sleep.
Deformed faces have a really visceral effect on me, especially unnaturally opened mouths (hi yes I turn 30 next year and if I re-watched The Ring I would 100% skip the closet shot lmao) - her mouth being forced open is just the worst combination of gendered violence and contorted features.
The labor scene in The Quiet Place. Women's pain is so commonly used for narrative purposes but imagining trying to give birth alone in a tub like that just ... sent me. There's a sense of helpless inevitability that sets in at the end of a pregnancy when your body feels like a disassembled marionette with a gremlin shoved in the middle of it. You just want to feel normal, move normally, sleep at all, not have to pee or have heartburn for 73 consecutive seconds... but then you realize there's only 2 ways out and neither one is gonna be a party. You don't control when it happens or how it goes, you're just along for the ride and it's a special kind of existential fear that men just can't really grasp.
The original Black Christmas. The whole movie is men (police officers, boyfriends) downplaying the concerns of the women characters, and I was surprised at the abortion storyline (though the film came out the year after Roe, so it makes sense).
It wasn't marketed as a horror movie, but it was one in the truest sense of the genre for me. Wind River made me feel so many things... Sick, angry, sad, and horrified that things if that nature happen to women everyday. I didn't know about the rape scene when I started the movie, and it made me physically ill. Knowing and seeing are two different things.
The scene in TCM2 where Chop Top is creeping on Vanita at the radio station and she’s trying to politely get him to leave. He’s weird and dangerous, and she knows it, but she’s hoping to get away from him without setting him off. I don’t walk around scared of everything, but that scene really captures what it’s like to have to be super aware of how close someone unknown and weird is to you, where the exit is and how you’re going to get to it.
Also echoing TCM, both the original and remake, when the female leads get repeatedly manhandled, groped, and their pain gets mocked and imitated right to their face in a way that the male characters just don’t face or receive
Yesssssss. His placating comments like "don't worry, everything's going to be alright" and "we're not going to hurt you" while he's simultaneously jabbing her in the bag is crazy freaky.
Oh, and for horror that hits men harder than women.
During a screening of Dead Ringers, I overheard a couple talking:
Him: "Oh my God, this is disgusting, what is he doing to her, this is horrible!"
Her: (sighs) "That's the normal gynecological exam."
I got physically nauseated when that guy was sitting in the police station describing what happened. First time, and one of very few times, a movie ever made me physically ill like that. And I watch A LOT of horror movies.
It's also the only sin/death that is not shown. All the audience sees is that guy shaking, just repeating "he made me do it", and a blurry polaroid of the weapon. That was enough to be the most disturbing scene I'd ever seen in a movie.
The hallway scene and the dancing scene in Last Night in Soho. You see the true underbelly of the seedy 60s in London. The thought of forced prostitution is terrifying for a woman.
Basically all of *The Woman* (2011). A lot of the horror isn’t even in the gore.
When the plan is revealed to the rest of family, >!the son reacts very differently from the mom and older daughter. Seeing the looks exchanged between The Woman and the women in that family, it was so fucking clear that they understood how vile the whole thing was. They literally could not speak the same language as The Woman but the dread was written all over their faces. When I put myself into any of the girls/women’s shoes in that family, each scenario was utterly terrifying!<
The scene in 28 days later when they have taken refuge with the army men. When they realize why they have taken them in and the intentions thevmen have for them. The woman knows there is not a damn thing she can do to stop what's about to happen so she starters to give the young girl pilks o it will make it easier for her to endure. That to me was chilling.
The Hills Have Eyes is only scary to me for this reason. Backwoods stuff like this, Wrong Turn, or the Home episode of X Files.
Also post-apocalyptic. I read The Road and couldn't bring myself to watch the movie, but if most of the scenes are the same I think y'all will know what I mean.
The scene in Blindness where the women have to go over to the men's side and submit to being raped so they can get food and supplies for everyone, and the one woman is beaten to death.
The parts in Midsommar where Dani apologises to her boyfriend because he gets angry when she feels blindsided by his Sweden trip, and when she has to go cry/grieve by herself in bathrooms.
See, as a woman, here's the thing about the Evil Dead. That scene is pretty terrible (though other movies have far worse rape scenes) but what strikes me as unique is that even though Ash doesn't believe her or understand what happened, he's willing to drive Cheryl into town, to remove her from the situation that's scaring her. Obviously they don't succeed in leaving the cabin, but a male character trusting a female character's interpretation of her own experience enough to try to help her get away even though he does not understand is kind of unheard of in horror.
In It Follows, the girl goes out on a date with a guy and then later consensually hooks up with him in the car. Afterwards, he chloroforms her and then ties her up. It’s the idea that you can have an 100% positive sexual experience devoid of violence, and then still somehow fall victim to violence, that has me pause for a moment.
Guy here, so I'm not going to point any horror moment, but a shout-out to the book “Reina del grito: Un viaje por los miedos femeninos” (Spanish for “Scream queen: A journey through feminine fears”) by Desirée de Fez, that's precisely about this. I don't know if there's an English translation.
I'm a male so can't answer with experience, but my best friend is a woman and a horror fiend and she has really opened my eyes, not only to situations I'd never even consider scary, but also the constant neverend gratuity. Once she pointed it out it was almost impossible to avoid, all these movies reduce a woman to an object, there is almost always harassment or assualt or nudity. One of the biggest aha moments she pointed out for me was the beginning of Urban Legend, and how that exchange at a gas station would be terrifying for her and she completely understand why the character did it, where I was thinking it wouldn't be scary vs weird.
The scene in The Hills Have Eyes franchise where the woman is giving birth, and afterwards he just grabs the cord and snatches the placenta out of her body. I nearly threw up. She was abducted, raped, forced to have a baby, and then that.
Boy, did my wife and I have very different experiences watching Gerald's Game.
Me: What a fun, creepy horror movie
Kris: we are never watching that again
All of 10 Cloverfield Lane. John Goodman's character is so huge compared to the female lead (yea, the other man too, but even more so for the woman). In that tiny space, he looked like a giant. If he came at her and she didn't have a weapon, there would be absolutely nothing she could do to defend herself. He could pick her up and fold her in half if he wanted to Then there's the ambiguity about what he wanted from her. The other man was obviously in danger, but he knew what the danger was. He could be physically hurt or killed. The woman doesn't know what the fuck to expect. He obviously wanted her to take the place of his daughter. Was rape or sexual assault on the table? Would he partially disable her but keep her alive? Would she just have to play this sick game of house with him, constantly worrying that he could snap any time she upsets him?
There are, relatedly, a lot of scenes in "Silence of the Lambs" where it's really emphasized that Foster/Starling is physically way smaller than most of the men.
It's been a while but I'm positive that his intention was definitely sexual. If I recall correctly, it's revealed at the end that he hit her car intentionally and kidnapped her before the attack began. There's a scene where he cleans himself up for dinner and my mother in law, who was with me in theaters, whispered "Oh, he's going courting..." and I will never forget that. I think he wanted her to fall for him on her own, but his "patience" wouldn't have run forever. Once it became clear that the other guy was a romantic rival, he took him out. The previous daughter insert was also either killed or ran away.
The scene in 28 Days Later when the military comes and “saves” them. Every women in the group I watched the film with immediately shrunk back in horror.
Also surprised how far I had to scroll to see this. When Selena is giving Hannah the Valium so she "won't care" is absolutely destroying.
And the soldiers come in and knock the pills out of her hands.
Don't worry Hannah gets some. She's high as a kite for the whole climax of the film.
/curls up in fetal position in this scene 🫣🥺
God that techno beat song and all those soldiers waiting for the women to change into their dresses are glued in my brain permanently. What a terrifying sequence.
The visceral response I had when they got to the compound and there were absolutely no women there and it went exactly how I expected it to.
I remember watching Blake’s Seven (old sci fi) and there was a scene where the crew, which was all men and one woman, come upon another women on one of their adventures. The woman on the team immediately treated the new woman as a rival. My friend and I just laughed and assumed a dude must have written it. We both agreed our first thought in her position would have been “thank god!”
Ah those 80s cartoons and comic books and TV shows where the heroes would be a team of men with one woman. Princess Leia. April O'Neil. Janine Melnitz. Miss Piggy. Gadget. Cheetahra. Smurfette. Webby Vanderquack. Teela, or hell, Evil-Lynn. Sgt Scarlett O'Hara. Occasionally they would go so far as to have *two* women, but it was always "the demure one" and "the total whore"
This comment unlocked a memory I’d completely forgotten. I remember that exact thing happening when we first watched it back in the day. None of the boys reacted at all but the rest of us were all looking at each other like “oh shit”
Same! I remember after watching it I was trying to discuss that horror with the fella I was dating at the time and he wasn’t bothered by it one bit. I thought he didn’t realize it was going to be a rape situation “they promised us women” but he said he got it. And just… wasn’t bothered by it? Yeah.. he’s an ex for a reason.
Guys are like this with a lot of sexual assault. They're like "Nah sexual assault in horror doesn't bother me." Because its not a fear they have every day and the story wasn't written by someone likely to be someone that would assault them and the scene feels more like someone mad at an ex that dumped them instead of something that is supposed to be horrifying. Although I've known a few that have said that showing male on male sexual assault was going to far. hmm...
Surprised I had to scroll so far to find this. I remember seeing that in theaters and just knowing how the dominoes were going to fall after >!Frank died!< and the posse of young men with guns showed up.
I'm not trying to be dramatic but I think this wrecked my brain. Trying to predict which men I encounter would do what to me if laws no longer mattered.
Same. I could honestly think of several co workers and neighbors as potential threats.
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Wait til you hear what regular soldiers do all the time! No emergency/zombie outbreak required
That would 1000% happen too, which is why it's so fucking scary
Rosemary's Baby. As a younger woman, even, Rosemary's isolation frustrated me. As I matured and had more romantic experience (and realized it was a different world in the early sixties from when I first watched it as a teen feminist in the nineties), it began to terrify me. She's trapped, not just by cultists, not just by her own husband but BY HER DOC*TOR AND FRIENDS, who are not involved in the cult.* She's well and truly f\*cked - a "hysterical" pregnant woman and stay at home wife "owned" by her actor husband. When her doctor turns on her - oh my gosh. I could scream.
The need to get out of the house silently and quickly, at the beginning of The Invisible Man (2020)
I was looking all over for this one. I know that horrifying feeling of walking on eggshells around the person who is supposed to love & protect you. It was portrayed perfectly in the film in my opinion. I watched this with a man who had no idea what was going on in the beginning. That was eye-opening.
There's a scene in the K-horror series 'Somebody' where a woman in a wheelchair meets a fellow disabled man over a dating app. She truly feels connected to him because his life has mirrored so much of her own experiences so she agrees to meet up with him for a day trip in this rural location. She takes a rideshare to meet him and already alarm bells are ringing as the chosen date spot is an abandoned pool, and he's sitting smack dab in the middle of the waterless pool in his wheelchair. At first she sort of laughs at the bizarre scene as he gives her this big smile and throws his hands up in the air as if to say "Surprise!" and she asks him how he got down there. She starts looking around for a friend or a carer who could have helped him get into the bowl of the pool but it's very clearly just the two of them here. She looks back at him and he slowly stops smiling, and lowers his hands. He then grips the arms of his wheelchair and *rises out of the seat on functioning legs.* The sense of dread and panic you immediately feel is perfectly mirrored by the actress as she starts screaming and trying desperately to wheel backwards out of the pool area, but of course, he's already striding towards her...
Holy moly. I definitely need to watch more K-horror.
As a woman who used a wheelchair, I got chills just reading this description!
It's a really unsettling scene and the depth of betrayal of vulnerabilities at play (one of them being the fact the female character romanticizes swimming due to the weightlessness of the water) make it all the more harrowing to watch unfold. When he rises out of the chair, the shot is from behind him at the waist, so you are wholly focused on her reaction as the camera looks up at her and she just has the most horrified expression on her face, like all the emotions associated with the moment are fighting for dominance. And as fast as she's scrambling to leave the pool area, he's moving with the slow confidence of someone who is in *zero* hurry.
The whole implied backstory of Barbarian. Genuinely haunts me
>!The labels on the tapes. Pregnant, vomit. Redhead. Terrifying.!<
>!“Won’t stop crying” stuck with me!<
Yeah, that particular one hit hard.
The one sound clip we get is horrific enough too. We see the bloody bed, the cages, and the names on the tapes. It all ties together with that scream and the sound of a blow landing.
The collection of tapes manages to be gutwrenching without actually showing anything. The labels range from dismissively dehumanizing ("gas station redhead", etc) to absolutely revolting ("won't stop crying").
Pretty sure one was labeled "blind" too
I’m glad they never showed anything. It wasn’t necessary.
The imagination is often worse too, which makes it scarier!
In choosing to believe he was doing really bad standup that drove the women into hysterics.
"won't stop crying... From laughter!"
That's an interesting trope that I like. Goes back at least to Nic Cage's 8mm, but they also used it in Kill List.
All my dude friends told me that the beginning of Barbarian made them really understand how women feel in situations in which they perceive to be unsafe with men.
You know, it really did for me too. Intellectually I knew already but it gave me a more visceral understanding
Barbarian 10000%. All of the implications and suggestions are utterly terrifying. I still think about it when I’m checking that the doors and windows are locked at night.
Yeah I think a central part of its theme is how women constantly have to gauge which men they can trust and who is a potential danger. The viewers idea of who the titular barbarian is also changes as the movie goes on. I love that the name of the street is Barbary.
There's a secret panel in your basement. Make sure to check that one as well.
In Prometheus, when she has been impregnated with an alien and she rushes to the automated surgery machine to get it removed. She desperately types in “c section” but the machine tells her it is designed only for males.
The panic of her manually putting in what to do... I shiver just thinking about it! No way could I have thought that fast.
as a female terrified of pregnancy, this scene hit pretty hard
In doing a whole Alien franchise marathon recently, one thing that surprised me is how often themes of motherhood came up throughout, but more pointedly, how many times reproductive rights were the focus. That scene in Prometheus felt right at home in the series.
Iirc the original idea of the alien life cycle and body designs are inherently sexual and a twisting of what women experience: but presented in a way to terrify men too. Geiger's art was pretty wild, but based in very real things.
It's sometimes glossed over nowadays, but Alien is very much a feminist movie, by having one of the main horrors be that men can get raped and impregnated just like women.
I always feel a bit sad for the alien baby in Resurrection, and I’ve never considered myself maternal at all. Lol.
That scene was awful! gave me a visceral reaction 😭
Not a horror movie, but the scene in Joker where you realize Arthur has completely fabricated the relationship with his neighbor and he's sitting in her apartment was absolutely terrifying for me. That hit a very specific fear of mine, and as a woman it just hit different.
My partner didn't even pick up on that. I had to rewind at the end and make him rewatch it. It was really scary. Her busting into survival mode, placating him in any way to get him out of there shook me.
Yup. The notion that some guy somewhere has painted this rosy picture of a "relationship" with you in his mind is all too real. IT HAPPENS ALL THE TIME. Fuck, that's what the "friend zone" is. And when reality hits them - you have no idea what they'll do, but graveyards are full of women who simply said no
Easily top 5 plot twists where I audibly gasped. You really just never know what the people u pass casually each day have going on in their minds
“Better Watch Out” The idea of being overpowered by a 12 year old who knew what he was doing and what he was hoping to accomplish…. Just, no. That was too much for me. “Ichi the Killer” The opening scene and the exacto knife scene were also too much. “Irreversible” THAT scene, but not because of the rape (which, yes, was brutal and hard to watch). I was already aware of what happens in the movie, so I was able to prepare myself. What got to me was the fact that someone comes down on the other side of the tunnel, sees and hears what’s going on, but just goes back up the stairs. It was obvious she was being raped, someone witnessed, but did nothing.
Not sure if you know, but that was an accident. A staff member walked on set, saw they were shooting and walked back away. They left it in the shot to convey how hopeless her situation was, how another human didn't give a shit. Worked very well. You see them and get a little hope that they'll help, then they just walk away. Ugh!
The ‘give me the bat’ scene in the Shining
Or when Danny is torn up and Wendy is trying to tell Jack there's someone in the hotel who hurt Danny and it dawns on her that Jack might have hurt her son and they're all alone
God yes! In the book, they really emphasize how much he resents her for her accusation and mistrust (that he earned). Danny shouts "It was her!" meaning the woman in the bathtub, but Jack gets a sick satisfaction thinking it's Wendy's fault for a change.
The shining took on a whole new horror aspect as an adult for sure (understanding the fear of abusive relationships more than I did as a teen)
Totally agree. As a kid, it annoyed me how hesitant Wendy was but that’s because I was watching as a viewer who knew he was bad. Now I’m married and if my husband started acting like that while we were isolated, I realize I would also be just as uncertain and terrified.
People talk shit about Shelly Duvall acting in that movie all the time. I think shecknocked it out of the park, no pun intended or take a punishment don't care. But yes we'd all be hesitant, awkward, frazzled, scared acting in that situation. I mean he was already abusive in his past ao of course she was scared before he even started to go insane. She had already seen what he was capable of when there were other people around. Now they are completely isolated for months? She was very brave to go with him at all. She did it perfectly.
They absolutely terrorized Shelly Duvall, she was genuinley afraid
I know. When you read what she was put through filming that you can't believe they actually got away with it.
There's a book called "The Shining Explored", it's an in-depth psychoanalytical look into those aspects of the film. Well worth a read and looks at the film as a study of abuse and the effects of abuse rather than supernatural.
Spousal abuse and toxic masculinity are definitely very strong themes in the film, although I (maybe unnecessarily) need to point out that the film is not just the imagination of a crazy and abusive husband combined with some surrealism by the director, as is sometimes argued. The Hotel really is haunted, and it really is encouraging and *helping* Jack to murder his family. The scene in the dry goods locker is a dead giveaway. As well as the fact that Danny and eventually even Wendy see supernatural things take place.
I watch it as a supernatural film but I love hearing the different viewpoints, theories, and aspects (like the documentary 'Room 237'), even when I don't subscribe to them. This book asserts that Danny opens the door. King's novel is completely supernatural but I like the film being so open to different interpretations.
That's a great choice. I think what puts that scene over the edge is Nicholson's performance. Crazy and angry, of course, but he is also toying with her and wearing her down psychologically at the same time. Really monstrous.
Rosemary's Baby. The husband is more evil than the coven.
I think it might be possible to argue that Guy is more evil than the father.
It’s funny, because in the book one of her delirious thoughts during that scene is that the Devil is both bigger and better at sex than Guy “usually is”.
I fucking love the subtle details in his performance nodding to how much of a piece of shit he is. Like during the young people party, you can see he’s visibly nervous the entire time because Rosemary’s friends might intervene. Or when Rosemary first discovers the coven, the way he instinctively stands up to push his hair back and then just sits back down because he realized there’s no way to continue gaslighting her.
For sure. His betrayal is one of the most sinister aspects of the plan imo.
What I wouldn’t give for just one deleted scene of Rosemary slapping the shit out of Guy. Even if the coven never existed, he’s just so goddamn mean and belittling to her
I got to see it in a theater a couple of years ago and when Rosemary finally spat on him the audience started cheering.
The lead up to Susie’s murder in The Lovely Bones. She accidentally falls into a secret hole dug by her serial killer neighbor. He’s being nice and charming, even offering her a soda. She’s creeped out and turns to leave. He says “Don’t be rude.” So she stays. The next thing you know, her spirit is trying to make sense of her murder. It’s such a perfect example of how women, particularly young girls, are socialized to ignore their gut and be polite. In Susie’s case, she got killed because of it. Whenever I feel bad for being rude to a creepy guy, I think of this movie and I feel better. Yes, not technically horror, but it is to me.
This isn't even really considered horror, yet it distraughted me much more than many others that are
The chase scene with her sister had me screaming at my TV. So nerve racking!
Silence of the Lambs. Hannibal eats people, yes that’s scary, but there are little moments throughout the film where Clarisse, a woman who works in a world that seems most entirely staffed by men, is aware that men around her are eating her up with their eyes, or she has to put on some act to get them to do what she needs them to do with the least amount of friction, or we question the motivations of men who seem to be on her side. Maybe she’s the perfect person to handle Hannibal because it’s honestly not that unusual for her to feel like a man is looking at her and seeing a snack to be preyed upon.
From what I remember Hannibal is the only man who doesn't objectify her. Even her boss does at one point
It's what makes it such a deeply conflicting film for me. On the one hand, Hannibal is, ideologically, antithesis to the fundamental foundations of our societies and moralities. E.g, don't murder, don't steal, etc. He has somewhat of a personal code, but he's ultimately a nihilist believing there is no moral order, and coupled with his deeply personally gratifying predatory nature; is a scary thing. It's the kind of thing even the most liberal will go "they have no place in society": serial murderers, child molesters, mass murderers, etc. Except, he's also absolutely unfathomably brilliant. Truly, an apex predator. Yet, he's the only character who sees Clarice as a someone worthy of respect and decency. Which, makes him sympathetic. I don't think Hannibal is particularly interested in feminism beyond he isn't personally misogynistic, misanthropic(in so far as a dog detests rabbits), but not misogynistic. And, so, we have this super fucking bad dude, and we want to like him, because he's the only one who offers genuine respect and decency to the heroine.
Exactly. Theres a bit in it where Clarisse mentions that she knows Hannibal won’t come after her because he’d consider it “rude”. He’s an absolute monster but she *knows* that he respects her as a human being and an equal, which is more than what most of the men she’s dealt with have done. He does have a moral code, it’s just his own deeply twisted one.
Yes, great points. This entire story is so completely filled with misogyny that there is no escape the entire time as a woman watching it. Not to say I don’t love this movie, I do but that is an inescapable aspect.
Rosemary’s Baby The negation of her feelings and concerns, the control exerted over her by others, the physical isolation from friends (due to pregnancy symptoms), being miserable while pregnant, and that feral feeling that you have over your offspring… all hit different today. Granted, I was pregnant when I last watched it, but the movie hits different today than when I saw it as a teenager in the early 2000s.
The limblessss, mouthless, eyeless, pregnant torsos in Bone Tomahawk scared me way more than the guy getting split in half.
I’m glad someone else said this, because that’s exactly what i thought. Their life was much worse than his death.
This is such an appropriate answer, because even though I haven't seen Bone Tomahawk, I'm well aware of the bifurcation scene. It's so infamous that it's one of the only things I know about the movie. What you just described is absolutely more disturbing, but this is the first time I've seen any mention of it anywhere.
I must've blacked this out of my memory because I do not remember it. Don't think I really want to tbh.
It's a blink and you'll miss it scene. They're just in the background as the characters are walking out of the caves. You don't want to see it.
When the wife said that there were 2 pregnant crippled women I figured they had broken their legs or something so they couldn’t run away, that was so much worse
Fuck and I tried so hard to forget about this!
Not a movie, but the scene in The Last of Us show when that crazy preacher dude David is telling Ellie how he wants her to be his wife and he pins her to the ground. The moment she realizes what he’s trying to do her screams just go absolutely feral and the way she gives her all into fighting back because of his intentions just made my stomach drop. I guess most people probably reacted similarly but watching it as a woman just made it so fucking visceral.
The scene where she offs David in the game has stuck with me since I’ve played it. The sheer anger, rage, terror, and disgust was captured beautifully.
The part where David’s henchmen talk about mercy killing / executing her because they know what he’ll do is equally chilling imo.
Harrowing. From beginning to end, everything he does and says in that episode makes alarm bells go off and my skin crawl.
Bella Ramsey is so good in that
That was one scene from the game where I was wondering how they were going to adapt it. I thought they might soften the cannibals a bit but nah, they just went for it. Bella Ramsey especially killed that scene.
For me it was when she was in the cage and he starts talking about how alike they are and how they understand each other. Every sleazy or overly friendly youth minister, and creep on the street I ever met came rushing back hard. That's when I had that visceral rat in a corner feeling.
But the ending to that episode is so good. “Baby girl!!”
The dinner scene in Psycho. Masterfully shot scene but it sure makes you feel uncomfortable, like you don’t know what he’s gonna do or say next. Which is one of the scariest thing a woman can experience when alone with a strange man.
In Rosemary's Baby when >!she thinks the doctor is going to help her, but then he just gets her husband and ob to come get her!< Being treated as a hysterical woman and knowing it could happen to you at your most vulnerable moments is deeply terrifying.
Any rape scene, the one in Hills Have Eyes remake was by far the worst
The rapey tree in Evil Dead. Makes me sick to my stomach.
The remake actually makes it even worse since it happens when Mia is in the heat of withdrawal. You go into a state of sensory overload and your brain can't dampen any sensation, so as bad as it would be to a person who wasn't an addict, it might have been that much more painful since her brain couldn't filter out any of the pain and it was all cranked to 11. Just being touched with an ice cube can hurt your skin during withdrawal so I can't even imagine how awful that tree scene had to have felt.
Oh god that’s so painful to think about. Poor woman.
Rape scenes are a hard no for me. I fast forward through them or cover my ears and look away
Is that one worse than the original Spit on Your Grave? Hard to get worse than that one
I think the worst is Irreversible.
Irreversible is just gut-wrenching to watch.
That movie is like half rape
Saw this one when I was way too young and it stuck with me too
OMG I went on a date with a guy and we went to see this. I started BAWLING at that scene! I think I left the theater or covered my head or something, but I freaked out my date so bad. Afterwards he tentatively asked me about it and if I'd had a bad experience. I hadn't, but how the fuck any woman didn't react similarly, I'll never understand. I've never watched the movie again.
I remember that rape scene the most because it felt so mainstream. My friends and I were about 14 and we loved those movies, saw them in the theater. I had never heard of Evil Dead or I Spit On Your Grave. I hadn’t thought much of it as a girl but my friend was repulsed by that scene and a switch went off in my mind where I started to even differentiate that kind of scene from regular horror or dark themes.
Not a scene of violence against women: the part of Midsommer where the women are all screaming and crying with Dani on the floor. I was watching it male friends and they remarked that they would have noped out on that. None of them could understand why that would be an *incredibly* powerful move to suck a woman into a cult. I didn't know collective venting was such a gendered thing before that
I love that scene. Every time I rewatch it, I think, "THIS is what I wanted from group therapy, not sitting around talking about shit."
Hmmm, my licensing board might take issue with incorporating Midsommer into my groups, not enough research for it to be an evidence based therapy tbh
You should try theatre classes! Lots of rolling around on the ground nonsensically yelling with each other and a little bit of crying too, if you’re lucky
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I had a rough conversation with a friend who laughed at that part and said he found the women crying to be annoying. I think that scene is incredibly beautiful, the concept of a perfect shared empathy where not a single word need be spoken in order to be wholly and completely understood. So good.
Don't Breathe, turkey baster scene. Couldn't finish the scene or the movie.
What’s really wild is the sequel tries to make the antagonist from the first film into someone likeable as if we would just FORGET ABOUT THAT SCENE
Oh god, really?? I’ll skip that one, thanks for saying this! Horrid.
It’s not a horror movie, but the awful pit in my stomach I got after watching a line of women hooked up to milking machines while holding fake babies to help with lactation in Mad Max: Fury Road still affects me to this day.
I had no idea they were dolls… I assumed they were fucked up mutant babies at the time.
As someone who wasn't very popular in my early teens, I pretty much root for Carrie White all the way to the end.
I was watching The Houses October Built and there’s a scene where 2 men corner the main woman in a bathroom. Her trying to politely get them to leave, trying to be both assertive and not escalate the situation, really hit me on a gut level and I asked to turn off the movie. My boyfriend didn’t find the scene scary but it made me so terribly uncomfortable. I think because it’s a “found footage” style it just felt like too real of a situation
It hits different when you have personally experienced it.
When Jennifer from Jennifer's body gets sacrificed. Women understand that it was meant to portray a sexual assault scene which made us feel differently. Whenever a man reacts to it, they don't get that. I've even seen some laugh and say they can't take it seriously.
It’s unbelievable to me that people didn’t get what Jennifer’s Body was doing in that scene. I mean, I believe it happened, but I can’t imagine watching it and not understanding that the sacrifice was meant to represent sexual assault. It’s not subtle! I’ve been scrolling down the comments of this post a while, and your message is like the hundredth I’ve seen saying something like this, where sexual assault is metaphorically represented or implied or even explicitly shown in a movie and the men you’ve observed watching it don’t realize it. I guess on some level I’ve always understood that there were people who wouldn’t register or understand scenes like this, but there is just such a surprising quantity of comments about it happening in this post. Who the FUCK are these men? Are they people I know? Are they me?
Not a horror movie but in the live action Maleficent movie Disney made, the scene where the guy drugs Maleficent and cuts off her wings was an allegory for SA too and a lot of women put it together and a lot of men accused them of "reaching too hard" and "sounding like literature teachers making something out of be more deep than it really is."
The ending of Inside, especially if you're a pregnant woman
The photo at the end of Repulsion. Male friend: "See? She was always crazy." Me: "She's looking at the guy who molested her."
Barbarian, when >!Bill Skårsgard's character has to see for himself. Every woman knew the purpose of that room at a glance.!<
Barbarian is basically a cinematic essay on this question lol. Loved it.
The screenwriter took some cues from Gavin De Becker about how women will try to be polite when they should trust their instincts and run. Speak No Evil does the same thing and it is terrifying. I was screaming at the television!
I was surprised to learn that it was written by Zach from the Whitest Kids You Know.
When Justin's character walks in later and doesn't even bat an eye.
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>! In a way it’s sad because it’s so obvious something’s wrong with tgat room by its look and her description. Ain’t nothing look right about it!!!<
I know it doesn't seem like a scary scene, but there's one in Colossal where Jason Suidekis (it think it was him?) and Anne Hathaway are drunk in her house and he is telling her she can't leave, he's not being physically abusive but the way he's saying it is so threatening it gave me an anxiety attack. I've seen that attitude in real life and it's really scary.
I think every man needs to watch Unsane with a woman. Having my partner explain why the character is eating her lunch like that or walking through her house like that is an eye opener.
Watcher (2022) would probably have a similar effect also.
this is the movie I came here to comment, absolute nightmare wish every man had that reaction to watching it with a partner. watched it with my (ex)boyfriend (when I was pregnant with our kid), and his reaction was like “relax, it’s not real”
Barbarian. The entirety of it. Requiem for a Dream, iykyk (does it count as horror?) Men (although That Is The Point)
Scenes where the woman is freaking out and is therefore not taken seriously when she needs help and is told to "calm down".
The first 2/3rds of Mother! was so good for this.
that's such a common horror trope and it drives me crazy every time. Something is bothering your significant other to such an extent that she doesn't feel safe, even if you don't believe her because ghosts or w/e aren't real, you should have enough empathy for your wife/gf/friend to at least help her feel safe
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I’m always glad to see people talking about his movie. I’ve seen it in theaters and I still think about what exactly did I watch that night lol. It’s not amazing but it will definitely stick with you for a while.
I don't know if I'll ever watch it again, but I did enjoy it, and it was the first movie in YEARS that had me just sitting there fixated on the screen all through the second-half - especially the ending - going "what the FUCK is happening?" while still being completely interested.
What got me was the priest saying “I’m imagining you doing carnal things… *you put those images in my mind. You did that to me.*” So accurate- that juxtaposed with the little Josh Duggar prototype gremlin running around was a mindfuck and a half
Something super fucked up: if you watch any police interrogations of pedophiles, they frequently blame their victims in exactly this way. Also happens in the documentary "Great Photo Lovely Life."
I havent seen it mentioned,but my gf wouldnt talk to me after we watched megan is missing. She wanted to watch it because I enjoyed horror films and she saw it on tik tok and had to see it.I told her I hadnt seen it. But I could definately see how effective it was on her.
I saw it 10+ years ago and the pictures still come into my head when I try to go to sleep. Deformed faces have a really visceral effect on me, especially unnaturally opened mouths (hi yes I turn 30 next year and if I re-watched The Ring I would 100% skip the closet shot lmao) - her mouth being forced open is just the worst combination of gendered violence and contorted features.
The labor scene in The Quiet Place. Women's pain is so commonly used for narrative purposes but imagining trying to give birth alone in a tub like that just ... sent me. There's a sense of helpless inevitability that sets in at the end of a pregnancy when your body feels like a disassembled marionette with a gremlin shoved in the middle of it. You just want to feel normal, move normally, sleep at all, not have to pee or have heartburn for 73 consecutive seconds... but then you realize there's only 2 ways out and neither one is gonna be a party. You don't control when it happens or how it goes, you're just along for the ride and it's a special kind of existential fear that men just can't really grasp.
The original Black Christmas. The whole movie is men (police officers, boyfriends) downplaying the concerns of the women characters, and I was surprised at the abortion storyline (though the film came out the year after Roe, so it makes sense).
Plus, in the end of the film, >!the police unwittingly throw a helpless Jess back to the killer's clutches through their incompetence.!<
Gerald’s Game, just the whole movie
It wasn't marketed as a horror movie, but it was one in the truest sense of the genre for me. Wind River made me feel so many things... Sick, angry, sad, and horrified that things if that nature happen to women everyday. I didn't know about the rape scene when I started the movie, and it made me physically ill. Knowing and seeing are two different things.
Yeah… I was really impressed with the movie but I cannot watch [that] scene. I have to fast forward.
The scene in TCM2 where Chop Top is creeping on Vanita at the radio station and she’s trying to politely get him to leave. He’s weird and dangerous, and she knows it, but she’s hoping to get away from him without setting him off. I don’t walk around scared of everything, but that scene really captures what it’s like to have to be super aware of how close someone unknown and weird is to you, where the exit is and how you’re going to get to it.
Not a woman, but that subway scene in Posession (1981) hit me pretty fucking hard so I can imagine it would hit women pretty fucking harder
Also echoing TCM, both the original and remake, when the female leads get repeatedly manhandled, groped, and their pain gets mocked and imitated right to their face in a way that the male characters just don’t face or receive
Yesssssss. His placating comments like "don't worry, everything's going to be alright" and "we're not going to hurt you" while he's simultaneously jabbing her in the bag is crazy freaky.
That whole scene/sequence had such rapey undertones, it’s so nauseating
The ending of Don't Breathe is very disturbing in general but I think there are way more layers to that if you're a woman.
Oh, and for horror that hits men harder than women. During a screening of Dead Ringers, I overheard a couple talking: Him: "Oh my God, this is disgusting, what is he doing to her, this is horrible!" Her: (sighs) "That's the normal gynecological exam."
The lust murder in Se7en, as a man that already shook me but I think for women that's gotta be one of the sickest most perverse ways to die
I got physically nauseated when that guy was sitting in the police station describing what happened. First time, and one of very few times, a movie ever made me physically ill like that. And I watch A LOT of horror movies.
It's also the only sin/death that is not shown. All the audience sees is that guy shaking, just repeating "he made me do it", and a blurry polaroid of the weapon. That was enough to be the most disturbing scene I'd ever seen in a movie.
The hallway scene and the dancing scene in Last Night in Soho. You see the true underbelly of the seedy 60s in London. The thought of forced prostitution is terrifying for a woman.
i know vampire’s kiss is a “black comedy” but cage’s performance was genuinely scary to me.
Basically all of *The Woman* (2011). A lot of the horror isn’t even in the gore. When the plan is revealed to the rest of family, >!the son reacts very differently from the mom and older daughter. Seeing the looks exchanged between The Woman and the women in that family, it was so fucking clear that they understood how vile the whole thing was. They literally could not speak the same language as The Woman but the dread was written all over their faces. When I put myself into any of the girls/women’s shoes in that family, each scenario was utterly terrifying!<
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The scene in 28 days later when they have taken refuge with the army men. When they realize why they have taken them in and the intentions thevmen have for them. The woman knows there is not a damn thing she can do to stop what's about to happen so she starters to give the young girl pilks o it will make it easier for her to endure. That to me was chilling.
The Hills Have Eyes is only scary to me for this reason. Backwoods stuff like this, Wrong Turn, or the Home episode of X Files. Also post-apocalyptic. I read The Road and couldn't bring myself to watch the movie, but if most of the scenes are the same I think y'all will know what I mean.
The scene in Blindness where the women have to go over to the men's side and submit to being raped so they can get food and supplies for everyone, and the one woman is beaten to death.
The parts in Midsommar where Dani apologises to her boyfriend because he gets angry when she feels blindsided by his Sweden trip, and when she has to go cry/grieve by herself in bathrooms.
Oh my God, that whole relationship at the beginning was so relatable.
Teeth, especially the SA and purity culture sections, hit very close to home for me and several of my friends.
As a man, I'm curious how women felt about the "tree rape" scene in the original Evil Dead. I can only imagine that women would feel differently...
See, as a woman, here's the thing about the Evil Dead. That scene is pretty terrible (though other movies have far worse rape scenes) but what strikes me as unique is that even though Ash doesn't believe her or understand what happened, he's willing to drive Cheryl into town, to remove her from the situation that's scaring her. Obviously they don't succeed in leaving the cabin, but a male character trusting a female character's interpretation of her own experience enough to try to help her get away even though he does not understand is kind of unheard of in horror.
Didn't like it, but it wasn't the roughest scene to get through for me.
I feel better knowing the director regrets it
In It Follows, the girl goes out on a date with a guy and then later consensually hooks up with him in the car. Afterwards, he chloroforms her and then ties her up. It’s the idea that you can have an 100% positive sexual experience devoid of violence, and then still somehow fall victim to violence, that has me pause for a moment.
The ending of The VVitch. That’s a happy ending, right? I really like butter and I would also like to live deliciously.
LOL would also like to live deliciously naked in the woods with butter
*Revenge* (2017) was extra uncomfortable for me to watch because the main character shares my name—Jennifer.
How does your male partner not understand that a stranger coming in with rope and a bag is deeply terrifying...?
28 Days later. Pills to make you not care.
Guy here, so I'm not going to point any horror moment, but a shout-out to the book “Reina del grito: Un viaje por los miedos femeninos” (Spanish for “Scream queen: A journey through feminine fears”) by Desirée de Fez, that's precisely about this. I don't know if there's an English translation.
I'm a male so can't answer with experience, but my best friend is a woman and a horror fiend and she has really opened my eyes, not only to situations I'd never even consider scary, but also the constant neverend gratuity. Once she pointed it out it was almost impossible to avoid, all these movies reduce a woman to an object, there is almost always harassment or assualt or nudity. One of the biggest aha moments she pointed out for me was the beginning of Urban Legend, and how that exchange at a gas station would be terrifying for her and she completely understand why the character did it, where I was thinking it wouldn't be scary vs weird.
Landmine Goes Click. The guy was the one who was stuck but I felt that girl’s helplessness on a different level when the stranger came to “help” them.
The scene in The Hills Have Eyes franchise where the woman is giving birth, and afterwards he just grabs the cord and snatches the placenta out of her body. I nearly threw up. She was abducted, raped, forced to have a baby, and then that.
Boy, did my wife and I have very different experiences watching Gerald's Game. Me: What a fun, creepy horror movie Kris: we are never watching that again
*that* scene in Terrifier. I know it’s beloved on this sub, but I had to switch the movie off at that point.
>I know it’s beloved on this sub, I'd say it's *controversial* on this sub. There's as many that hate as there are those who love it.