Are you sure you ain't 'fraid of no ghost?
Ghostbusters is a supernatural comedy at its core, but it very much qualifies as a horror film as well.
WARNING: Spoilers are unmarked.
- The library scene
isn't exactly the scariest scene in the movie, but it can really catch you off-guard if you haven't seen it before. It's big reason enough why Peter, Ray and Egon take off running from the library screaming.Ray: Get her!
(library ghost suddenly roars and morphs into a larger ghost self with a Nightmare Face) - The scene right before Peter goes to Dana's apartment when the scary building is shown. The ominous music makes the scene even more creepy. The "Spook Central" building is scarier in broad daylight!
- Dana arrives home to find her television to have been somehow switched on. In the daylit kitchen, newly bought eggs fly from their box and start to fry on the unheated counter. At a low growl from inside the fridge, Dana slowly opens its door — which reveals, instead of the fridge's interior, a void of ethereal yellow fire, in which we briefly see some kind of temple — and then, the screen is filled with a horned, leathery, bestial head.Zuul: ZUUL!!
- Egon’s warning about crossing the streams gives us a terrifying mental image of what could happen if it’s done:
- Egon: “Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.”
- Zuul and Vinz Clortho: Hellish, frightening, demonic dogs with glowing red eyes. Don't say they didn't traumatize kids of The '80s and for generations after.
- The shots of the tower statues crumbling to life and Zuul's red eyes illuminating beneath the rock. The thunder and lightning crashing along with the instrumental music doesn't help.
- Dana being taken captive by Zuul. It starts with her arriving home before her date with Peter, having a brief phone conversation with her mom, and relaxing in a chair. Then she hears something and looks to see a light under her kitchen door and something moving against the door's surface. Right before she can take any kind of action, three demonic arms rip out of her chair and hold her down as the door opens to Zuul, who immediately flashes its glowing red eyes and large fangs in a horrendous growl at her. The chair then zooms towards the door with a screaming Dana. Once Dana's in the kitchen with Zuul, the door slams shut. Scary stuff.
- The shot of lights coming through Dana's kitchen door was inspired by Close Encounters of the Third Kind. "If Spielberg can do those lights, I can do those lights, and we'll do them in kind of a different way," says Ivan Reitman. Also, Harold Ramis says this scene when the arms come out of the chair to grab Dana is the scariest one for kids.
- Dana under Zuul's influence. It's rather sexy at firstnote , but then she becomes frustrated with Peter and speaks in a demonic voice, starts hovering above the bed, and makes beastly growling noises.Dana/Zuul: THERE IS NO DANA. ONLY ZUUL.
- The shot of Vinz Clortho on Louis' bed in the dark. Though the moment is a little funny due to an oblivious Louis tossing the guest's coats onto the creature's head.
- Louis is chased out of his own party by Clortho and ends up cornered by the monster in Central Park. Once it possesses Louis, Clortho searches for Zuul, and when a cabbie makes a remark, Clortho growls and flashes an intense, intimidating red-eyed glare.
- Hell, just how Vinz Clortho catches Louis to begin with. He chases Louis relentlessly for blocks seemingly into Central Park, and when Louis finally finds a restaurant full of people he can appeal to for help, they can't even hear his pleas, and it's implied from camera shots that they can't even see Vinz Clortho at all. So Louis is dragged down screaming in terror and violently possessed right in front of a brightly lit, glass-walled building full of people, and all they do is raise their heads briefly and then go right back to chatting and eating dinner.
- Ray and Winston's talk about the apocalypse.Winston: Do you remember something in The Bible about the last days, when the dead would rise from the grave?
Ray: I remember Revelations 7:12 note . "And I looked as he opened the sixth seal, and behold, there was a great earthquake. And the sun became as black as sack cloth, and the moon became as blood."
Winston: "And the seas boiled and the skies fell."
Ray: Judgment Day.
Winston: Judgment Day.
Ray: Every ancient religion has its own myth about the end of the world.
Winston: "Myth?" Ray, has it ever occurred to you that maybe the reason we've been so busy lately is 'cause the dead have been rising from the grave?
[Ray looks very disquieted]- "How about a little music?" Ray, despite being an atheist or an agnostic, is disturbed by that enough to want to change the subject immediately.
- The entire "Shut Down the Grid" scene is pretty creepy, especially the shot of the Manhattan skyline flooding with tendrils of paranormal energy. With the build-up it gets, we know nothing good can come from that pretty pink light show. Mick Smiley's foreboding "Magic" playing on the soundtrack doesn't help.
- The moment the hardhat worker pulls the lever to shut down the grid, we get a flashing red lightbulb with a loud alarm going off, followed by a horrid sound of huge rumbling from behind a brick wall. The wall is blown apart brick by brick, revealing a blinding light from behind that encompasses every spook, specter, phantasm, and whatever unimaginable horrors the Ghostbusters ever subdued.
- The zombie cab driver.
- The raspy-voiced, wailing spirit that flies out of a subway stairwell is also a little creepy.
- Egon's descriptions of Ivo Shandor, the architect of Dana's apartment building who designed it to have secret passages leading to the roof, which served as an altar for his ominous Gozer cult. Shandor is said to be a Misanthrope Supreme following World War I and believed that Humans Are Bastards is a good enough reason for Gozer to destroy Earth. Egon also mentions that Shandor was a doctor who performed a lot of "unnecessary surgery."
- The way Egon smirks while describing Shandor's "unnecessary surgeries." He isn't especially good at reassuring smiles in the first place, but in this situation, it just looks like he's enjoying Shandor's shenanigans entirely too much.
- Zuul and Clortho are electrocuted by psychic energy and transform from Dana and Louis's human bodies into their own demonic dog forms when summoning Gozer.
- Gozer◊ itself is kind of freaky. Deep red, bloodshot eyes on a pale white, skeletal face and that evil, high, shrill voice.
- The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man's creepiness is ramped up when it's angry. And the Oh, Crap! face when it sees the Ghostbusters crossing their streams.
- Stay Puft's guttural roars sound somewhat scary and unnatural.
- Added to the fact that it proves that Gozer is a Jackass Genie in terms of the choice it gives to the Ghostbusters. No matter what you pick, Gozer can and ''will'' twist it into something (apparently) capable of destroying the world.
- Many fans who saw it as kids likely didn't appreciate just how bizarre Gozer's form really is thanks to the built-in Weirdness Censor that most young children have. Fans who first saw the movie as adults can vouch that a giant, smiling marshmallow man stomping its way through the streets of New York shouldn't be as disturbing as it is, but by God does it ever work in context.
- Elmer Bernstein's incredible score by itself can be very unsettling and intensely eerie at moments. It augments the terror of any horrific scene. Awesome Music nonetheless, though.
- That friggin' stringy Scare Chord that pops up when Dana first sees Zuul in her refrigerator or when Stay Puft manifests.
- And during the Containment Grid Jailbreak scene when the released spirits destroy Dana's apartment.
- Also at the end, providing a last-second Last Note Nightmare.
- That friggin' stringy
