22 of the Most Suspenseful Scenes in Movie History

More than any other emotion, there are levels of fear that are best experienced as a spectrum. Like, if you want a movie to make people happy, you obviously hire John Goodman, but you don’t really benefit from slowly ramping up the Goodman factor. You can blow your Goodwad early and often.

Likewise, you can induce fear in a viewer by simply throwing the scariest stuff imaginable at them, but it might not be the best strategy. Maintaining a degree of tension until they start pulling out their hair one strand at a time is far more constructive if you’re looking for that coveted nervous breakdown effect.

But suspense requires skill that mere shock value doesn’t. To understand what makes a good scene suspenseful, one must look to the masters. To that end, Redditor Horrorgirl367 asked r/Movies for “scenes that are a masterclass in suspense,” and a masterclass they received.