Entering our hellishly horrific library of the scariest horror movie moments ever this week is the harrowingly scarring opening scene in It Follows. (Curse you, sexually contracted entity!)
Upon releasing in 2014, It Follows shocked audiences worldwide with its grimly imaginative invention of a sexually transmitted curse that sinisterly stalks its victims to death. Or, in other words, an ominous supernatural entity contracted through doing THE deed.
Part supernatural part psychological thriller, David Robert Mitchell's haunting take on the lingering aftereffects of unprotected sex was so hideously nightmarish it had promiscuous high schoolers rubbering up through fear of demonic possession for all eternity.
But one scene, in particular, appears so viscerally disturbing and visually jarring that it deserves special praise.
In the beginning sequence of It Follows, the camera tracks a young girl seemingly fleeing from her boyfriend's house. Struck with indescribable fear, we track her distressed footsteps to a secluded beach.
Clearly experiencing emotional turmoil, we witness a wide-angle shot of the girl alone and afraid on the beach, accompanied by an unsettling score as the scene slowly and suspensefully pans out.
Suddenly, from out of leftfield, we cut to an oppressively inescapable shot of her mangled corpse. Which, in a gruesomely jarring display of body horror, shows her leg hideously snapped back and severed at the knee.
It's a terrifying scene of dislocation, impossible to erase from the psyche. But what makes it so ingeniously unnerving is that, as the viewer, we spend the remainder of It Follows dangling over a knife's edge - chattering our teeth in pure terror over what might come next.
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