MaXXXine and Longlegs are hitting theaters and—don’t mind the jump scare—The Blair Witch Project is turning 25. To celebrate, The Ringer presents to you Shriek Week, our celebration of everything that makes the horror movie genre fun, fascinating, and downright terrifying.

The first kill in movie history happens, naturally, with an axe. 

The 1895 film The Execution of Mary Stuart isn’t particularly impressive by today’s standards. It’s a grainy, 18-second movie (produced by Thomas Edison, of all people) that recreates the death of Mary, Queen of Scots. There’s not much in the way of plot—just a Mary stand-in being placed on a chopping block before an executioner lowers the blade—and there’s an obvious edit when the human is swapped out for a dummy. But despite the limitations of the infant medium, The Execution of Mary Stuart’s kill is cold and brutal. Enough so that if you squint as you watch it, you may very well see the first horror movie ever made. 

Even if you don’t consider The Execution the urtext of horror, kill scenes like it have been the bedrock of the genre since its inception. At their best, movies are supposed to tap into something primal within us—and what’s more primal than a fear of death? But movie deaths have evolved many times over in the 130 years since that black-and-white short. 

Directors like Wes Craven and Sam Raimi have shown us that kills can be provocative or even funny, while some like Eli Roth have found ways to push gore past the limits of our grossest imaginations. Movies like Get Out and Dawn of the Dead have woven ideas about race and class into their death scenes, while others like Sleepaway Camp and Zombi 2 seem to simply revel in the savagery. Movie kills have persisted throughout creatively challenging times, like the Hays Code era, and thrived during the boom of New Hollywood. They’ve created genuine outrage—let’s not forget that Cannibal Holocaust got someone briefly charged with murder—as well as viral sensations. (You can probably still find a few people who believe The Blair Witch Project was a documentary.) The kills have been committed by thrill seekers, psychopaths, monsters, husbands, wives, children, pets, the devil him- or herself—anyone and anything you can think of—and they’ve come via guns, nooses, chainsaws, cleavers, and cars. 

And especially axes. 

Maybe you’re desensitized to the point where you can sit through Terrifier 2 without flinching. Or maybe you’ll show up to Longlegs this week and watch Maika Monroe and Nicolas Cage through your fingers. But if you’ve arrived at this list, then the idea of the kill scene likely has a hold on you. So, in that case, let’s turn this funeral into a party.

To kick off Shriek Week at The Ringer, we proudly present to you our ranking of the 111 best horror movie kill scenes. (We tried to keep it at 100, but sometimes we enjoy reveling in the savagery.) The entries encompass a wide range of films: B-movie trash, auteur-driven classics, art-house experiments, and summer blockbuster thrillers. Some of the deaths are more iconic than they are bloody, some are more gory than they are shocking, but all speak to something within us, on a primal level. (And if you’re wondering why we’re doing this in July as opposed to, say, Spooky Season, well, when we saw that MaXXXine and Longlegs were releasing in the same seven-day stretch—which also comes just before The Blair Witch Project’s 25th anniversary—we figured it was the right time to do something.)

So without further ado, here’s our ranking of the bloodiest, most bloodcurdling kills in horror movie history. Please note: We did our best not to give away all of the kills in the entry titles, but the movies’ plot points are discussed throughout. But if you’re not scared of a little murder, then we can only hope you’re not scared of a few spoilers. —Justin Sayles 

111. The Invisible Man, Restaurant Scene (2020)

It’s tempting to make jokes or ask hypotheticals—I mean, how would you explain your way out of this?—but the set piece kill of 2020’s The Invisible Man is just too awful to think of. Cecilia is being tormented by her violent and controlling (and invisible) ex, Adrian. (Presumably—we can’t see him, after all.) And while at a restaurant confiding in her sister, Emily, that she’s discovered proof that Adrian’s still alive, suddenly a knife begins levitating and then slices Emily’s throat before landing in Cecilia’s hand. It creeps up on you—both in the scene and in the context of the movie. To that point, Adrian’s proved himself capable of reprehensible things, but nothing at this level. But true evil has a way of luring you in and making itself seen only when it’s ready. —Sayles

110. A Quiet Place, The Kid (2018)

If you’re going to have a poor dear 4-year-old boy get fatally Terry Tate’d by a snarling, ruthless, all-teeth-and-elbows-and-tympanic-membranes monster of murder right at the start of your high-concept film, it’s only fair to imbue his death with some real meaning. And A Quiet Place definitely does that when it kills off young Beau Abbott just a few minutes in! His unfortunate end, Randy Parker–ass scarf and all, helps establish the grim stakes and build the dim world of A Quiet Place right from the start, showing exactly why this weird family has been tiptoeing around barefoot and fussing with batteries like that. It creates a brutal emotional tension between Beau’s sister and dad that hangs over the film until its bitter end. And it ultimately raises a crucial, nagging thought in the viewer, one of those magical and wholly unanswerable great questions of cinema history: How the hell did that spirited child ever make it to Day 89 alive, anyway?! Some science fiction is simply too far out to grasp. —Katie Baker

109. Sinister, Lawn Work ’86 (2012)

By at least one scientific study, it’s the scariest movie ever. And while that doesn’t necessarily make Sinister a great film, it is a deeply unsettling one. It’s about a true crime writer played by Ethan Hawke who’s trying to get his career back on track, so he moves his family into a home where a gruesome, unsolved killing took place. In the attic, he discovers a collection of Super 8 home movies with seemingly innocent titles: BBQ ’79, Sleepy Time ’98, Pool Party ’66, etc. But those names belie what’s contained in those canisters’ films: idyllic scenes of suburban life juxtaposed with ritualistic slaughters of entire families. (Snuff films, essentially, though less pornographic than 8mm and Hardcore would lead you to believe.) The most gruesome of these home movies is Lawn Work ’86, which may top a future list of best jump scares ever. It’s filmed from the POV of the killer, who starts a lawn mower, and well, you’ll just have to watch for yourself. 

If that one doesn’t get your heart rate going, maybe they should do a study on you next. —Sayles

108. Train to Busan, Sang-Hwa (2016)

I recently watched the 2016 Korean zombie-NUMTOT film Train to Busan in a manner that surely was just as the filmmakers intended: on an airplane, with a gummy, via a seat-back TV with malfunctioning subtitles. (The only thing that could have made this setup more cinematically ideal is if I were watching the movie with no sound over someone else’s shoulder.) As it turned out, Train to Busan is so well made and gripping that the teensy screen and complete language barrier didn’t matter one bit. The snarling, gory set pieces are gnarly at any resolution, after all; the howls of zombie-bit-me! fear are in a universal tongue. 

But what surprised me was how easily I could grasp the movie’s comparatively quiet and more emotional stakes, too—chief among them the death of the film’s humble expectant zaddy, Sang-hwa (Ma Dong-seok). Part Bruce Willis sacrificing himself for the cause in Armageddon, part Hodor ho’ding da do’ in Game of Thrones, Sang-hwa’s valiant demise is a triumph of dad strength and a fitting goodbye to one of the film’s most magnetic characters. As TV Tropes once pointed out, “the ‘Too Cool to Live’ Heroic Sacrifice is the most common type in American movies.” Guess the same goes for foreign films, too. —Baker

107. The Hills Have Eyes, Big Bob Gets Cooked (1977)

There’s a brutality to the early Wes Craven movies that you don’t see in the Scream or Nightmare series. Sure, those had their share of blood and guts, but a film like The Last House on the Left is so shocking and perverse that it almost plays like a snuff film. Ditto for Craven’s second non-porno feature, the road-trip/revenge fever dream The Hills Have Eyes. Depending on your vantage point, Hills could be an allegory for the Vietnam War, or class warfare, or the American settlers’ slaughter of Indigenous people. (Or maybe it’s just a twisted reimagining of Hansel and Gretel.) But mostly, it’s just harrowing.

Nowhere is this more true than in the barbecue of Big Bob, the patriarch of the Carter clan. After venturing off to get some help for the family’s broken-down car, he’s abducted by his hillbilly counterpart: Papa Jupiter. Jupiter then proceeds to crucify Bob and turn him into a human french fry, just like Brenda worried would happen. (Also: While we’re including the original film’s kill, it should be noted that in Alexandre Aja’s 2006 remake, Big Bob is cooked so viciously that we basically watch him melt.)

But what pushes this kill over the top for me comes after Bob’s family arrives to put out the flames, as his wife, Ethel, calls out repeatedly—hysterically—“That’s not my Bob.” It is him—it’s just sickening to look at. —Sayles

106. 28 Days Later, Frank Gets Infected (2002)

One of the many genius things about Danny Boyle’s classic 28 Days Later is that we don’t see the initial outbreak happen in real time. The movie begins with Cillian Murphy’s Jim waking up from a coma only to discover that London has turned into a dystopian wasteland overrun with people who have turned into possessed, fast-moving, zombielike predators. And the scariest part: It will take only a single drop of blood for the same thing to happen to him. But because of how it unfolds, we don’t experience much of the heartbreak as it happens—we hear stories of violent transformations; we learn Jim’s parents died by suicide rather than suffering a fate worse than that.

Our first up-close look at how the infections tear families apart comes courtesy of cab driver Frank and his daughter, Hannah. They join Jim and fellow survivor Selena on the road-trip survivalist portion of the story, and Frank (played with a hard-edged gregariousness by Brendan Gleeson) quickly becomes the most colorful character in this all too drab world. That is, until they reach a rest stop where he looks up at a crow that’s feasting on a dead, infected body and a single drop of blood falls into his eye. He realizes immediately what’s happening and tells Hannah he loves her—and more importantly, to stay away from him. As the infection is about to take over his body and Hannah screams out in confusion, military officers appear from hiding and shoot him dead.

It’s so heart-wrenching that you may have missed one great detail: As the bullets riddle Frank’s body, the blood splatters everywhere, including on the camera lens, as if the viewer’s been infected now, too. —Sayles

105. Raw, Adrien (2016)

Adrien is one of the only people at the veterinary college who doesn’t treat Justine like an animal. That’s why it’s so shocking and disappointing when she wakes up next to him, only to realize that a large portion of his leg has been gnawed off and he’s been stabbed to death in his back with a ski pole. Justine and the audience are first led to believe that she’d eaten perhaps her only friend. However, it’s soon revealed that Justine’s sister had committed the murder and cannibalization, an act she’s quickly forgiven for by a sympathetic Justine, who now finally understands the depths of their familial bloodlust. —Donald Morrison

104. Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, the Boxing Match (1989)

By my count, Julius Gaw (Vincent Craig Dupree) lands 25 head shots and 33 body shots in his boxing match with Jason. All the punches do is move Jason a few feet and bloody Gaw’s knuckles, but the sound and slow-motion effects are top-notch. Out of breath, Julius tells Jason, “Take your best shot, motherfucker.” Jason does just that, knocking his (obviously fake) head off his shoulders and cleanly into an open dumpster. Swish! —Austin Gayle

103. X, Maxine/Pearl (2022)

The first time you watch X, you may not even notice that Mia Goth is also playing Pearl. Which makes the final scene—when Maxine Minx runs over Pearl’s head in the midst of her escape—all the more harrowing. Ti West’s X trilogy has always been painstakingly meta, sometimes to its benefit, occasionally to its detriment. But its original film has some legitimately interesting things to say about fame and aging. It’s a credit to the makeup team and Goth’s talents that she was able to play two distinct yet related roles. But it’s a testament to West’s vision that he saw that the film worked better by casting her as both Pearl and Maxine—and that in the end, one had to kill the other for the story to work. —Sayles

102. The Blob, the Phone Booth (1988)

The silly name of this killer creature belies the carnage it inflicts. The Blob tells the story of a thick, gelatinous slime from outer space that arrives in a sleepy California suburb and begins ingesting its residents whole. It’s pure nightmare goo: slow-moving yet inescapable—the very definition of dread inducing. 

While the 1958 original was horrifying in its own right—the theater projectionist’s death, which plays out as an audience belly laughs at a horror flick, shows that the film was smarter than its B-movie billing—special effects had improved greatly in the 30 years before the remake. That meant a more frightening, gorier Blob: a man’s lower half absorbed, a high schooler ripping off another’s arm as she futilely tries to save him from the slime, a restaurant worker sucked down a drain headfirst and whole. 

But none produce anxiety quite like the fate diner owner Fran meets: trapped in a phone booth, trying to keep the door closed with one foot as the Blob surrounds her, calling for the sheriff only to see he’s already arrived—and that the Blob’s already gotten him. Fran barely has enough time to process what’s happened: The glass smashes and the Blob fills the booth, killing her instantly. We hope, at least. Because the only thing worse than getting swallowed by this thing is knowing it’s going to happen. —Sayles

101. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, the Suitcase (1986)

“I guess I love you too.”

You’re actually kinda rooting for Henry when he says these six words. We’ve just spent 70-plus minutes with the sociopathic spree killer as he’s slaughtered everyone from a hitchhiker to a black-market TV dealer to a family of three (taped on a camcorder and played back to horrifying effect). But he’s also just killed his accomplice—the brother of his maybe-girlfriend, Becky—after Henry caught him sexually assaulting his sister. As Becky and Henry drive away from Chicago and presumably toward San Bernardino, you think that there’s a shred of humanity in there. When Becky says she loves him and Henry responds as best he can, it produces an uneasy feeling—but one that opens the door a crack to let some light in.

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That door slams shut the next morning, when Henry shaves and leaves the motel with no trace of Becky in sight. He parks on the side of the road and pulls out Becky’s oversized suitcase—the one she awkwardly lugged around earlier in the film, as if it were the enormous baggage of her terrible life. He discards it on the side of the road, as coldly as he left the bodies of the liquor store owner or the woman watching TV. The suitcase is, of course, blood-soaked. The implication is obvious—we don’t need to see a body for this one to rattle us.

But here’s the thing: I’m still not convinced he didn’t mean these six words when he said them. What they say about a leopard and its spots is typically true. Same goes for a serial killer and his blood stains. —Sayles

100. High Tension, to the (New) Extreme (2003)

Perhaps the worst film on this list—Roger Ebert once said the plot holes were big enough to drive a truck through—this one merits inclusion, if only as a representative of the New French Extremity movement. While directors like Gaspar Noé, Lars Von Trier, and Julia Ducournau have crafted bona fide masterpieces within the movement—a loose description of ’90s and 2000s films that push the limits of good taste in the name of art and provocation—Alexandre Aja’s High Tension may be the most infamous. It’s a bloody disgusting slasher with a twist that’s both ableist and a touch homophobic—and without the cover of saying it came from a different era. You could probably look past some of this if the story weren’t so dreadful. 

While all of that is the true horror—seriously, watch this one at your own risk—the staircase scene is among the best kills you’ll ever see in a movie. The visuals are unshakable: the dad trapped between two balusters, looking out as the killer slams a bookcase into his head at high speed. (It’s gory even in the toned-down version, but the NC-17 cut is gnarly.) Besides simply being clever, I give this one points for being a tidy metaphor for the feeling I had watching High Tension: stuck with something unpleasant before my eyes. At least the dad’s experience ended more quickly. —Sayles

99. Get Out, Rose Keeps on Smiling (2017)

Rose’s body count might not be as high as some of the others here, but she’s one of this list’s coldest monsters. After luring her boyfriend Chris, who’s Black, into her family’s body- and consciousness-snatching operation, she does whatever she can to keep him from, well, getting out. After she gets shot in the last scene, she pleads with him to help her. But when he wraps his hands around her throat, she just smiles. In the end, Chris leaves her bleeding in the street. 

Allison Williams, who plays Rose, was disturbed when strangers just assumed that a pretty white girl like her couldn’t be that bad. “They’d say, ‘She was hypnotized, right?’” Williams said on Late Night With Seth Meyers. “And I’m like, ‘No! She’s just evil! How hard is that to accept? She’s bad! We gave you so many ways to know that she’s bad!’” —Alan Siegel

98. Funny Games, Blood on the TV Screen (1997)

There’s an argument that the rewind kill should be on this list—though some people may loathe the winking trickery of that one, it’s a perfect meta-commentary on hopelessness in the face of pure malevolence. But the kill from Michael Haneke’s 1997 classic that haunts me—and presumably most viewers—is when young Georgie meets his off-screen end. It’s not just the shock of seeing his body on the floor—it’s how Haneke films his devastated parents in a 10-minute-plus static shot, forcing the viewer to sit with the horror as if it happened in real life. (It recalls the most famous death in another Haneke classic, Cache; that one happens on-screen but is captured with an icy, lingering remove.) It’s fitting, then, that just before we see Georgie splayed lifeless and face down, we’re shown another gruesome image: blood dripping down the front of the television set. It’s as though Haneke is finding yet another way to ask us just how complicit we are in all this. —Sayles

97. Barbarian, Justin Long’s Eyes (2022) 

Writer-director Zach Cregger’s clever horror flick is known for a narrative flip that introduces us to AJ, a smarmy TV actor whom his costar has accused of rape. It’s very clear from the jump that this guy is a complete scumbag. The only question is: How will he die? The answer is, quite creatively. In the movie’s final moments, Mother squeezes his eyeballs out and rips his head in two. It’s the perfect end for a man who, like Mother, is a true monster. And fun fact: Barbarian is the second movie that ends with Justin Long getting his eyes gouged out. —Siegel

96. Braindead, Mowing Down the Dead (1992)

Following a bite from an infected rat monkey during a zoo trip, Lionel Cosgrove’s mother, Vera, takes a turn for the undead. After a few attempts to put her to rest, Lionel is forced to tranquilize her, as well as the others she’s infected, and lock them in the basement of their Victorian mansion. Through a series of mishaps, Lionel injects the zombies with animal stimulants instead of poison while his uncle hosts a housewarming party, creating a slaughterhouse full of reanimated dead. In a moment of genius, Lionel straps a lawnmower to his chest, blades ready to slice through the oozing, decaying bodies. In this splatter sequence to define all splatter sequences, the amount of blood, body parts, and chaos is nearly unparalleled. —Brooke Knisley

95. Scream 2, Another Classic Cold Open (1997)

Directed by Wes Craven, 1996’s Scream wore its appreciation for the horror genre on its blood-soaked sleeve and reveled in playing on horror tropes to great comedic effect, becoming a beautiful meta-commentary on the genre. But the question remains: How would Scream 2 top it? Easy: by going even more meta. In the 1996 film, we are introduced to the main villain of the series, Ghostface, through a “game” he “plays” with high school student Casey Becker (Drew Barrymore, who didn’t last past that scene, becoming Ghostface’s first on-screen kill). It surprised audiences, as Barrymore was a part of the film’s promotional campaign, but was also a warning: nobody was safe. 

To up the ante, of course the Scream universe features a movie that was made about the events from the first film (titled Stab), and of course this film opened with two big names: Jada Pinkett—who was not a Smith at the time, as Scream 2 hit theaters just weeks before Pinkett and Will Smith tied the knot—as Maureen Evans, who was on a date with Phil Stevens (Omar Epps), who left Maureen in a packed theater full of Ghostface … fans? Stans? Whatever you call them, it’s enough of a distraction for the real Ghostface to take a seat next to Maureen and stab her in the stomach, an obvious shock that led her to stand up and slowly realize what was happening. It’s then a symphony of murder, as Ghostface gets up to finish what he started while the fake Ghostfaces are cheering on the fictionalized murder of Casey Becker they are watching during that Stab screening. Once the on-screen carnage turns to real-life blood spatter, Maureen makes her way to the theater stage, stumbling to the center, lit brightly by an image of Ghostface’s iconic mask on the silver screen while she lets out one final scream before dying in front of a shocked, packed house.

And that’s how you (attempt to) top the intro to 1996’s Scream.  —khal

94. Deep Red, A Mother’s Love (1975)

Few movies contrast striking visuals with shocking violence like Dario Argento’s best works. Suspiria and Tenebrae work because they’re thrilling black-glove-killer slasher mysteries, but also in large part because of their use of color. It’s fitting, then, that Argento’s masterpiece is titled after what I can only assume is his favorite color. Deep Red—or Profondo Rosso in Italian—features some of the giallo master’s best set piece kills (the first one, with the victim’s head being rammed through a pane of glass, feels like a dry run for Suspiria). But he saves the best one for last, when the presumed killer’s mother shows up to reveal that it was her all along—and also to get her bloody revenge. As she tussles with the protagonist, Marcus, her necklace gets stuck in an elevator, and when the lift goes down, it cleanly severs her head. Two shots follow, both stunning: first, her blood-drenched necklace stuck on the elevator as it continues its descent, and finally, Marcus’s reflection staring back at him in a pool of red. It’s a bit of beauty in the grotesque. —Sayles

93. Pet Sematary, Gage Creed (1989) 

The thing about Pet Sematary is that the title of this entry could be referring to two different moments in the film. But while the second instance—when Louis jabs a reanimated Gage with a morphine syringe before burning down the house—is awful to think of, I’m of course talking about the accident, the one when a young Gage goes chasing after his kite only to find himself in the path of a runaway 18-wheeler. Thirty-five years later, the scene plays as light camp, with Louis’s scream, Gage’s rolling bloody shoe, and the quick cuts to the baby pics coming across almost as self-parody. But there’s a reason why there’s a YouTube upload of the scene labeled “This scene traumatized a generation.” Count me among that group. —Sayles

92. Mandy, Mandy (2018)

You need a director that knows what they’re doing with Nicolas Cage. In the right hands, he lands a performance like Wild at Heart. In the wrong ones, it’s the Wicker Man remake. (Not the bees!) The wild swings in his performances have made him a star, an Academy Award winner, and a meme. More recently, they’ve made him something of a scream king. (Not the long legs!)

Panos Cosmatos is one of those directors who knows exactly what to do with Cage. 2018’s Mandy is a hazy bad-acid-trip revenge film that plays like a story the metal kids in junior high dreamed up. It’s packed with plenty of spectacular violent imagery—even if you’ve never seen it, you may recognize this shot of a blood-soaked Nic Cage—but nothing in it produces a visceral reaction quite like the death of the title character. It’s brutal, it’s heartbreaking, and it’s nearly impossible to watch. It also leads to this Nic Cage scene. The sight of him chugging booze and screaming in the bathroom treads a fine line between campy and brilliant. Much like Cage himself at his best, provided you know how to get it out of him. —Sayles

91. The Green Inferno, Jonah (2013)

Cannibal movies: a little racist and a lot disgusting! The North Star for the subgenre has long been Cannibal Holocaust—an early found-footage movie that felt so real that its director was briefly charged with murder. Eli Roth’s 2013 entry is well aware of that, as he goes as far as to name The Green Inferno after the fictional documentary produced in Holocaust. And Roth’s Green Inferno is every bit as difficult to stomach (pardon the pun) as its gorefather. Just look at the demise of Jonah, a member of the activist group that stumbles upon the cannibal tribe. It plays out over the course of three and a half minutes, as his eyes, tongue, and limbs are all removed from his body to be consumed.

The worst part? It doesn’t even become a kill until more than two minutes in. Jonah was alive for most of that. —Sayles

90. You’re Next, the Blender (2011)

If you have an appetite for destruction and don’t scare easily, one of the best parts about engrossing yourself in a horror film is to ask the Austin Gayle Question: “Could I survive that?” You’re Next, Adam Wingard’s 2011 home-invasion slasher, is a great film to play that game with because it’s more practical (assuming you have no fear and can handle yourself in combat) than other horror films. Take this kill: Erin, who has been holding her own against a group intent on killing her and everyone she was having dinner with, is facing Felix and Zee two-on-one. While grappling with Zee, Erin makes Felix trip after throwing a pan of (cold) oil on him. She’s pretty badass throughout this gripping kitchen fight, beating the shit out of Zee and Felix separately so that they don’t get the drop on her. At one point, Zee is gasping for air on one side of the room while Erin finds a blender and, first, bashes Felix in the head with the glass pitcher. Then, in a fit of macabre genius, Erin stabs Felix in the top of his head with the exposed blender blades; while he’s writhing on the floor, Erin proceeds to plug the blender in and make a puree of the insides of Felix’s skull, blood raining down his face as he shrieks in terror. (Bonus points go to Erin for doing all of this with the knife that Felix stabbed her with still in her back. She, of course, uses that to stab Zee in the top of the head—the perfect accent to a modern classic of a kill.) —khal

89. Wrong Turn, Carly (2003)

The film that did for mountain hiking what Jaws did for going to the beach. Out of all of its many kills, the most unnerving one is that of the last character in the central group to die: Carly (Emmanuelle Chriqui). After she, Chris (Desmond Harrington), and Jessie (Eliza Dushku) try outrunning the villainous, inbred mountain men on their trail, they jump from the burning watchtower that was their temporary sanctuary and into some trees. Compared to the other characters who are picked off in a swifter fashion, the men target Carly more methodically by firing an arrow to corner her against the tree before one of them, Three Finger (Julian Richings), slowly creeps up from behind and then axes her in the mouth, half decapitating her. The fact that it’s the only kill sequence to occur at nighttime makes it more noteworthy. —Matthew St. Clair

88. Resident Evil, the Laser Hallway (2002)

What does it say about the 2002 adaptation of Resident Evil that its standout sequence has nothing to do with zombies? When an elite commando team is tasked with infiltrating the Umbrella Corporation’s underground lab and disabling its artificial intelligence program—known as the Red Queen—they enter a hallway that poses no discernible danger. Naturally, that’s when the Red Queen’s defense system kicks in and puts on the world’s deadliest laser show. The first attack is one laser beam that moves across the room in a straight line, beheading one soldier and slicing the fingers off another; the second moves around and slices a dude in half. Finally, with only the team leader remaining, the Red Queen pulls out all the stops with an inescapable grid pattern that turns our guy into human sashimi: 

The zombies might rack up a higher body count, but the Red Queen is the movie’s Resident Sicko. —Miles Surrey

87. Chopping Mall, Suzie’s Long Burn (1986)

In this campy techno-slasher featuring mall robot guards gone awry, Barbara Crampton’s performance—and death—as Suzie especially stand out. After snagging cans of gasoline to use against the vigilante robots, the girls of the group must run from the robots, who are hot on their tails. As luck would have it, Suzie is hit in the leg and drops to the floor, and her gasoline can is struck by a laser and explodes. Cue Suzie writhing and screaming on the mall floor as her entire body burns. Especially notable is the length of this on-screen burn—even after a threat from the MPAA forced the filmmakers to shorten it for the movie’s release, according to TV host and horror movie host Joe Bob Briggs. —Knisley

86. Dawn of the Dead, Zombie Gets a Haircut (1978)

Dawn of the Dead is not George A. Romero’s most famous zombie movie (obviously Night of the Living Dead), nor is it his goriest (Day of the Dead is the one with exposed vocal cords). But it may be Romero’s smartest—and it’s certainly his most fun. The movie mostly takes place in an abandoned mall where human survivors live out their bourgeois fantasies as the risen dead are either gunned down or forced to watch through plexiglass. (Class warfare much?) But this kill comes early in the movie, as Roger tries to gas up the helicopter. A zombie with a suspiciously Frankenstein-like head begins lurching toward him, only to be scalped by the helicopter blade and collapse lifelessly. 

It’s a hilarious end for a walking dead and a testament to makeup and practical effects legend Tom Savini (who also appears in the movie as a member of the anarchistic motorcycle gang). Two pieces of trivia about it, though: First, The scene doesn’t exist in giallo king Dario Argento’s edit of the movie for the Italian market (which ratchets up the Goblin soundtrack and dials back the humor). Second, the scene was originally supposed to be foreshadowing: The film’s original ending had human survivor Fran become overwhelmed and stick her head directly into the blades, ending her life—and any chance she’d become a zombie herself. Just goes to show, the line between horror and comedy can sometimes be as thin as a hair on your head. —Sayles

85. The Suspiria Remake, Olga’s Final Dance (2018) 

For as beautiful and brutal as Dario Argento’s Suspiria is, certain details feel like afterthoughts. For example, we never really see any dancing even though the movie is set in, you know, a dance academy. Luca Guadagnino’s 2018 remake—really, a complete reinvention—presents no such issues. Dancing takes center stage, particularly in the showstopping “Volk” set piece. It’s also the driving force behind the movie’s first death, Olga’s, which rivals anything in Argento’s classic. As Susie dances for her new schoolmasters, the defiant Olga attempts to escape the Markos Dance Academy, only to be trapped. With every move of Susie’s, Olga’s body becomes more and more contorted, until it’s been pretzeled four or five times over. It’s haunting and, set to Thom Yorke’s score, a tad beautiful. And while Luca’s Suspiria may be a totally different movie than Argento’s, both have an uncanny ability to mix the macabre and the gorgeous. It’s twisted, really. —Sayles

84. Final Destination, the Bus (2000)

I am not sure how many times in my life I have simultaneously screamed and laughed, but I am certain that I will never do so as loudly as I did during Terry Chaney’s exodus in the original Final Destination film. “I will not let this plane crash be the most important thing in my life!” she screams and continues as she makes the definitely-not-haunted-by-a-plane-crash choice to walk backward into the street: “You can just drop fucking dead.” Then: WHOOOOOOSH!, and no more Terry. Bonus points for the gentle sprinkling of blood that lands on the onlookers, whose reaction to the sudden, violent demise of their friend skews far less toward horror than sheer amazement. —Claire McNear

83. Maniac, Savini on Savini (1980)

A Koch-era New York slasher that feels like the sleazier cousin of Cruising, Maniac is better than its cult-trash legacy would lead you to believe. (Gene Siskel famously walked out of a screening after only 30 minutes—respect to the god, but maybe genre films weren’t for him.) It follows a killer named Frank Zito—played with a melancholy creepiness by Joe Spinell—as he stalks down a variety of beautiful young women to kill them and take their scalps to use for his mannequin collection. (It probably goes without saying, but Zito’s got mommy issues.)

There’s a palpable sense of dread to scenes like the subway kill or the one in Rita’s apartment, but the most impressive, shocking moment comes alongside the Verrazano bridge, when Zito attacks and kills a young couple (billed as only “Disco Boy” and “Disco Girl”) in the throes of love. When the woman spots Zito lurking and demands they get out of there, the man starts the car and turns on the headlights, only to discover Zito waiting with a shotgun. Zito sprints, jumps on the hood of the car, and fires at Disco Boy’s head, blowing it clean off in one of the most spectacular cranium explosions you’ve seen outside of Scanners. 

It’s a stunning use of low-budget practical effects, especially as director William Lustig plays it in slow motion. But this kill makes the list in large part because of the behind-the-scenes details: For Maniac’s most famous killing, makeup and effects legend Tom Savini plays both Disco Boy and Zito. Because the filmmakers essentially had one shot at the scene and because Savini had experience with similar kill scenes in other movies, Savini stood in for Spinell. (Thank the fact that both had bushy mustaches for the continuity.) When Savini fired the gun through the windshield, he was essentially killing himself. Then, with the shotgun still smoking, he discarded it and jumped in a waiting car, which took off immediately. Turns out it’s illegal to fire a gun in public in New York City. Which makes sense, but you can’t help but wonder: If the killers lived in fear of the police the same way the Maniac crew did, would we even have to make these kinds of films? —Sayles

82. Let the Right One In, the Pool Scene (2008)

This existential Swedish vampire story about love, trauma, friendship, longing, and gender is on the shortlist of best horror movies of the 21st century. (There are good reasons it received an American remake, and that the book it was based on was adapted into a 2022 TV series.) It contains a handful of anxiety-inducing moments—I’m still rattled by the bathtub scene—but for a movie full of understated horrors, it includes one bit of pure spectacle: the pool scene.

If you’ve seen the film, you can recall it with ease: Oskar’s head held underwater by his bully, a long stretch of near-silent dread, and, finally, body parts. Eli has just come to Oskar’s rescue, dismembering his tormentors (and leaving one sobbing, as if it’s his turn to now carry the trauma). In a lesser story, the moment is played for shock—or worse, melodrama. But in the context of Let the Right One In, it’s a healing moment—a sign that even at your lowest, you’re never truly alone. —Sayles

81. House (Hausu), the Piano Scene (1977) 

You’ve likely never seen a sillier movie rooted in atomic anxiety (and, yes, I’m counting Dr. Strangelove). But Nobuhiko Obayashi’s cult classic has held up for more than 40 years mostly because it needs to be seen to be believed. The story follows a group of girls (Gorgeous, Kung Fu, Prof, Fantasy, Sweet, Melody, and Mac—the last gets her name because she really likes to eat) as they visit Gorgeous’s aunt’s faraway home. Quickly, though, troubles arise as the girls begin to get picked off one by one. While all of them meet grotesque and increasingly silly ends—and while the most heartbreaking was that of Kung Fu, who truly deserved better—none are as memorable as Melody’s. While attempting to cheer the other girls up by playing a song, Melody’s fingers are bitten off by the piano’s fallboard. Next goes her hand and then, before long, her entire body. By the end, she’s essentially merged with the piano: a torsos atop its strings, with legs kicking out wildly from the keys. (If this sounds impossible to imagine, please just watch—I guarantee it’s worth it.) 

Like all of the girls’ deaths, Melody’s is more comedic than horrific. That is, at least until you consider that Obayashi was inspired to make this film by the U.S. atomic bombings of Japan, which killed most of his childhood friends. It’s easy to laugh off House as a gonzo surrealist experiment, but like any good horror movie, there’s real trauma lurking beneath all the gore. —Sayles

80. Shaun of the Dead, “Sorry, Mum” (2004)

There comes a point in any good zombie movie when there’s a choice to make: Do you kill your freshly reanimated friend or loved one, or do you let them kill you? Romero set this template with classics like Dawn of the Dead, so it’s fitting that the comedic Romero pastiche Shaun of the Dead understands the importance of this conceit, too. The titular Shaun is actually faced with this decision twice. The first comes in the pub scene, when his mother, Barbara, is bitten by a zombie and dies. After a protracted standoff with the smarmy David—think Reservoir Dogs with broken lager bottles—Shaun does what is unthinkable but necessary: Through tears, he shoots resurrected zombie Barbara square in the head, saying goodbye to both her and a piece of himself in the process.

It’s a decidedly different case with Shaun’s best friend, Ed, who sacrifices himself toward the film’s climax. After life in London has returned to something approaching normalcy—so long as you consider using zombies for game shows and manual labor normal—we find Shaun living his best life. He’s got the girl, and he’s got a zombie Ed, whom he keeps chained up in his shed so that the two can play video games. It’s one case in one of these films where the best decision is no decision at all. —Sayles

79. The Vanishing, Finding What You’re Looking For (1988) 

How much are you willing to give up to find out the truth? For Rex Hofman, the answer is everything. When the Dutch national’s girlfriend Saskia goes missing at a French rest stop, Rex makes it his life’s mission to discover what happened to her. His campaign brings him to Raymond Lemorne, the man behind Saskia’s disappearance, who’s all too willing to show Rex what happened to her—under grave conditions. That Rex accepts those terms is surprising; that they also lead him to meet his end is not. While most horror movies—and make no mistake, The Vanishing is horror—are comfortable hiding the ball, this one explains things in methodical detail. (A killer’s precision, if you will.) Perhaps the question this film raises is an even more unthinkable one: Is it worth finding what you’re looking for if it means your certain death? —Sayles

78. Martyrs, “Keep Doubting” (2008)

After spending decades torturing young women to turn them into “martyrs” who will receive a transcendental insight that gives them knowledge of the afterlife, Mademoiselle, the leader of the cult torturing the girls, succeeds in her mission. After she is flayed alive, a woman named Anna whispers a secret into Mademoiselle’s ear. Later, a cult member asks Mademoiselle whether she heard what Anna said. Upon affirming that she did, Mademoiselle asks in return, “Have you tried to imagine what happens after death?” When the follower answers in the negative, Mademoiselle draws a handgun out of her purse, replies, “Keep doubting,” puts the gun in her mouth, and shoots. Her suicide, after finally securing the answer to her life’s work, makes Mademoiselle’s death both abrupt and ambiguous—what did Anna say? Why should we keep doubting? Truly a death that launched a million video essays. —Knisley

77. Halloween, Bob and Lynda (1978)

A two-fer because they’re inextricably linked: Michael Myers killing Bob—impaling him with a knife so fierce it pins him to the wall, levitating—then putting on Bob’s glasses and a white sheet and paying Bob’s girlfriend, Lynda, a visit. They’re not the most gruesome killings in the Halloween franchise (I’m partial to the Halloween IV shotgun stab), nor are they the most impactful (that one comes a little later on the list). But they are among the most memorable—maybe in part because Michael Myers in the ghost getup is … kinda cute? —Sayles

76. House of Wax, Paris Hilton (2005)

My kingdom for a celebrity willing to dive into the deep end of horror tropes. The 2005 House of Wax remake arrived at the heights of Paris Hilton’s aughts fame, midway through the run of The Simple Life and a year before her infamous photo in a car alongside Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan. Which is to say that Hilton didn’t need to do a cheeseball slasher flick, and she certainly didn’t need to take a role that ends with a harpoon through the damn head. But she did, and we are all better for it. —McNear

75. Happy Death Day, the Loop Montage (2017)

Cross Groundhog Day with Scream (and sprinkle in a little Mean Girls), and you have Happy Death Day, the 2017 time-looping, crime-goofing slasher film in which a girlie named Tree gets whacked on her birthday by a perp named Babyface … only to wake back up that same morning so that she can get re-whacked, again and again. The film features a number of inventive offings—I’m partial to the time Tree gets stabbed with a bong shard in a frat house; who among us?—but its most propulsive bit is a gumshoe/fuck-you montage that cycles between investigation and arson, between sleuthing and stabbings, between getting close to the truth and getting absolutely smoked by a bus. And many more … —Baker

74. An American Werewolf in London, Nazi Werewolves (1981) 

Sure, John Landis’s An American Werewolf in London has many, many werewolf maulings, but the show-stealing kill sequence takes place during David’s hospital stay. Following his werewolf bite, David suffers a series of feverish nightmares, including a dream about the invasion of his family’s house by mutant Nazi werewolves. It starts with a ring of the doorbell. As soon as his father opens the door, a wolf-man hybrid in Nazi regalia shoots him dead. Then more rush in to shoot his mother, niece, and nephew before slitting David’s throat. In a movie where werewolf attacks are expected, Nazi werewolves shooting up a suburban home is both jarring and delightfully goofy. —Knisley

73. In a Violent Nature, the Yoga Pose (2024)

In a Violent Nature is the newest entry on the list, and it makes it here partly because it’s a fascinating genre experiment. (Think Friday the 13th from Jason’s POV.) The movie follows Johnny—the smoke-protector-helmet-sporting otherworldly killer—as he stalks a group of young adults partying in the woods. And while Johnny’s preferred method of working out is walking (seriously, can we call him the 10,000-Steps-a-Day Killer?), the most inventive kill of the film comes via another form of exercise: yoga. When Johnny spots one of the girls doing her morning routine, he hunts her down, spikes her with dragging hooks, and literally pulls her head through her torso before throwing her mutilated body off a cliff. All we can say is, namanasty. —Sayles

72. Midsommar, Cliff Diving (2019)

Ari Aster’s Midsommar took an unsuspecting group of grad students to commune with the Harga during their midsummer festival. One psychedelic trip later, it’s clear that something is awry; it’s at the attestupa, where two of the elders of the community take their own lives by jumping off a cliff onto the rock below, where things go from awkward to downright dreadful.

This is an act seen with great honor in their community. The elders, once they hit 72, are meant to do this, but that doesn’t make watching the act happen any easier. The scene seems to lack most colors besides dull grays, bright whites, and the chill tones the grad students are rocking. And since everything occurs during sunlight hours, you can truly see the grotesque impact of those elders hitting the stones below. And that’s not even the worst part: Unlike the first elder, the second elder lands feet first, meaning he’s still alive. All that’s left (according to ritual?) is for some dude with a big hammer to finish the job. And yes, Aster also makes sure we see the gruesome impact of that moment. —khal

71. The Last House on the Left, Weasel Bites Off More Than He Can Chew (1972)

As far as real-life American monsters go, there aren’t many scarier than the Manson Family. Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left understands this as well as any film of its era. Coming three years after the Tate murders, Last House introduces us to a thrill-seeking, cultlike group of losers who target teenagers Mari Collingwood and Phyllis Stone, torturing them before killing them—just for kicks. But when the Manson stand-ins find themselves, through a twist of fate, spending the night with Mari’s parents, things quickly change. That begins when Mari’s mother, Estelle, takes the scuzzball Weasel outside with the promise of oral sex. But when she gets his pants down, well, let’s just say she isn’t afraid to use some teeth. Weasel bleeds out as the Collingwoods go to work eviscerating the rest. Nearly 50 years before Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood gave an alternate ending to the Manson Family saga, Last House was a revenge-fantasy flick that showed that even if the bad guys win in real life, they can still get their comeuppance in the movies. —Sayles

70. The Hitcher, Tearing Me Apart (1986)

Of all the gnarly scenes on this list, this one may be the toughest one to watch. If you haven’t seen this movie, the premise is pretty simple: Hitchhiker John Ryder (Rutger Hauer) terrorizes Jim (C. Thomas Howell), the man who unwisely picks him up. At one point, the madman ties Jim’s friend Nash (Jennifer Jason Leigh) between a Mack truck and the truck’s trailer hitch. Jim, it won’t surprise you, can’t save the day. Ryder revs the engine, takes his foot off the clutch, and steps on the gas. Watch this cult classic once, and you’ll never forget the sound of Leigh’s screams again. —Siegel

69. Paranormal Activity, Camera’s Rolling (2007)

The found-footage boom is often linked to The Blair Witch Project—which, circa Y2K, produced a quasi-serious debate over whether the movie was a work of fiction or actual unearthed video footage. But the found-footage boom couldn’t happen in earnest for a few years because the real-life technology hadn’t fully developed yet. When the Blair Witch kids went off into those Maryland woods, they were film students with expensive equipment. By the time the genre really took off, practically everyone had a high-powered camera in their pocket via their smartphone. Look at this list: While the movies start to trickle in after Blair Witch, they take off in the late 2000s, as iPhones, webcams, and home-security setups became the norm. 

Paranormal Activity—the most famous found-footage film this side of Rustin Parr’s cabin—takes place squarely in this new world. After his girlfriend, Katie, tells him that an evil presence has haunted her since she was a child and has seemingly returned, Micah does everything he can to antagonize the spirit: yelling at it, breaking out the Ouija board, and, most importantly for our purposes, setting up a camera in the couple’s bedroom to document everything. (What else would you expect from a 26-year-old day trader named Micah Sloat?) Unwittingly, Micah’s also preparing to document his own death, which happens when a possessed (we hope!) Katie kills him outside the view of the lens. Moments later, she drags his fresh corpse back to the bedroom. Naturally, she throws it directly at the camera—and in turn, the audience. It’s a sign of maybe the scariest thing of all: In our modern world, we live our entire lives on camera. —Sayles

68. Evil Dead, the Chainsaw (2013)

The reimagining of Sam Raimi’s classic doesn’t quite hold up to the original—the color is off, the early 2010s aesthetics are overbearing, and most of all, the campy vibes just aren’t there. (Thankfully, they fixed that last part in 2023’s superior sequel Evil Dead Rise, best known for terrorizing unsuspecting NBA fans during the Nuggets’ title run.) But the 2013 Evil Dead does have one big thing going for it: Jane Levy, a verifiable scream queen who turns in an all-demon-world performance as Mia, a young woman struggling with sobriety and the evil spirits possessing her. Levy—and the movie—crescendo in a rainstorm of blood, as she is being stalked by hell creature Abomination. After a car falls on Mia’s arm, she’s forced to choose between her life and her hand. She chooses wisely, grabs a chainsaw, and unleashes one of the most gruesome killings in the franchise, full stop. It’s spectacular enough to justify the remake’s existence—and, given the hand/chainsaw of it all, one way this film does right by the original franchise. —Sayles

67. Nope, Gordy Goes Apeshit (2022)

Jupe can’t even talk about it as though it really happened to him. Played by Steven Yeun, the former child actor turned theme park owner witnessed a massacre firsthand nearly 25 years earlier, but he prefers to discuss it through the lens of the Saturday Night Live skit about the incident—where it’s Chris Kattan, not a killer chimpanzee, wreaking havoc. And it makes sense if you saw what he saw: While working on the short-lived sitcom Gordy’s Home, he watched one of the chimp actors who played the titular character lose his mind, kill several human members of the cast and crew, and then get gunned down as he was trying to fist-bump Jupe. You’d likely prefer to process it as sketch comedy, too!

The Gordy’s Home set piece comes midway through Nope, after director Jordan Peele had teased images from it for the film’s first hour. When he shows it in full, it’s a chilling, five-minute horror movie within a horror movie. (All told, I’ve personally watched or rewatched 50 horror movies in preparation for The Ringer’s Shriek Week, and re-experiencing the Gordy scene was the only time I felt true dread.) It’s made all the more horrifying by the fact that it’s seemingly based on a real-life incident. But in the context of the movie, it’s a skeleton key that unlocks ideas about performance, captivity, and what those bone-crunching UFOs were really up to. (What’s telling is that they would suck you up only if you looked at them.)

It’s perhaps surprising that, given what he lived through, Jupe suffered a fate at the theme park similar to the one he escaped on that sitcom set decades earlier. But sometimes, we process trauma by leaning into our past. And sometimes, that’s easier than talking about it. —Sayles

66. Friday the 13th, Mrs. Voorhees Loses Her Head (1980)

The answer to Casey Becker’s least favorite trivia question—the real killer of Friday the 13th—meets a gruesome end. With all due respect to Kevin Bacon’s Jack, the victim of the franchise’s first iconic kill, Pamela’s beheading at the blade of Alice is the stuff of horror legend. (Though it should get docked a few points for leading to this awful part of this awful Nintendo game.)

There isn’t much to add here (maybe MOTHERING in all caps a few times), but props to  Pamela for getting her revenge in a roundabout way in the sequel, when a reanimated Jason places her head in Alice’s fridge. When Alice discovers it, Jason stabs her with an ice pick. Just goes to show that Pam’s always looking out for her son. —Sayles

65. The House of the Devil, Pizza Guy (2009)

A thought experiment: Has any Oscar-nominated filmmaker ever died on-screen more brutally than Greta Gerwig in The House of the Devil? Back in 2009, the Barbie impresario was merely the freshest face of the nascent mumblecore movement and a secondary presence in Ti West’s ’70s-style chiller, supporting Jocelin Donahue’s protagonist in a best friend role that showcased Gerwig’s sweet and screwy charisma (and iconically skeevy pizza-eating style). That is, until her character, Megan, is mistaken for her pal by a squirrelly stranger who asks her a bunch of weird questions en route to realizing that he’s talking to the wrong person. “Are you not the babysitter?” he queries. What happens next is shocking and hilarious—a scintillating midpoint money shot in a movie that knows how to pick its spots. “They made a cast of my head and there was a dummy,” Gerwig told CinemaBlend in 2009. “We were huddled around a monitor and we watched my head explode and that was a strange moment in my life. … I’m watching my own head explode and I’m thinking ‘My life is so strange! I don’t know what I’ve done, to get here!’” —Adam Nayman

64. Drag Me to Hell, the Train Tracks (2009)

No movie on this list hates its protagonist as much as Drag Me to Hell, Sam Raimi’s return to the horror genre nearly two decades after his last Evil Dead movie. Because while there are curses, demons, and a bile-spewing elderly woman with bad dentures in DMTH, it’s clear who Raimi thinks the real monster is: the banking system and the people who are a part of it. Throughout the film’s 99-minute running time, loan officer Christine Brown (played with pitch-perfect ignorant malevolence by Alison Lohman) experiences the kinds of abuse and degradation you wouldn’t wish on the worst person you’ve ever met. Except, here’s the thing: She found herself in this position because she refused to grant an extension on the aforementioned elderly woman’s loan payments, effectively causing her to lose her home. By the time the woman’s curse has fully broken Christine’s spirit—in the seconds before she falls off the Union Station train platform and gets pulled down into, well, hell—you’re left with little sympathy for the main character. And understandably: Raimi may have denied that the timing was intentional, but given the 2009 release date, it’s hard not to experience Drag Me to Hell as Great Recession revenge porn. —Sayles

63. Kill List, the Hammer (2011) 

Leave it to a British director to reinvent the idea of “Hammer horror.” In Kill List, Ben Wheatley literalizes an august genre tradition in bludgeoning and brilliant style. The protagonists of Wheatley’s supremely freaky thriller are contract killers who stumble into the orbit of occultists who want a very specific set of civilians wiped out; hoping to learn more about their assignment, the pair torture one of their targets before taking him out of the equation with a nearby piece of hardware. Not surprisingly for a director who got his start in viral videos, the “hammer scene” in Kill List operates on conjoined principles of shock and plausibility: It’s captured in a medium-long shot with no cuts or close-ups, which doesn’t so much distance us from the skull-crushing intensity of the violence as drive it home with a kind of objective authority. The worst part, though, is that before having his brainpan mulched, the victim expresses a smiling, resigned gratitude for what’s about to happen—a sign not only that Wheatley’s masterpiece has reached a point of no return, but also that it’s got even darker places to go from there. —Nayman

62. It Follows, Annie’s Death (2014)

Let’s get it out of the way: It Follows is not a metaphor for STDs; it’s about sexual trauma, as the final showdown in the pool should make obvious. But in this light, the opening scene is all the more terrifying, as Annie is hunted down by a killer we never see. She ends up on the beach, making one last phone call to her dad to say she loves him and waiting for a morning that, for her, will never come. When the camera cuts to the next day, Annie’s on her back, lifeless, with her legs snapped backward at the knees. It’s a gruesome image, made all the more heartbreaking by the context of the film. —Sayles

61. Fear Street Part One: 1994, the Bread Slicer (2021)

With the number of horror movies being made these days, it’s incredibly rare to watch one and say, “I’ve never seen anything like that before.” That’s why Kate’s gruesome death belongs on this list. I’d never seen anything like that before. It’s really not complicated: Kate tries like hell to escape a killer in a skull mask. She can’t. And the killer shoves her head through a bread slicer. When it comes through the other side … ick. There isn’t anything profound to be said about it beyond “Holy fucking shit!” But every time I see it, that’s what I say. —Siegel

60. The Exorcist III, the Shears (1990)

Jump scares get a bad rap, the result of lesser horror movies that have used them as a cheap substitute for genuine suspense. But the best sequence in The Exorcist III shows that, in the right hands, the jump scare can be a brilliant form of misdirection. On a quiet hospital night, the lone nurse in her ward hears a strange noise and enters a room. Ice melting in a glass of water is the culprit; her intrusion, however, wakes up a doctor, who startles the nurse. It’s an effective jump scare in its own right and lulls the viewer into a false sense of security. Minutes later, when the nurse continues making her way through the ward without incident, the killer emerges behind her, wielding giant shears. We don’t see the nurse’s death, nor do we need to: By the time you’re leaping off your couch and screaming bloody murder, the damage is done. —Surrey

59. Saw, Adam (2004)

You pretty much know that Adam is doomed in the first few seconds of Saw. It’s the moment we see the key to his leg shackle get flushed down the drain of the bathtub he awakens in, setting forth a series of gruesomely over-the-top events spanning 10 films, two video games, and a comic book—and that’s just so far. 

The Saw franchise began as the postcollege brainworm of future horror kingpins James Wan and Leigh Whannell, the latter of whom wrote the film and starred as the hilariously overacted Adam, a man who is revealed to have the same job as J. J. “Jake” Gittes in Chinatown: that is, taking photos of cheating husbands for private clients. Adam comes off as a somewhat likable fuckup, neither the first nor last person I’d pick to be chained in a room with.

I can remember the genuine shock I felt when it was revealed that Jigsaw had been in the room the entire time and when Adam screams in agony as he realizes he’s being left to die chained to a drainpipe in a blood- and shit-covered room. He’s presumably still chained to that drainpipe, as his corpse is briefly seen rotting in the same place in Saw II and Saw 3D. 

However, this is one of the few deaths on this list we don’t see for ourselves, so naturally, there’s a large contingent of fans who think Adam never died and is a secret accomplice of Jigsaw. The most compelling evidence for this theory is that the chain on Adam’s alleged corpse is attached to the wrong foot when shown in the later films, meaning that Adam wasn’t killed by Amanda and that it’s only been made to look like he’s dead. —Morrison

58. The Shining, Dick Hallorann (1980)

Aside from Jack Torrance, whose death we technically don’t see—one would argue that we merely see the frigid results after his demise while trapped in the maze—Richard “Dick” Hallorann is the only character in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining that gets offed on-screen. Hallorann—the head chef at the Overlook Hotel, portrayed by Scatman Crothers—could shine just like Torrance’s son, Danny, and after leaving the Overlook, he sensed that something awful was afoot during that snowstorm. As a result, he made the trip—which included a flight from his vacation in Florida back to snowy Colorado—to catch the business end of Jack’s axe right in the chest, sending shock waves that young Danny seems to have felt deeply. The addition of the cuts between Dick’s scream, Danny’s scream, and Jack’s eagerness to plunge that axe deep into Dick’s chest adds weight to Dick’s death in particular, as what feels like the last hope for Danny and his mother, Wendy, to escape Jack’s rage is taken out right before our eyes. —khal

57. Terrifier 2, Allie’s Bedroom (2002)

I mean, what the actual fuck. It’s almost too much. It starts with Art the Clown slugging a cheeky glass of tap water and ends with one of the bloodiest single-victim deaths I’ve ever seen. The kill begins with a deep vertical cut through Allie’s left eye and down her face, but by the end of the scene, that’s basically a paper cut. Art scalps her alive in front of a mirror so that she can watch, makes multiple deep cuts in her back, pulls off more skin, breaks her left arm, rips it off at the elbow, and then splits her right arm in half, starting in between her middle and ring fingers. Art then gives her five off-screen slices, God only knows where, and pops off the bed all giddy, like he heard the ice cream truck pulling up the driveway. 

Art returns to the room to see Allie crawling for her phone. And he’s carrying a bottle of bleach. Yes, Art literally rubs bleach in her fucking wounds. Her mom shows up a few moments later to see her daughter cut to pieces and Art grinning ear to ear. THE WORST PART: ALLIE IS STILL ALIVE IN THIS SCREENSHOT. AGAIN, WHAT THE FUCK?! —Gayle

56. Peeping Tom, the Dance Before Death (1960)

A slasher in the way the Stooges were a punk band, Peeping Tom was so loathed upon its release that it essentially destroyed Michael Powell’s career. (A difficult thing to do considering this was the man behind Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes.) But history has been kind to the film—it’s risen above cult-classic billing and is now considered one of the greatest British films of all time. (Thank Marty for the assist on that one.)

And much of the reclamation is owed to the brilliance of scenes like this one, in which Vivian (played by a pitch-perfect Moira Shearer) dances joyfully until she realizes what Mark Lewis (a stealthily sinister Carl Boehm) has in mind. The camera rolls, capturing the utter panic on her face—and, in kind, putting it on the viewer’s. 

There are plenty of reasons a filmmaker should get put in director jail—you can probably find a dozen or so on this very list. But a moment like this isn’t one of them. —Sayles

55. Us, the Tylers (2019) 

What makes this scene so unforgettable? Is it the shock of the tethers’ arrival? The sight of Tim Heidecker getting killed by his tether? The Amazon Alexa stand-in Ophelia mishearing Elisabeth Moss and playing “Fuck the Police”? The sheer (get it?) brutality? Jordan Peele has created more lasting characters than the Tylers, but he’s never crafted a more thrilling, hilarious kill scene. You’ve almost certainly never had more fun watching a family of four get killed with scissors, I can guarantee that much. —Sayles

54. Opera, the Peephole Shot (1987)

Opera is perhaps giallo master Dario Argento’s final masterpiece. Accordingly, it contains some of his most inventive kill scenes. (The open-neck bracelet retrieval is not only gory, but truly inspired.) But similar to meta films like Funny Games, Opera is also interested in the audience’s participation in the violence. How else do you explain the extended sequences when Betty is forced via a proto-Jigsaw contraption to watch those around her slaughtered in gruesome fashion? It’s a similar proposition for the film’s most famous kill, the peephole shot, when Mira cowers by the door and peeks out only to be greeted by the barrel of a gun. She of course meets a brutal, spectacular end. It’s delicious foreshadowing for the movie’s finale, but also a clear message to the audience: You watch at your own risk. —Sayles

53. The Ring, Samara’s First Appearance (2002)

One of the great strengths of The Ring—and before it, its 1998 Japanese inspiration, Ringu—is how long the supernatural killer is kept away from the viewer. We know there’s water involved, and phone calls, and something to do with TVs, but how that creepy little girl gets from VCR to murder is left a mystery till late in the film. That’s when we finally see Samara, dripping wet in black and white, creep toward the front of a TV screen—and then ever so slowly crawl her way out into the real world. The effects have aged in the years since The Ring’s 2002 American release, but the impact remains the same—and maybe packs even more of a punch in our infinitely more screen-tethered present. There’s something particularly haunting about her absolute disinterest in hurrying toward her victim. This is Samara’s world; we’re all just—for seven days, anyway—living in it. —McNear

52. Re-Animator, Head of State (1985)

Neither here nor there, but don’t Dr. Carl Hill and his severed, reanimated head bear a not-so-subtle resemblance to former U.S. secretary of state and one-time presidential nominee John Kerry?

In fact, put the head on the ballot this November. Can’t be any worse than our current options. —Sayles

51. Sleepaway Camp, the Curling Iron (1983)

Because of the era it came out in and also the summer camp setting, it’s easy for Sleepaway Camp to be reduced to a Friday the 13th knockoff. What makes the 1983 cult hit different is its emphasis on how cruel teenagers can be, especially Judy (Karen Fields), who makes Angela’s (Felissa Rose) time in camp a living hell at every opportunity. 

Given how Judy is portrayed as both the most promiscuous one of the victim group and a bully, it was inevitable that she’d face the killer’s wrath. When it does happen, it’s every bit as shocking as the movie’s divisive twist ending, even if this one is mostly seen through shadows: Judy’s attacker sexually assaults her with a hot curling iron as she suffocates Judy with a pillow. It’s gruesome—and a little silly—but it heavily plays into one of the big historical slasher clichés: that sexual promiscuity can lead to one’s demise. —St. Clair

50. Saw 3D, Reverse Bear Trap 3.0 (2010)

The Saw franchise used the reverse bear trap three times, but its third appearance, in Saw 3D, is the only time we see it kill someone. Mark Hoffman, an accomplice and copycat of John Kramer, uses it on John’s ex-wife, Jill Tuck, and gives her no chance to survive it. Hoffman ties her to a chair with no path to a key to unlock the trap, even if her hands were free, finally ending a dizzying character arc for Jill and flinging a lovely combination of blood, guts, and bone at the audience in 3D. Chef’s kiss. —Gayle

49. Final Destination 3, the Tanning Bed (2006)

Let’s face it: There’s something deeply unsettling about tanning as a proposition. You strip mostly naked, put on funny little glasses, and jump in a giant tube as UV rays roast you like a spitfire hog. There are seemingly a million things that can go wrong. And in Final Destination 3, almost all of them do, as Ashley and Ashlyn escape death on the roller coaster from hell only to be done in by their self-care routine. (And to think, with all we now know about the effects of tanning, this may be the rare death in the FD universe that should’ve been completely avoidable.) Still, RIP to the girls, who not only had the most mid-aughts names imaginable, but also died the most mid-aughts death possible. —Sayles

48. Don’t Look Now, the Ending (1973)

The recent passing of Donald Sutherland renders the climax of Nicolas Roeg’s thriller even more haunting; if Don’t Look Now is essentially an extended—and tragic—sick joke about a man who refuses to heed what the universe is trying to tell him, the death of Sutherland’s John Baxter at the hands of a serial killer he’s mistaken for his dearly departed daughter comprises a singularly melancholy punchline. In stylistic terms, the killing is staged in homage to various deep-red giallos (Dario Argento would have been proud), but the bloody violence is subordinate to the brilliance of the editing, which uses the slitting of John’s throat as a pretense to slice through space and time—replaying earlier moments from the film in a precisely syncopated sequence that approximates the sensation of having one’s life flash before their eyes. On one level, the scene comes out of nowhere; on another, its effectiveness derives from our realization that he—and we—should have seen it coming all along. —Nayman

47. Hellraiser, Torn Apart (1987)

The image of Frank slowly being torn apart by dozens of metal hooks is hard to unsee. The lack of digital effects makes the whole sequence all the more impressive—and terrifying. Even as Frank is being literally torn to shreds, he can’t help but get in one last barb, declaring, “Jesus wept” in a deeply mocking tone, signifying his pride in being able to withstand a level of pain beyond what Jesus could tolerate on the cross. Indeed, the mutilation of Frank, played by Sean Chapman, makes a crucifixion look like a simple walk in the park. He also takes a moment mid-decapitation to suggestively stick his tongue out in what may be the creepiest three seconds of the entire franchise. —Morrison

46. My Bloody Valentine, Running Water (1981)

After a traumatizing mining accident during the town’s annual Valentine’s Day dance results in one miner cannibalizing the others for survival, he goes on to murder the two supervisors responsible for the accident during the following year’s dance. The town decides that continuing to host the dance is probably a bit insensitive, and subsequent Valentine’s Day dances are canceled. Ignoring warnings not to revive the dance, the town reinstates the tradition 20 years later, and then the killings begin. Although it’s not the first, Sylvia’s murder ranks among the most inventive—the miner impales her head on a water pipe. He then turns the spigot, allowing water to flow through the pipe and out of Sylvia’s open mouth. —Knisley

45. Se7en, Wasting Away as a Living Corpse (1995)

In David Fincher’s Se7en, two detectives tracking a serial killer who is committing murders based on the seven deadly sins find a man, presumed dead, who’s strapped to a bed in a room full of air fresheners hanging from the ceiling. The man, a child abuser and drug dealer, abruptly moves, to the detectives’ horror. According to evidence discovered throughout the room, he has been kept alive via IV for one year as his body deteriorates. Although he was alive while being removed from the room, doctors at the hospital declare him brain-dead, predict that his body will go into shock at any moment, and note that at some point, he had consumed his own tongue. Yikes. —Knisley

44. Zombi 2, the Eye Splinter (1979)

Following the popularity of George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, Lucio Fulci created this counterfeit sequel hoping to profit from Romero’s audience—there is no Zombi. Notably, Zombi 2’s undead share no similarity to Romero’s ghouls: It’s made quite clear that they rise as voodoo zombies on a Caribbean island. This particular kill takes place when a young woman named Paola attempts to barricade herself from an approaching zombie behind a wooden door. Unfortunately, the zombie breaks an arm through, grabs her by the hair, and pulls her face toward a large splinter, courtesy of the door. The long, drawn-out sequence makes you think, “Surely she will escape before the worst? Surely someone will intervene at the last moment?” But no, the splinter finally pierces her eye, and it’s as wince inducing as it sounds. —Knisley

43. Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, Ellen’s Sacrifice (1922)

The earliest film on this list, the famous story of the famous vampire is so eternal that it’s set for another remake later this year, more than a century after Max Schreck put on the prosthetics. (Meaning: If you don’t want spoilers for the Lily-Rose Depp version, don’t read on.)

Given all the advancements in filmmaking and horror movies, there’s no reason that Ellen’s final stand should be so terrifying to watch. But give credit to Schreck for his menace and to Greta Schröder for selling this scene as a silent-era scream queen. (And while you’re here, give credit to director F.W. Murnau for the shadow shot—still among the most iconic in film history.)

Something tells me that this year’s version won’t be the last rendition of Nosferatu we ever see. —Sayles

42. Scream, the Garage Door (1996)

As the Scream franchise has repeatedly explained, there are certain rules for surviving a horror movie. Splitting off from the rest of the group is a big no-no, which poor Tatum Riley (Rose McGowan) learns the hard way. Going into the garage to grab more beers during a house party, Tatum is trapped by Ghostface and initially brushes him off as one of her friends pulling a prank. (She is technically right; one of the killers happens to be her boyfriend.) To Tatum’s credit, she puts up a good fight, smacking Ghostface with the freezer door before nailing him in the crotch with a beer. Sadly, Tatum’s fatal flaw is trying to make an exit through the garage’s doggy door—once she gets stuck, all Ghostface has to do is press the button to ensure her demise. At this point in Scream, the killer(s) had exclusively taken out their victims with knives; seeing Tatum get her head crushed in such gruesomely inventive fashion proved the franchise wouldn’t be a one-trick pony. —Surrey

41. Black Christmas, Clare (1974)

One of the earlier films in the slasher genre, Bob Clark’s Black Christmas is proof that the staging of a killing sequence can be just as unsettling as the killing itself. It’s evident in the opening when kindly sorority sister Clare (Lynne Griffin) gets killed by the unseen man who hides in the attic and torments the students he’s preying on through obscene phone calls. As Clare packs up for the holidays, there’s a point-of-view shot from the killer’s perspective before the camera cuts back to her, who hears what may or may not be the house cat as an ominous piano aids the mood. Lured into making the doomed slasher movie mistake of investigating the strange noise she hears, Clare slowly steps into the attic before suddenly being suffocated by plastic wrap. The petrifying image of her plastic-covered face then lingers throughout the film and in its promotional material. —St. Clair

40. Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, the Big Guy Goes Down (1984)

If a cat has nine lives, how many does Jason Voorhees have? Our hockey-masked goon has died more times than anyone on this list, as he’s been killed off repeatedly over the course of 12 movies and 45 years. (Pedantically, however, some would argue that several entries in the franchise—like Friday the 13th VII: The New Blood, in which he was chained to the bottom of Crystal Lake—don’t show Jason being killed, just contained before the next sequel arrives.) Jason’s been drowned, he’s been blown to bits (a few times), and he’s even found his way to hell and back. But his most cinematic death came in what was originally intended to be the franchise’s swan song, 1984’s Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. 

The fourth installment of the series finds Jason squaring off for the first time with Tommy Jarvis, played in this movie by a kid Corey Feldman. And Tommy has one of the more ingenious Jason-trapping plans of the series, if only because it gave us this image: He (poorly) shaves his head to make himself look like Jason as a kid. (Also, maybe a young Wallace Shawn.) It somehow works. (Look, no one ever accused Jason of being smart.) Jason is spellbound, allowing Tommy’s mother, Trish, to catch him with a cleaver. Some theatrics ensue—including the reveal of Jason’s deformed face—and eventually Tommy hits the monster with a cleaver again. As he falls to the ground, the blade goes clean through his head, slicing the small brains the big guy is working with. Finally, when Tommy sees Jason’s fingers twitching, he begins whacking him repeatedly, almost sadistically. (Hey, this guy was never going to go down easily.)

And Jason was truly dead—for then, at least. He sat out the silly Friday the 13th: A New Beginning, which is about a regular guy inspired to start killing while wearing a hockey mask. He does, however, return for Friday the 13th VI: Jason Lives. That’s when a traumatized Tommy goes to dig up his grave to see the body and cremate it, only for lightning to strike and reanimate Jason. The lesson: This guy’s always going to get up, so you’re always gonna need another plan to get him back down. —Sayles

39. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, Laura Palmer (1992)

It’s one of the most famous killings in all of 20th-century storytelling—though it begins and ends on TV, of course. Twin Peaks opens with Laura Palmer—dead, wrapped in plastic—washing up on a Washington coastline. It closes some time in the future, or maybe the past (what year is this, anyway?), with one of the more bloodcurdling shrieks ever filmed. In between, there are countless trips to the Red Room, half-baked fan theories, and slices of cherry pie. But amid the murder mystery, suburban Americana campiness, and Fellini-core abstractions, there’s a heart of darkness that animates David Lynch and Mark Frost’s three-decade masterpiece.

By the time the prequel movie, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, arrived in 1992, there was no question of who killed Laura Palmer—that matter was resolved midway through the second season of the show, at the behest of the ABC suits. But aside from one horrifying flashback that obscured much of the killing, the series doesn’t show the full story of what transpired. FWWM changes that, taking us inside the final days of Laura Palmer in gripping fashion, even as her death looms over it all. Presumably—hopefully—you know the who, what, where, when, and why of the killing before you hit play on the film, but that doesn’t make it any less shocking. There’s a reason why the most hopeful moment of Twin Peaks: The Return comes in “Part 17,” when Cooper crosses timelines and tries to change the trajectory of that infamous night. There’s also a reason why the most hopeless moment comes just after that, when Laura’s hand slips away and you realize that in the world of the Black Lodge, evil always wins. —Sayles

38. It, Georgie Makes a Friend (2017)

I’m sorry, but I have to say it. Why the fuck does Georgie hold a conversation with a devilish clown who has perfect makeup and is lurking in the sewer? I get that he’s young, but he’s old enough to tell Pennywise that he isn’t supposed to take things from strangers! Do you think that rule applies to CLOWNS IN SEWERS, Georgie? He’s gabbing it up for more than two minutes before Pennywise even tries to manipulate him with the paper boat. I’m not saying Georgie deserved to have his arm chomped off, but he wasn’t exactly putting himself in a winning situation. The TikTok generation won’t make the same mistakes. —Gayle

37. Hereditary, Piano Wire (2018)

For me, it’s the sound. The sight of Toni Collette’s possessed body, seemingly levitating in the rafters of her family home’s attic, is plenty horrifying in its own right. But the sound of the piano wire going back and forth against her neck—first slowly, and then with the speed of a hornet flicking its wings—is what sticks with me. It is, of course, followed by a second sickening sound: her body hitting the floor after she’s successfully self-decapitated. I shudder thinking about it. It may not be Hereditary’s most famous beheading, but it is the one that will rattle around in your ears before becoming lodged in your brain. Ari Aster is a master of brutal imagery, but this scene showed that you may want to cover more than just your eyes when he’s behind the camera. —Sayles

36. Evil Dead II, Henrietta (1987)

How can you not absolutely adore this scene? A possessed demon named Henrietta evolves into a long-legged, alien-looking thing, and then both of its arms—in two separate shots, mind you—and its head go flying in random directions after Ash chops them off with a chainsaw. The kicker? Henrietta’s neck makes a long fart sound as she collapses to the floor. Every Henrietta scene in the film is delicious to begin with; her death is just icing on the cake. (The stop-motion animation and elite prosthetics make Evil Dead II a must-watch.) —Gayle

35. Hostel, the Achilles (2005)

Before unwatchable knockoffs piled up like bloody body parts, there was Eli Roth’s Hostel. It’s the closest thing the torture porn genre has to fun. It’s even a little funny, in addition to being gory as all hell. There could be a whole ranked list of deaths in this movie alone. But the most visceral—I hesitate to say “best”—is when the psychopathic Dutch Businessman slices Josh’s Achilles tendon before cutting his throat. It’s impossible to watch this scene and not grab your ankle in sympathetic pain. How memorable was it? Well, when an errant skate blade cut Dallas Stars center Tyler Seguin’s Achilles in 2016, he immediately worried whether he’d suffered a fate similar to Josh’s. “In the movie the bad guy goes and slices the guy’s Achilles,” he told The Dallas Morning News. “I’m wondering if my Achilles is sliced like that.” —Siegel

34. American Psycho, “Hip to Be Square” (2000)

Thanks to American Psycho, one can never listen to Huey Lewis the same way again. During what is arguably the film’s most infamous moment, Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) invites his coworker Paul Allen (Jared Leto) to his apartment. Patrick waxes poetic about Huey Lewis and the News and the single “Hip to Be Square,” but things quickly turn hostile when Paul, with whom Patrick has an axe to grind, is hacked to death. 

In a film made tense by the ambiguity over whether Patrick’s killings are real or machinations of his mind, Patrick’s axing of Paul over having shinier business cards and reserving spots at a restaurant Patrick can’t get into is a frightening testament to how rattled he is by his own insecurities. It’s a grotesque yet morbidly funny critique of ’80s consumerism and excess that still feels relevant today. —St. Clair

33. Ghost Ship, the Cable Slice (2002)

It’s the scale of the kills and the delay of the bodies’ actual collapse that make this scene stand above so many others in which people are cut in half. It’s almost beautiful when the camera runs through the crowd’s shocked faces as their blood starts to pour and they feel their chests, heads, and limbs slip off their bodies. From the champagne glass, to the arm holding a cigarette, to the guy who loses the bottom half of his suit, to the couple still dancing—all of it. The graceful, grotesque falls make the scene infinitely rewatchable, too. You get something new every time, like the woman who’s grasping at her lower half or the rogue hand that’s reaching for the sky. It’s also a rare win for the short kings out there; that wire would give me a free haircut, if anything. —Gayle

32. The Fly, Brundlefly (1986)

Of all of David Cronenberg’s horrific inventions, none has held a place in the cultural psyche like Jeff Goldblum’s Seth Brundle, a molecular physicist whose teleportation innovations go horribly awry when a fly gets caught in the machine. After a brief fly-splice glow-up—look, Goldblum on the pull-up bar is enough to forever alter your DNA—we watch Brundle slowly disintegrate, losing every bit of what makes him a person. Soon, there’s nothing left of him—and nothing left for him to do but force his girlfriend (Veronica, played by a radiant Geena Davis) to put a shotgun to his head and pull the trigger. It’s heartbreaking, but also a cautionary tale for anyone who gets so lost in their work that they forget what made them human. —Sayles

31. Day of the Dead, Captain Rhodes Has Gone to Pieces (1985)

The grisly death of Captain Henry Rhodes, played by Joseph Pilato, will always remain one of the most visceral and disgusting in the history of zombie movies. It’s also one of the most satisfying, as the audience finally gets to witness the aggressive and sadistic Rhodes get what he deserves. Trapped in a small hallway, Rhodes is attacked by zombies from all sides and literally ripped in two as he infamously yells, “Choke on ’em!” 

This wasn’t just a brutal kill for audiences, either. Legendary makeup artist Tom Savini, who worked on the film, said in a documentary that the pig guts and chicken parts used to replicate Rhodes’s intestines were accidentally left in an unplugged refrigerator for weeks before filming. Because of this, the cast and crew wore masks, but Pilato, whose body was hidden by a false floor, was forced to endure the rancid meat smell for hours during filming. —Morrison

30. A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, the Puppet Master (1987)

It’s the creativity that really draws me to Freddy Krueger as one of the top horror villains of all time. He gets so deep in his bag in the Dream World. You have to respect the craft. Turning Phillip Anderson (Bradley Gregg), a puppet maker and habitual sleepwalker, into a marionette held up by his own tendons and walking him out the window of a tall building is simply a Krueger master class. The practical effects are gruesome enough for me to feel a little tug on my own tendons every time I rewatch Dream Warriors. —Gayle

29. Death Proof, the Car Crash (2007)

The decision to play the collision four times to show each of the four women’s unique deaths in detail is quite literally perfect. No notes. —Gayle

28. Deep Blue Sea, Samuel L. Jackson’s Monologue (1999) 

“Nature can be lethal, but it doesn’t hold a candle to man.” 

So says Samuel L. Jackson’s Russell Franklin in Deep Blue Sea, an endearingly batshit blockbuster about an underwater lab that’s attacked by a group of supersmart, genetically engineered sharks. Franklin is recounting an incident in the Alps when his hiking group was hit by an avalanche. Seven members survived the avalanche; only five made it home, as the group resorted to eating two people to stay alive. The moral here is that, in times of chaos, humans can be their own worst enemy—to survive the sharks, everybody has to stick together. And, well: 

Turns out nature’s pretty lethal, too. —Surrey 

27. The Exorcist, the Steps (1973)

How many other horror flick filming locations can claim to be historic landmarks? Nestled in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., this 75-step staircase is the site of the climactic scene in William Friedkin’s devil-possession masterpiece. It’s not the most gruesome killing on this list, but Father Karras tumbling down all those steps and then lying lifeless at the bottom remains among the most haunting—but apparently not haunting enough to keep tourists away from the stairs. —Sayles

26. Saw III, the Crucifixion Rack (2006)

What gets lost in this sick, sadistic trap is just how good Mpho Koaho’s performance is in this scene. You feel every inch of the rack, Jigsaw’s favorite trap, turn as tears well up in Koaho’s eyes and he screams in pain. Add in the sound of his bones splintering as every limb in his body and eventually his neck turn 260 degrees, and you have yourself a one-of-one Saw moment. It’s easily the best (and hardest to survive) trap of the franchise. —Gayle

25. The Omen, the Nanny (1976) 

Can you imagine anything more scarring than your nanny jumping from a building with a noose around her neck right after shouting, “It’s all for you”? (Well, maybe witnessing a decapitation would at least be equal.) There’s a reason they ran the jump-hang back in 2024’s The First Omen, but only this time, they added fire. —Sayles

24. Final Destination 2, the Highway Pileup (2003)

It’s because of Final Destination 2 that I still don’t follow directly behind a logging truck on the freeway unless I absolutely have to. I can vividly remember the reaction of the theater when that first log came loose from the truck, bounced on the pavement, and careened directly through a policeman’s car. The way the rest of the crash unfolds is both harrowing and hilarious in equal measure. It’s as if each driver forgets how to use their brakes the moment the crash starts. A motorcyclist gets crushed to death by his own bike after getting pinned against a log. A woman watches as a man burns to death. There’s so much fire, chaos, and death, all because this logging truck wasn’t secured correctly. The most ironic detail: I’m pretty sure the driver of the truck is left unscathed. —Morrison

23. A Nightmare on Elm Street, Johnny Depp Past His Bedtime (1984)

Word to the wise: If you’re already tired, watching TV will just put you to sleep at some point. (Don’t believe me? How often have you woken up to Netflix asking whether you want to continue watching whatever season of Suits sent you to Sleepytown?) That’s fine for our reality, where we don’t have a serial killer with razor blades affixed to the dirty leather glove he wears trying to murder you in your dreams via your favorite hobbies (or deepest insecurities). But in 1984’s Nightmare on Elm Street? Where you’re some kid named Glen (Johnny Depp, in his film debut) who is friends with the girl on the block who’s being terrorized by this dreamland destroyer? I hope whatever show he had to watch with his TV resting on his torso was worth it because it was indeed his last. Freddy Krueger’s right arm—the one with the aforementioned razor blades—reached from underneath Glen, quickly wrapped around his abdomen, and PULLED HIM INTO THE BED (along with the TV and his stereo).

Now, the first time you watch this kill, you may wonder: “That’s it? He just gets pulled into the bed? A bit on the nose, no?” Krueger isn’t done, though; as a nasty mic drop, a flood of red liquid—Glen’s blood? Glen’s, um, body in general?—shoots out from the hole Krueger made in Glen’s bed (with Glen), giving his bedroom a gnarly crimson paint job. As the final touches spurt out of Glen’s bed, all you’re left with is the bloodcurdling screams from his mother as she checks on the commotion in his room. This has to be one of the most iconic kills from that film, if not the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise in general. —khal

22. Jason X, Liquid Nitrogen Face Smash (2001)

After accidentally cryogenically freezing himself in a kerfuffle with scientists, Jason unfreezes 445 years later aboard a spaceship whose crew visited the abandoned Crystal Lake Research Facility and took a Jason-shaped souvenir. His first kill to kick off Jason in space? Freezing a scientist’s face in liquid nitrogen and shattering her head on a nearby counter. Such a creative, visually pleasing kill was a treat in an otherwise lackluster flick. —Knisley

21. Scanners, Head Explosions (1981)

The excruciating minute and 11 seconds it takes for Darryl Revok to make the head of another scanner explode is perhaps less remarked on than the explosion itself, which hit screens at a time before sophisticated digital effects—which director David Cronenberg would’ve surely avoided even if they were available. That meant it also came at a time when people asked, “How the hell did they do that?” when leaving the movies. (The answer in this case is a double-barreled shotgun loaded with kosher salt.) But the facial expressions of both Darryl and the ConSec marketer as the former uses his scanning powers are equally unsettling and unforgettable. The way Revok, played by Michael Ironside, contorts his face in deep concentration turns my stomach. He almost looks like a drunk person in a crowded bar trying their hardest not to vomit. The ConSec scanner, played by Louis Del Grande, manages to make his face appear as if it’s imploding. The bloody climax was almost too gory for executives to approve, and it ultimately ended up being so shocking that it’s one of the main things people remember about David Cronenberg’s 1981 masterpiece. —Morrison

20. Bone Tomahawk, the Scalping … and Then Some (2015)

The movie itself can’t live up to this, but Bone Tomahawk’s ass-splitting and scalping combination kill is a must-search on YouTube. Sheriff Franklin Hunt, played by Kurt Russell, and his old, largely useless deputy, named Chicory (Richard Jenkins), are behind bars in an underground jail cell built by freakazoid, human-eating savages they dub “Troglodytes,” who are gearing up for their first major on-screen kill of the film. (Later in the movie, you find out that the Troglodytes cut off their women’s limbs and stab stakes through their eyes while they impregnate them. They’re completely fucked up.) Another deputy, a youngster named Nick, is dragged out of his cell across from Hunt and Chicory, stripped naked, and scalped alive. That’s it, right? No. The monsters then skewer his scalp to the end of a pointed stake and hammer it through the back of his mouth with two hefty swings. That should be enough. But then they flip Nick on his head, split his legs apart, swing a bone tomahawk down on his crotch three times, and then pull him apart to split him in two as his guts pour on the floor. Russell’s crazy ass didn’t turn away once, but I can’t say the same for myself. —Gayle

19. The Wicker Man, the Burning Man (1973)

When we meet Sergeant Neil Howie (Edward Woodward) in the original Wicker Man, he’s a hard man to like. Investigating a young girl’s disappearance on a remote Scottish isle, Howie sticks out like a sore thumb in contrast to the hippie-like locals: He’s devoutly Christian, saving himself for marriage, and just an all-around bad hang. But The Wicker Man’s brilliance lies in how our sympathies slowly sway toward Howie: None of the inhabitants seem overly concerned with the girl’s disappearance, and their worship of pagan gods is a little unsettling. Sure enough, the missing girl was a ruse to lure Howie to the island, where he will be burned alive in an offering to save their dying crops. The juxtaposition between Howie, trapped in a giant Wicker Man set aflame, and the locals’ gleeful celebration of his demise will stick with you—as will the film’s final shot: 

On a totally unrelated note, I’ve taken Scotland off my bucket list. —Surrey 

18. Frankenstein, the Monster Meets the Girl (1931)

All he wants is a friend: Lumbering down to the riverside early on in Frankenstein, Boris Karloff’s Monster is a vision of loneliness, as well as of a terrible sort of innocence. Hence his instant—and ecstatic—connection with the little girl he finds throwing flowers into water, the first person in the movie not to react with horror or revulsion at his massive, reanimated body or cadaverous face. The scene’s sweetness is real, but so is its percolating sense of dread; the flip side of innocence is vulnerability, and it’s to director James Whale’s credit that the ensuing tragedy—in which the Monster tries to integrate the girl into her own game, with lethal results—mostly deepens our empathy for an outcast who knows not what he does. More than 90 years later, the scene remains as chilling, ruthless, and heartbreaking as ever—a miniature masterpiece of bleakness that transcends parody or imitation. —Nayman

17. Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood, the Sleeping Bag (1988)

In the 1988 horror installment Friday the 13th VII: A New Blood, the instrument of death in one of Jason’s most iconic kills isn’t some obvious machete or axe or ice pick. Instead, it’s just a regular ol’ sleeping bag. Talk about campy violence! Early in the film, when Jason encounters a horny coed snuggled in a tent—speaking of which, can we discuss the absolutely bonkers tenor of that poor gal’s pillow talk?!—he knows just what to do: trap her inside her sleeping bag and swing the whole caboodle right into a nearby tree trunk. It takes him only one memorable thwack to finish the job. 

Originally, however, that’s not how the scene was supposed to go. In an original cut of The New Blood, Jason slams the sleeping bag against the tree over and over—a brutal sequence that was one of many in the film to be whittled waaaaay down by the MPAA. (You can check out the originals on YouTube.) Nevertheless, the sleeping bag death was unforgettable enough that it remains one of Jason actor Kane Hodder’s favorite kills. And it lives on: Subsequent franchise installments delighted in the motif, using sleeping bags for bludgeoning bodies and, most terrifyingly, for roasting them. No wonder they call it Gore-Tex, you know? —Baker

16. Se7en, “What’s in the Box?” (1995)

Without those four words, Se7en would still be one of the most gruesomely entertaining crime thrillers of the past 30 years. With them, it’s one of the most memorable movies of all time. It’s impossible to talk about David Fincher’s breakthrough without talking about how it ends, as the cop that Brad Pitt plays mentally breaks down when he realizes that the film’s pseudonymous serial killer has murdered his wife and packaged up her head. “Oh, what’s in the box?” he wails. “What’s in the fucking box?” The moment is excruciating, and you don’t even see what Morgan Freeman’s detective does when he opens it. 

The ending was so bleak that when the movie was in development, Fincher had to fight New Line Cinema executives to keep it. He won that battle, thank God. “There’s nothing wrong with up endings, it’s just that the dark ending of Se7en was what it was about,” Andrew Kevin Walker, who wrote the film, told Uproxx in 2015. “To change the ending to something else was to remove the very heart of the story.” —Siegel

15. Suspiria, Patricia Hingle (1977)

Dario Argento, the main figure in the Italian horror subgenre giallo and often referred to as the “master of horror,” turns graphic violence into high art better than anyone. His 1977 masterpiece, Suspiria, is the perfect example. The film juxtaposes external beauty with the slow-motion stabbing and hanging of Pat Hingle, a ballet student who winds up in a spectacularly pink apartment building and is eventually killed. 

As in most giallo films, we don’t see who’s stabbing Pat—instead, we’re confronted with images of an anonymous knife-wielding hand appearing from off-screen just long enough to pierce flesh. The stabbing motions are all the more haunting when you consider how slow and playful they seem, culminating in a close-up of Pat’s exposed heart being sliced with the tip of the blade. This is all moments before she is thrust through a skylight and her neck catches on a noose, leaving her body to hang there as shards of glass fall into the central courtyard, nearly splitting the skull of Pat’s friend. It’s shocking how visually appealing the whole sequence is, considering the over-the-top violence that’s taking place. —Morrison

14. The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal’s Final Face-Off (1991)

By the time Hannibal Lecter makes his escape in The Silence of the Lambs, we’ve already seen multiple cadavers and body parts, including a pickled head in a jar. But all of these corpses appear under clinical circumstances—all the blood had dried, as it were. We’re also led to believe that Lecter is violent but contained—his potential danger spoken of but put to rest. Until the reveal of Lecter’s macabre tableau, the extent of his capabilities has only been teased. Here, not only does he string up one of the guards assigned to him, entrails dangling from his abdomen, but he borrows the face of the other, fakes a seizure, and is wheeled out by the medical team called to save the victim he is now wearing as a disguise. It’s the perfect crescendo in the film’s orchestration of Lecter’s intellect, clinical precision, detachment, control, and gruesome monstrosity. —Knisley

13. The Shining, Jack’s Cold (1980)

A good test of whether a 20th-century movie scene is iconic is whether it was parodied by The Simpsons in the ’90s. Of course Jack Torrance’s ice-cold death got that treatment. No matter how many times you watch the axe-wielding, maniacal drunk stumble through a snowy hedge maze as Jack Nicholson’s roars become increasingly unintelligible, it’s still terrifying. We don’t see the moment when Jack stops breathing, only the aftermath of the night he spent outside. His mouth is open, his hair is encrusted in ice, and his eyes have rolled back into his head—he’s frozen stiff. It’s a fitting fate for one of the most terrifyingly self-destructive characters in cinematic history. —Alan Siegel

12. Carrie, Knives Out (1976)

Few movies have captured the ecstatic aspects of revenge like Carrie, which is, above all, a fable of righteous retribution: One way or another, everybody who picks on the title character gets theirs, and in spectacular fashion. That includes Carrie’s Bible-thumping gorgon of a mother, played with Oscar-nominated gusto by Piper Laurie; it’s obvious from the start how much Mama White resents—and fears—her daughter, whom she’s decided is the embodiment of her own sin. Typically, matricide is not a crowd-pleasing event, but again, Brian De Palma is a master at stacking the emotional deck; when Carrie comes home from prom, drenched in blood—and with the deaths of about a hundred classmates on her increasingly fragmented conscience—it’s fair enough that she wants to just take a bath in peace. Instead, her mom tries to stab her to death, at which point Carrie decides to return the favor by telekinetically impaling her with a series of flying kitchen knives—the end result being a flesh-and-blood pietà that resembles the creepy Christ figurine stashed in the hall closet. It’s a moment of rapturous, terrible catharsis that breaks our hearts and gets our fists pumping simultaneously, and it sets up the coup de grâce a few minutes later—a seminal jump scare whose victim doesn’t get to die but is instead forced to live on inside her own tormented subconscious. —Nayman

11. Hereditary, Charlie’s Ride Home (2018)

The horror in Hereditary is a slow burn. You know that something is very wrong, but it’s hard to figure out what it is for a long time. Eventually, Ari Aster takes us to the heart of darkness—the cult, the ritual killings, King Paimon—but before any of that becomes clear, we have a much more prosaic kind of terror: a big brother who is desperately trying to get his creepy kid sister to a hospital after a run-in with a severe nut allergy. In another movie, it might have been an exceedingly dark laugh line for little, wheezing Charlie to stick her head out of the car window only to be summarily decapitated at high speed. Here, it’s just dark—something else is still coming, even if it’s not yet clear what it is. Fittingly, King Paimon ultimately receives the crown that was resting on Charlie’s rotting remains. (You can buy your own homage, you sick freak.) —McNear

10. Night of the Living Dead, the Final Scene (1968) 

The climactic moment in the Godfather of zombie movies isn’t gory, but it might be the most viscerally crushing death on this list. The hero of George A. Romero’s opus, a Black man named Ben, selflessly helps a group of white strangers try to survive a ghoul invasion. But when he’s the last one standing, a rifle-toting member of an armed posse approaching the farmhouse that Ben’s holed up in says he hears a noise. But before bothering to confirm that Ben is one of the undead, the sheriff gives the order to “hit him in the head, right between the eyes.” And in an instant, Ben is robbed of the humanity he’d spent the entire film trying to protect. It was a scene that at the time felt—and still feels—all too familiar. 

“I convinced George that the Black community would rather see me dead than saved, after all that had gone on, in a corny and symbolically confusing way,” the late Duane Jones, who played Ben, once said. “The heroes never die in American movies. The jolt of that and the double jolt of the hero figure being Black seemed like a double-barreled whammy.” —Siegel

9. A Nightmare on Elm Street, Tina on the Ceiling (1984)

Before the sequels—and the one-liners, and the late-night show appearances, and the Funko Pops—Freddy Krueger wasn’t fucking around. The extended, excruciating evisceration of Tina Grey (Amanda Wyss) near the beginning of the original A Nightmare on Elm Street is, well, nightmarish—less so in the dream space where Freddy stalks her through a series of dark alleys than in the real world, where we watch along with her boyfriend as her sleeping body gets dragged out of bed, into the air, up the wall, and onto the ceiling, gushing torrents of blood as it goes. The combination of physical stunts, choreography, acting, practical special effects, and sound design is horrifying, establishing the film’s supernatural rules with a mix of economy and showmanship. Of all the baroque, over-the-top kills in the Nightmare series, the first one may be the best. —Nayman

8. Jaws, Opening Scene (1975)

The opening of Jaws is so terrifying that it forever changed Americans’ relationship with the ocean. Anyone who’s swum in the sea since the release of the film in 1975 has experienced that brief pang of fear at the realization that something deadly may be hunting them in this vast and mysterious body of water, which we know less about than outer space. The scene is especially unnerving because the drunken man at the shore fails to hear the screams of Chrissie Watkins, played by Susan Backlinie, as she slowly, achingly gets pulled underwater by a shark we can’t see. The contrast between her bloodcurdling cries for help and the utter silence as she disappears into the dark water makes this one of the most ominous openings of any movie ever. —Morrison

7. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Trespassers Will Be Slaughtered (1974)

In 1974, we received a gritty, dirty independent film that changed the course of horror as we know it. Not only did Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre bring us the original redneck cannibal family, it gave us the infamous Leatherface. When Kirk, one of the road-tripping protagonists, enters the Sawyer farmhouse to barter for some of the gas used by the house’s generators, he makes a fatal mistake: In Texas, you don’t go inside a house without an invitation. Kirk travels up a small ramp at the end of the entryway, and through the doorframe at the top of the ramp, Leatherface steps into view, complete with his skin mask and butcher’s apron. Without a moment’s hesitation, Leatherface strikes Kirk in the head with a sledgehammer, knocking him to the floor, dead. The speed and visceral brutality set the bar for future violence in the horror genre. —Knisley

6. The Blair Witch Project, the Basement Corner (1999) 

For a movie whose power mostly depends on keeping things out of sight—and thereby activating our mind’s eye as a directorial presence—The Blair Witch Project doesn’t lack for startling images. Any list would have to begin with its final shot, captured in a flurry of chaotic handheld choreography before stopping to show us poor, doomed Mike standing forlornly in the corner of Rustin Parr’s abandoned (?) cottage, quietly awaiting his fate. Besides paying off some earlier exposition about the methodology of the film’s supernatural antagonist, the scene conjures up some diabolical subtext about spectatorship; after all, it’s not Mike who dies in the shot, but Heather, whose murder is signified by the camera falling to the floor and going back in sync with its operator’s severed consciousness. A decade before David Chase symbolically whacked the viewer at the end of The Sopranos, The Blair Witch Project’s death-tinged POV climax raised the kind of existential goosebumps that transcend gore or special effects. —Nayman

5. Halloween, Michael Myers and His Sister (1978)

Halloween—John Carpenter’s 1978 indie horror flick that both began a dense franchise and made the slasher film a thing—starts with a nightmare to which you just happen to have a front-row seat. It takes place on Halloween night in 1963 and is shot from the perspective of a 6-year-old Michael Myers, whom we watch murder his sister after a night with her boyfriend. We’re with young Michael every step of the way, from peering into a window and seeing his sister making out with her boyfriend to grabbing the knife and a mask to, at one point, looking up to focus on the image of the knife in his hand plunging into the body of his sister.

There may be no more fitting way to start a film like Carpenter’s first Halloween. Taking us inside Michael’s head when he acted on whatever feeling was gnawing at him sets a real sense of fear for what happens when that man is back on the streets. Witnessing this death in that brutal, up-front manner is the main reason why Michael Myers has been one of the horror villains you love to watch … repeatedly knife someone to death. Kicking off this film with that particular presentation of death emphasized just how menacing—and frightening—Myers would later become, in turn adding to his longevity as a franchise star. —khal

4. The Thing, the Defibrillator (1982)

There’s something inherently funny about Dr. Copper’s attempt to perform CPR on a frozen body, only for the person’s chest to completely cave in after the first compression. What isn’t funny is when that same concave chest comes alive and cuts off the doctor’s arms. It’s perhaps the most gruesome and outlandish stunt in a cult classic that critics referred to at the time as “instant junk” and “wretched excess.” The chest cavity grows a set of shark teeth that easily takes off whole arms before opening up, jack-in-the-box-style, and revealing some sort of gross centipede-looking monster partially made of human intestines, complete with a screaming head who seems to be saying, “I didn’t ask to be born.” —Morrison

3. Scream, Casey Becker (1996)

Do you like scary movies? may have gotten all the glory, but the line I’ll never forget from the silly, shocking opening scene in Wes Craven’s 1996 modern classic, Scream, comes when the pushy mystery caller asks the nice teen who’s home alone for her name: I wanna know who I’m looking at. Not since “the call is coming from inside the house” had eight words over the phone spooked me so much, coming back to mind every time my parents went out or I babysat.

That nice teen’s name, of course, was Drew Barrymore. OK, technically the character was Casey Becker. But it was Drew Barrymore’s face that had been all over the marketing materials for Scream. And it was Drew Barrymore who later recalled that she was originally cast for the lead role of Sidney in the film … until she suggested that it might be more true to Scream’s intended meta-critique-homage tone—and also probably just a lot cooler—if she played someone who died right away instead.

Craven was down, Bob Weinstein was mad, audiences were rocked, and a franchise was born. Casey’s backyard murder is an all-timer, demented and inspired, a sequence crackling with cheeky horror-core tributes, remarkable cruelty—and those terrible sounds of overdone Jiffy Pop and landline static. (Ugh, moms are always picking up when you’re on the other line!) Casey Becker may have made a few iffy decisions once she answered that phone, but Drew Barrymore? She made the right call. —Baker

2. Alien, the Chest Burster (1979)

The iconic chest-burster scene starts as a laugh-around-the-table moment at dinner. The whole crew is buzzing, Dennis (Yaphet Kotto) is making fellatio jokes, and Thomas (John Hurt) is wolfing down some shitty food. The fun stops when Thomas starts to choke and proceeds to writhe in pain on the dinner table. It’s a loud, calamitous moment until it isn’t. Immediately after Thomas’s chest squirts red blood through his shirt and onto the ceiling, the entire room falls to silence for just a second. Director Ridley Scott worked tirelessly with the practical effects team to capture the actors’ genuine reactions and to create one of the most horrific (yet still somehow cute) baby chest aliens. The tail slither out of the gate, combined with the animatronic neck turns, is just so good.

I can’t even imagine the audience’s shock when they saw this in the theater in 1979. I first watched this film when it was recommended to me by a high school friend who said, “You have to see the chest alien.” It’s not just one of the most iconic kills in movie history, but also one of the most iconic scenes. It’s a true one-of-one moment, an unreplicable kill (and birth). —Gayle

1. Psycho, the Shower (1960)

Could it be anything else? Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is on the short list of movies that everyone knows about—even if they haven’t seen it—and the enduring influence of the shower scene speaks for itself. At this point in the film, our protagonist Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) has a change of heart and decides she’ll return the $40,000 she’s stolen from her employer after she spends the night at the Bates Motel. Of course, Marion doesn’t live to see the morning, courtesy of Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), who viciously stabs her to death in the shower. 

Killing off your protagonist midway through a film is shocking stuff in any era, but it’s the ultimate flex that Hitchcock managed to insert such a provocative sequence of implied nudity and violence when the Hays Code was in effect. 

Psycho’s shower scene has since been parodied more times than I can count and inspired the horror genre to consider whether man might be the scariest monster of all. After all these years, Marion’s death still cuts deep. —Surrey

The Ringer Staff