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    Films — Animation 
  • The sound of Jafar laughing in Aladdin, especially his laugh at the end of Prince Ali the reprise.
  • The haunting mechanical deep-bass roar of the Leviathan in Atlantis: The Lost Empire that sounds like the humpback whale from Hell. Especially when it's hunting them through the underwater caves, and they don't know where it is yet, but all they can hear is this horrible noise over the radio...
  • The Brave Little Toaster has the electromagnetic crane in the junkyard emit a deeply creepy low buzzing, made worse by the fact that it doesn't speak.
  • Parodied in Kung Fu Panda — the jar that contains a thousand souls makes a deliberately ominous "oooOOOooo" every time someone even touches its pieces.
  • Puss in Boots: The Last Wish: The Wolf stalking Puss throughout the film has a calling card of whistling a haunting melody. It's unnerving when Puss first encounters him at the bar, but once the Wolf makes clear how big of a threat he is, any time his whistling is heard throughout the rest of the film sends Puss into a full-on panic attack.
  • In Turning Red, Mei's nightmare is filled with some... rather unsettling sounds (these are even on the film's soundtrack, so you can have pleasant dreams while listening to it).

    Films — Live Action 
  • 1408: A cheerful song by The Carpenters, playing on the clock radio even after it's been unplugged. "We've only just begun..."
  • The Alien series:
    • The motion trackers in Aliens. Not only does the rising tone of the detection chime become outright terrifying, especially in the tense build-up to the "Last Stand" scene, but even the soft "paf" of the tracker when it's not detecting anything causes fear because you just know what it's leading to. Tip: if you want to wake up quick, program this sound to be your alarm clock's sound the night after watching Aliens. Additionally the screeches and hisses of the Aliens themselves are quite terrifying.
    • There's also the infamous siren. It's made all the more unnerving because it isn't a traditional-sounding siren, instead being a rhythmic, high-pitched noise that sounds like someone screaming.
  • Alien Abduction (2014) uses sound to great effect as the Morris family are chased by aliens, in particular a low-pitched horn reminiscent of War of the Worlds (2005), the whirring of their tractor beam, and the ear-grating screeches of the beings themselves.
  • Altitude: After the characters have been flying through the storm for a while, and it doesn't seem to end, and their altimeter says they should be in the stratosphere... all they can hear on the radio is this horrible screaming sound.
  • A Nightmare on Elm Street: One, two, Freddy's coming for you...
  • Annihilation (2018) has a bear whose roaring is mixed with the dying screams of the people it kills, who are implied to still be alive inside it.
    • The hideous distorted-droning noises made by the Humanoid that attacks Lena in the climax.
  • Apaches: Sharon screaming and crying in pain while she slowly dies from poisoning in the middle of the night after unintentionally drinking weed killer earlier that day. This particular scene is one of the film's most nightmare inducing moments, because of those horrible agonized shrieks.
  • The movie Audition had "Kiri kiri kiri kiri kiiiii....". Coupled with a SLOW Eye Scream.
  • Berberian Sound Studio, being about horror movie sound engineering, is utterly LOADED with these.
  • The lone shriek heard while all the main surviving characters of The Birds are huddled in the living room, terrified at the idea of having to pass a whole night under siege by the eponymous volatiles.
  • An innocent child's laughter should be heartwarming, right? Take that very same laugh, place it in the woods in the dead of night. Courtesy of The Blair Witch Project.
    • "The Cellar." It is literally the sound of being trapped. And it is horrifying.
  • Roy Batty howling like a wolf as he pursues Rick Deckard through the Bradbury Building in the climax of Blade Runner.
  • Blue Velvet: In response to all the traumatic events he's going through, Jeffrey has a nightmare which includes a distorted memory of the villain Frank Booth making an almost mechanical sounding roar of pure rage.
  • Bone Tomahawk: The absolutely inhuman howling and shrieking sounds that the Troglodytes make, which can be heard from miles away. It turns out that they accomplish this by inserting an animal's trachea bone into their throats in some kind of primitive Body Horror surgery.
  • The 1975 film Bug has the raspy, falcon-like shrieking sound that the titular insects make in their final form, when they emerge from the pit and come after Parmiter...
  • Captain America: The Winter Soldier: The titular Winter Soldier's Leitmotif of what sounds like a electronically-pitched wailing siren, only modulated to sound uncannily like someone screaming.
  • Carrie (1976) has the "Psycho" Strings that announce Carrie's power.
  • Children of Men: "You know that high-pitched ringing sound you hear? That eeeeeeeeee? That's the sound of the ear cells dying, like their swan song. Once it's gone you'll never hear that frequency again. Enjoy it while it lasts."
  • Citizenfour has an eerie, static-y noise that appears whenever the US government is doing something sneaky like sending surrounding Edward Snowden's house (and his unsuspecting girlfriend) with "maintenance vans" shortly after Snowden's leaks hit the news or detaining one of the reporters' partners for nine hours at an airport under "national security".
  • A Clockwork Orange and "I'm singin' in the rain, just singin' in the rain..."
  • Clover Field:
    • Clover's roar.
    • The emergency sirens and evacuation alarms near the end of the film.
    • For some, the lice monsters' roars can count, too.
  • Come and See: There are two. The first is after standing mere yards from a bombing, Flyora gets deafed, and a sharp tinnitus ring plays over the soundtrack for several minutes as the boy wanders around the forest in shell-shocked panic. The second is the sound of the Nazi spy-plane flying overhead which sounds like a plane run through a droning synthesizer and always signals that something terrible is about to happen whenever it’s on-screen.
  • The Dark Knight has three examples, all of which involve The Joker.
    • First off, his Leitmotif. Just that one, screeching note (made by using razor blades on a piano string) is enough to terrify you.
    • Second of all, his laugh. Not your average Evil Laugh — a wheezing, high pitched one that makes it very clear the clown is out of his mind.
    • And, of course, "Why. So. Serious?!"
  • The "ping" sound of the sonar picking up the enemy sub in Das Boot as well as the creaking ones of the U-96's hull as she approaches crush depth.
  • Dead Silence: All the normal sounds that you should be hearing slowing down, distorting, and finally fading out, leaving absolute silence behind.
  • District 9:
    • The metallic droning screech given off when the spaceship starts up.
    • There is a high-pitched noise as if one's ears are ringing whenever the fluid's effects on Wikus become apparent but the exact extent of it isn't known yet. It's first heard when he's sprayed in the face with it, then when he throws up, when he experiences a nosebleed, when his fingernails come off, and when he trows up again at home.
  • A literal example in Dogma, where the fallen angel Asriel makes his presence known with wails of suffering each time he enters.
  • Dracula (1931). Renfield's laugh. "Nhnn, hnn, hnn, hnn, hnnnnn..."
  • Drag Me to Hell uses this quite effectively. For example, in one scene, Christine is alone in her house at night when she starts hearing strange noises, including screeching sounds, creaking, and thumps from above. The lights then go out, some hanging pots and pans suddenly clang together, and then light enters the house showing the shadow of a demonic figure. An invisible force then blasts her backwards into a counter, leaving her with a bloody lip.
  • In the movie Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story the presence of the samurai armor clad demon is accompanied by convincingly realistic off-screen shrieks of agony and fear. Considering where this demon had just supposedly come from, this might be the most literal example of this trope yet.
  • Dunkirk, appropriately, uses the Stuka Scream to this effect. In a generally very quiet movie, still scenes will be interrupted by a stomach-turning shriek after which everything stops while the men onscreen do whatever they can think of to save themselves. That sound isn't the plane engine but a special siren, added to the real Stukas specifically for its psychological effects.
  • Dumb and Dumber: "You wanna hear the most annoying sound in the world?".
  • Eraserhead: Throughout the whole movie, there are a lot of jump scares involving noise, like the artificial chickens, the demon baby thing getting sick, and the sound of a baby crying. For about fifteen minutes straight. The last ten minutes or so are nothing but high pitched static and the sounds of a baby screaming.
  • Event Horizon: The sound of a hand sliding against tent material...
    • "Liberate.... me..." Free me. Except that's all they could hear over the horrible distortion and grisly screams. It's later found out to be "liberate tuteme ex infernis", or "save yourself from hell." And the sounds were the crew and ship tearing each other — and themselves — apart in a horrible orgy of violence and madness. One of the more literal interpretations of the trope in question.
  • Indio's watch chime in For a Few Dollars More. Every time it plays, you know someone is going to die horribly.
  • Friday the 13th: Chi-chi-chi-ha-ha-ha..., officially spelled Ki-Ki-Ki-ma-ma-ma, meant to resemble Jason's voice saying "kill kill kill, mom mom mom" in Mrs. Voorhees' mind.
  • The opening action sequence of Gangs of New York has "Shimmy She Wobble" and "Signal to Noise", both of which are not pleasant to hear. "Shimmy She Wobble" is heard as the Dead Rabbits are marching through their cavernous brewery out to the street; it's a slightly neurotic fife-and-drum march, which when paired with an army of grotesque thugs and their barbaric surroundings is really quite creepy. "Signal to Noise", by Peter Gabriel, plays during the fight with the Nativists in the square outside; it starts out merely grim and ominous, unsettlingly building toward some uncertain unpleasantness...and then, an ear-splitting, electronic "SHREEEEEEEE!"
  • Get Out (2017) turns a spoon scraping a teacup into this during the scene where Chris is hypnotized\brainwashed. He downright collapses the next time he hears it.
  • Godzilla: Boom....boom.....boom....boom... "SKREEEEEOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNK!" So iconic that the first teaser trailer for Godzilla (2014) shown at Comic Con managed to tip people off as to what it was for and introduce the Darker and Edgier tone by having a frightening update of the roar sound out over a blank screen. Needless to say, Godzilla's roar was best described by the 2014 film's director Gareth Edwards himself: "A roar of nature. A roar of rage."
    • Godzilla (2014): Besides the title character, there's also his mortal enemies of the week, the MUTOs; have a listen here. In context, that's what the female sounds like while building her nest in San Francisco.
    • Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019):
      • The ambient, musical and heart-pounding growls, shrieks and wails of the Big Bad himself, King Ghidorah, here. The Death Song of Three Storms indeed. "REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEIKIKIKIKIKIKIKIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!"
      • And Rodan's cries, here, which sound like enraged screams that don't sound even human. "KEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOOARRRRRRRRRRRRNGHHHH!!!!!"
    • Godzilla vs. Kong: Then there's the shrill, warbling, unnatural-sounding roars and clicks of Mechagodzilla, which furthermore have Ghidorah's wails and shrieks audibly mixed into them several times once Ghidorah's Soul Fragment hijacks the Mecha.
  • In the original Halloween, at the end, after Loomis shoots Michael six times, and the body just disappears, we hear the main theme, with Michael's heavy breathing in the background.
  • In The Haunting (1963), some of the scariest scenes involve something pounding its way up and down the hall...and then hammering violently on the bedroom door.
  • The Haunted Mansion (2003): The ringing telephone in the middle of the empty secret corridor.
  • Hereditary: The movie's soundtrack is an atonal, droning, buzzing creature.
    • Also, Charlie's tongue clicking, which the movie likes to sprinkle throughout even after she dies.
    • Have fun with the throat-rending, animalistic scream of a mother who has suffered the death of a child by finding that child's headless body in the backseat of her car.
  • Hostel Part II: A woman rubbing the tip of the scythe against Heather Matarazzo's skin, and then her screams.
  • I Am Legend manages to turn a window closing into the scariest thing ever.
    • The terrifying screams made by the dark seekers. Note that unlike most similar effects these were not a combination of animal sounds or created in a studio but were actually created by a single voice artist, Mike Patton.
  • This sound in Inception.
    • And if that doesn't give you chills, try listening to it for five minutes straight. Spooky.
      • BWOOOM!!!!
    • Some people have suggested that it's "Non, je ne regrette rien" that is slowed down to a crawl.
  • The shriek at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978).
  • You hear that? That's Sergeant Donny Donowitz. But you might know him better by his nickname...
  • It: The inhuman noise Pennywise makes whenever he gets those fangs.
  • In Jason and the Argonauts, there's the creaking sounds of the gigantic living bronze statue Talos, which the Argonauts can do nothing but run away from.
  • In Jaws when Hooper inspects Ben Gardner's boat, there is a horrific shriek that accompanies the sudden appearance of the poor fisherman's corpse.
  • The Ju-on films, and their remakes, The Grudge films. The croaking sound made by Kayako (her death rattle) will haunt your nightmares for weeks. Same with Toshio's piercing cat meow.
    • The No Budget Ju-on ripoff Ju-Rei used the same croaking sound effect for some of its ghosts.
  • The earth-shaking noise (and the water rippling usually coupled with it) whenever the T. rex is walking in Jurassic Park (1993). You are so screwed now...
    • To a slightly lesser extent, the sound of the enclosure wires snapping, the purportedly high voltage electric wires that is the only boundary between the animals and the visitors...
    • The raptors tapping their claws in the kitchen chase scene. The whistling-chirping sounds the raptors make to communicate are also very unsettling.
    • There's also the birdlike chittering of the turkey-sized Dilophosaurus. Not really all that scary in itself, and in fact kind of adorable. But once you realize that little cutie is surprisingly ferocious, and can spit poison...
  • Kill Bill: Elle Driver, the most despicable of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad thugs, casually whistling "Twisted Nerve" as she prepares to administer a lethal injection to the Bride while disguised as a nurse.
  • In Kiss Me Deadly there's the hideous, dissonant sounds when the mysterious suitcase is opened. It's supposed to be a nuclear explosion gearing up, but it sounds more like something out of Hell itself.
  • A camera flashbulb in one scene from Kong: Skull Island, not to mention the hideous snarls and roars of the Skullcrawler monsters.
  • The screeching synthesizer chords as Phyllis is stabbed to death in The Last House on the Left.
  • Gabriel's horn in Legion, which sounds like the sky turned into a big sub-woofer.
  • Les Misérables (2012): The unholy sound of Javert's spine cracking as he jumps into a river and hits a stone partition.
  • In The Lord of the Rings:
    • Moria has the drums...drums in the deep... doom, doom, doom... Best of all, when the first drum is heard, everyone in the audience and in the scene can tell that the shit has hit the fan.
    • The Nazgûl screeching. It's so horrible that in universe it causes people to just fall where they are and scream while covering their ears. Created by recording and blending numerous sounds, including co-producer Fran Walsh screaming. She had a throat infection at the time. Fans joked that Jackson got her to make that sound by telling her he was going to do a film of The Silmarillion next.
    • From The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring; that low rumble signalling the Balrog's approach.
  • Lost Highway: The sound of the Mystery Man laughing.
  • The Loved Ones tells the story of a deranged girl who kidnaps a boy and tortures him. One of the first things she does is inject his vocal cords with bleach to silence him. When she eventually begins her Cold-Blooded Torture his resulting screams are this trope times a thousand.
  • Man of Steel gives us General Zod's terraforming devices and ships, which emit this horrible droning noise that even makes the ground shake.
  • The Millennium Trilogy: That scream in Men Who Hate Women. It will haunt you in your dreams, as well as return later in the series.
  • The squawk Bing's violin makes when the shadows swallow him in MirrorMask.
  • Monty Python and the Holy Grail for such a silly, entertaining movie, the eerie howls that can occasionally be heard in the background (such as when Galahad's limping towards Castle Anthrax) are genuinely disturbing. Can you imagine being in the rain, wounded, locked outside a castle, listening to those mournful howls come closer and closer?
  • The really loud Bug Buzz produced by scarab beetles in The Mummy Trilogy. Especially since these scarab beetles are capable of killing you and the most effective weapon against them is a flamethrower.
  • Subverted in My Cousin Vinny. Seeking a quiet place to rest, Vinny and Lisa have borrowed a cabin in the forest. The silence is broken by a horrific screech, Vinny jumps up WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT and starts shooting at random into the trees. The culprit, a screech owl that could fit in the palm of your hand, merely blinks and turns around on its branch.
  • Night of the Demon features a high-pitched chittering sound that precedes the appearance of said demon, or at least threatens imminent arrival.
  • Nope: Screaming horses and later, screaming people. More often than not, it means the UFO is near, either because they're reacting to it or they've been eaten by it and aren't dead yet. Although, given the horse sounds Jean Jacket was making before the Star Lasso Experience, it's possible the alien had learned to mimic its prey.
  • Romero's Of the Dead films:
    • Night of the Living Dead (1968) did this a couple of times - the zombie feast was understated and otherworldly; the death of Helen Cooper was a series of highly distorted screams; even the last bit of music during the photo montage of the posse disposing of the bodies...
    • In Day of the Dead (1985) one character's head is slowly pulled off by a horde of zombies. As he screams, his vocal cords are pulled taut and finally snap...
  • Oblivion (2013): The drones', well, electronic droning, consisting of dissonant warbles which almost sound like an attempt to form words. In practice, they resemble someone hitting a digital keyboard at random notes; in effect, it's an extremely unsettling "voice."
  • One Missed Call has the ringtones. Here is the American version, and here is the Japanese version. Both qualify, although YMMV on which fits this trope more.
  • The Orphanage:
    • The screaming, invisible ghost children.
    • The knock on the wall game that the protagonist plays with one of the ghosts. She has to face the wall to knock on the wall and say a little rhyme and each time she turns around, the ghost is a little bit closer.
    • And Tomás's rasping breathing.
  • Paranormal Activity
    • The trigger sound of the presence arriving to do its business, which sounds like some sort of rumbling, which was probably meant to be the audio track being distorted by the presence.
    • The footsteps of the demon 'walking' down the hall during the preliminary hauntings turn out to mirror the shuffling noises we hear just before the 'pop out and scare you' moment in the last scene.
    • Katie talking about her paranormal experiences that include hearing long scratching sounds and the calling of her name.
  • The titular Piranha announce themselves with a watery echoing gargling/burbling chitter. It's creepy to young impressionable ears, but when you're older it sounds like a flock of scuba-diving turkeys.
  • Pontypool: Sydney Briar is alive. Sydney Briar is alive. Sydney Briar is alive.
  • Predator.
    • The rasping, clicking sound of the predator.
    • How about it playing back the soldiers' conversation?
    • Billy's laugh is pretty disturbing on it's own, but when the Predator repeats it at the end of the film, it's downright chilling.
  • From Predators, when they realize the Mexican dude is dead, but the Predator keeps playing his voice. Then it starts playing some variations of that same voice. It sounded like a five-second chorus of disturbingly calm souls begging for help FROM HELL.
  • The Princess Bride:
    "Do you know what that sound is, your Highness? Those are the shrieking eels! If you don't believe me, just wait— they always grow louder when they're about to feast on human flesh!"
  • The Emergency Broadcast from The Purge Universe that announces the commencement of the annual Purge is treated like this In-Universe, given that it basically means anyone out on the streets is going to be stuck in a whirling vortex of terror and bloodshed with no one to help them. Bonus points for the actual siren at the end of the announcement that indicates that all laws have been suspended for basically one-upping the Silent Hill air raid siren. Have a listen, why don't ya, and good luck getting to sleep tonight.
  • Wet sneakers in Resident Evil (2002). Think it's a survivor? Dead wrong, it's a zombie with a broken foot.
  • Red State: And I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see. The horns of the apocalypse sound an awful lot like an iPod playing shofar blasts over an air raid siren.
  • The squeaking, creaking sounds the Wheelers make as they roll around in Return to Oz, and especially their laughs.
  • In the American remake of The Ring, the cursed videotape contains an odd, rising-and-falling-in-pitch squeaking sound that loops constantly. It's scary because it quickly becomes associated with Samara's attacks, but the repetition — it's the exact same sound every time — is creepy on its own.
  • Ringu:
    • The videotape contains a grating, high-pitched squeaking sound which is heard multiple times throughout the movie. It is creepy. Also, during the ending, a single, high-pitched squeak is heard repeatedly when Sadako is coming for Ryuji... and it only rises in pitch as she gets closer to emerging from the TV.
    • The barely-audible speech of the "Towel-Headed Man" from the video (used twice in the first film and then used once towards the end of Ring 2) will haunt you.
    • There's also a short, incredibly high-pitched whine (for those of you watching the Tape: it's the sound of the finger pushing down into the nail) that tends to come up every once in a while.
    • You'll also never listen to forest sounds, like insects and birds, the same way. (These precede the infamous Well Scene.)
  • The Rocky Horror Picture Show:
  • Saving Private Ryan has the approaching German tank's clanking noises that makes the soldiers shudder after a calm and funny conversation, knowing that only a few of them will survive the final battle.
  • In Serenity, as the titular ship sneaks through a Reaver fleet, the crew can hear the screams of the Reavers' captives through the comm. Then a spotlight comes on...
  • The Silence of the Lambs:
    • "Thhhp-thp-thp-thp-thp-thp-thp-thp."
    • "Good evening, Clarice."
    • Buffalo Bill clicking his night vision lenses into place and turning them on.
  • Simon's voice from Session 9. But especially the way he says that last line, over the final shot drawing away from the abandoned asylum, just before the credits roll and shortly after watching everybody die except Gordon, who went Ax-Crazy and killed them all. "And where do you live, Simon?" "I live...in the weak...and the wounded, Doc."
  • In The Sign of Four: Sherlock Holmes' Greatest Case, the distinctive, rhythmic clopping sound of Small's wooden leg is enough to drive Major Sholto to near-insanity.
  • Clicking noises and baby monitors. A winning combination in Signs.
  • Silent Hill:
  • Sleepaway Camp: That disturbing hissing/moaning sound that Angela/Peter makes at the end.
  • In Sound of Horror, an invisible dinosaur emits ear-piercing screeches as he stalks unsuspecting humans across a remote countryside.
  • In SpaceCamp, two klaxons go off when Atlantis' oxygen reserves run out during Andie and Max's EVA. Kevin has to flip two switches to shut off the sounds. It didn't mean those on-board were going to drop dead right at that moment, but it did mean they only had whatever oxygen was left in the cabin atmosphere. So all they could do was wait for Andie and Max to bring back reserve tanks stored on Space Station Daedalus.
  • The sound of Doc Ock's approach during the balcony scene in Spider-Man 2. As Roger Ebert describes in his review: "We hear him coming, hammering his way toward us like the drums of hell."
  • The music pieces that play for the tapes in Sinister.
  • Star Trek: The Motion Picture
    • The blaster beam sound associated with V'ger tends to be this.
    • Lori Ciani's death scream in the transporter.
  • Star Trek Into Darkness: The sound of the U.S.S. Vengeance racing up to you in warp, that metallic humming sound you hear before it starts raining phaser-y death.
  • Star Wars
    • Vader Breath: HHHHHHGGHHH-PHRRRRRR. HHHHHGGGHHH-PHHHHRRRR. Especially in Rogue One. If the noise of that ominous breathing echoing out of the featureless darkness wasn't pure unfiltered Nightmare Fuel before the first anthology film, it certainly is after.
    • The noise Palpatine makes as he jumps at the Jedi in Revenge of the Sith. It's a technique known as a Force Scream.
    • The unmistakable, bone-cracking bass rumble of someone being Force-choked.
    • The sound of Kylo Ren forcibly scanning someone's mind for information sounds like rocks being broken in a distant thunderstorm, and is incredibly painful in-universe to boot.
    • The distinctive rolling and clattering sounds of droidekas rolling down a hallway and then unfolding.
    • The voices of the Death Troopers, which, instead of being natural voices with a filter applied, sounds like a horribly distorted inhuman radio-crunching sound.
    • Everything about Jabba's palace; the screams of possibly sentient droids being tormented by a sociopath, Oola's screams of terror as she's devoured by the Rancor, those damned gates opening up for R-2 and 3PO, the high-pitched cackle of his pet Salacious Crumb, even Jabba's distant and derisive laughter can be terrifying with the right timing. All of these are a testament to Ben Burt's sound design, and one damned good screamer.
    • There's also the sound that the TIE fighters make, a horrible screaming noise that is the herald of one of the chief symbols of the Empire.
    • In contrast to the smooth vibrating hum of a Jedi's lightsaver being activated, Kylo Ren's lightsaber makes a uniquely harsh, crackling hiss that reflects his unstable personality.
    • Sith lightsabers in general make deep growling or hissing sounds when ignited, to set them apart from the "cleaner" sounds made by Jedi sabers. Notably, Sith ignition sounds are used when an evil character wields a Jedi lightsaber as well, such as when the brutal General Grievous ignites those he collected from Jedi as battle trophies, or when Anakin is about to start killing the younglings.
  • The Strangers: QUICK SILVERGIRL—-QUICKSILVER GIRL—-QUICKSILVER GIRL---QUICKSILVER---QUICKSILVER---QUICK---QUICK---QUICK---QUICK-
  • The bizarrely atonal snarls, squeals, and roars that the alien makes when attacking in Super 8. Especially when it lets out what sounds disturbingly like laughter. The sound designers really earned their overtime pay on that one.
  • The ghastly mechanical-sounding GROAAAAAAN noise that plays whenever a Terminator shows up. Terrifying, yet awesome at the same time.
    • Especially the repetitive version of this accompanying the T-1000.
  • The Texas Chain Saw Massacre: *chk-whrrr*...it's only a camera flash bulb going off, but still...
  • They Look Like People: Whenever Wyatt suspects that the monsters are near, the sound drops out and is overwhelmed by an ominous buzzing sound, like the swarming of flies.
  • The Thing (1982):
    • The blood test scene where MacReady casually puts a heated wire to a tray of Palmer's blood and the blood explodes with a hideous screeching sound. It should be hilarious but it's horrifying.
    • The Thing is overall one of the greatest masters of this trope in cinema. The scene where the lights go out in Fuchs' room (it only attacks in the dark) and as he walks to the door with a candle, a shadow darts by with a... sound so alien, there are no words in the English language to describe it.
    • The Bennings-Thing's scream. It still disturbs many fans of the movie. And in some fanfics, it causes a reaction of horror in the individual cells of any non-Thing life form.
    • The combinations of sounds from the Jed/Kennel Thing. Especially that insect droning.
  • The ticking of the Geiger counter that heralds the approach of the title creature in The Thing from Another World.
  • In Titanic (1997), the ship herself can be heard groaning louder and louder as the film progresses. The passengers are all too aware of what these sounds mean, especially when the top levels of the ship start going under water. The groaning directly before the grand staircase dome breaks and the ship splits in half are downright ominous and haunting.
  • In the second Tremors 2: Aftershocks, about 48 minutes into the movie the Graboid screams, and it is one of the most chilling sounds you'll ever hear.
  • The Troll Hunter has an absolutely nerve wrecking build-up to the first troll being revealed. First, flashing lights in the distance accompanied by the sound of trees being uprooted. Then, the audible sound of some very heavy footsteps. Wait... is that growling?
  • In 2001: A Space Odyssey, there's the wailing and high-pitched noise ("Requiem" by Ligeti) that the Monolith appears to make. Which sounds like the voices of hell.
  • Under the Shadow: In-Universe examples are the deep bass air raid sirens, and the sounds of explosions outside, which sends all the tenants dashing for this dark room that's presumably safe from being bombed by Iraqi missiles.
  • In-Universe in The War Game, where a nuclear blast wave is described as resembling "the sound of an enormous door, slamming in the depths of Hell".
  • The sound the war machines make in the The War of the Worlds (1953) when they move. You hear that eerie reverbed chiming sound, you know they're coming, and there is no stopping them.
  • War of the Worlds (2005):
  • "Warriors, come out to pla-ay!" *clinkclinkclink*
  • Judge Doom's high pitched voice in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
    "Remember me, Eddie? When I killed your brother, I talked just... like... THIS!"
  • The Wizard of Gore has a prolonged screeching sound frequently used in scenes where the heroes realized something is horribly not right with the scene. Contrasts heavily with the cheery jazz music as Montag gleefully rips gobbets of flesh out of his victims.

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