As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
There is a reason why some kids are terrified of clowns.
- If you're a kid, the scenes with the evil clown puppet and the carnivorous tree are straight out of Hell. If you're a parent, the mother's struggles to reach her endangered children, as corpses pop up out of the pool and floors all around her, are even worse. And the bit where the researcher claws at his own disintegrating face in the mirror gets to everyone.
- The last one is even worse in the book, where that is just part of a greater manifestation. First, he sees his midnight snack sprout tumors and maggots, then he peels his face off, then he's paralyzed while trying to run away from the manifestation. Then, he's eaten alive by a spider swarm, feeling every detail. Then, he's eaten by rats, then worms, then he crumbles to sub-atomic dust. Again, he can feel everything as it happens.
- The end of the movie, when the closet has a huge mouth sucking the kids into the portal. The fact that it's growling like a monster doesn't help either.
- The Beast's sound-only introduction: Carol-Anne is making contact with her family from the other side, but all of a sudden something scares her off and she "runs" off screaming. Then a low growling manifests all around the family and investigators, getting louder, before erupting in a loud breathy roar that unleashes a wave of force knocking everyone on their asses.
- When the giant flaming skull pops out of the portal in the closet - and far more what it represents. Steven was told not to pull on the rope by Tangina. He did it anyway, and what came out attached to the rope wasn't his wife — it was the beast.
- The white, spider-like... thing
◊ guarding the door to kids' room when the ghosts return. Somehow the bright light on it (as opposed to darkness and shadows) makes it worse. - The endless hallway scene.◊ Diane is pushing to reach her children's room before spirits can recapture Carol Anne with the aforementioned mouth portal in their room. When she reaches the second floor, the hallways starts stretching well beyond the limits of the house like the laws of physics are starting to break down from the spirits taking over the house. No disturbing images or gore involved, just a practical camera zoom-out effect.
- The simple fact that it all unfolds in somebody's tract home in a seemingly ordinary suburban neighborhood, not out in the woods or whatever, is pretty creepy. How many people who watch this for the first time can avoid looking suspiciously at their closet doors for several nights?
- Critics initially blew off this movie as "not scary enough" because nobody gets killed messily. But seriously - ask any parent how they would feel to see their five-year-old dragged off by malevolent spirits, unable to reach them or stop it. Bonus: being able to hear your terrified child screaming for you to save her... with no way of knowing where she is.
- The scene where Diane receives incontrovertible proof of her house being haunted. She notices the kitchen table chairs have been moved away from the center and gets annoyed, since she's already told her kids to push them in when they're done. Carol Anne, denying she moved them, is sitting on the counter and Diane fixes the chairs and goes to take something out of the cabinet under the sink with the camera following her. When she rises up again a few seconds later, she screams as the camera tracks back to the background—the chairs she has just pushed back in are now stacked in tiers on top of the table. We know nobody could have done it so quickly and silently, and furthermore, Carol Anne hasn't moved an inch. This is the moment Diane reevaluates the "TV people" and realizes something horrible is happening. The staging as an uncut single take sells the impossible event perfectly, particularly since it was achieved entirely practicallynote .
- Also, look at the bottom-left chair. Two of its legs are resting on air. The chairs are not just stacked, the weight of the chairs on top is all that's holding the ones on the ends in place. Which is nearly as creepy, because there's no way that one person could do that, even given several minutes in which to do it. Which implies, right from the beginning of the haunting, that there are multiple ghosts at work. It's worse when you remember that the silverware was bent out of shape while the family was still at the table.
- The movie has an uncanny tendency to have long scenes of relative calm and normalcy (even after the poltergeists have made their presence known), only for the HSQ to suddenly turn up out of nowhere as things start bursting out the closet, toys start moving around on their own, and bright lights start shining. It has a thoroughly unnerving effect.
- The film has several quiet scenes that give the audience plenty of time to anticipate something horrible happening. Diane knocking on the bedroom door. Robby hearing the clown hit the floor while Diane is taking a bath. The meter recording spirit activity activates and goes off the scale while the technician is listening to music and drawing in a sketchpad.
- A bit of Enforced Method Acting, said to have been Steven Spielberg's idea. The corpses in the final scene were real, as using real skeletons was cheaper than getting plastic ones.
- The very, very end of the film, where the theme music stops and turns into creepy children's laughter, which continues even after the title fades. Not horrifying, but it's definitely unsettling.
- Tangina's expository monologue, detailing exactly what's going on in the house and what they're up against.
- The scene with the meat on the counter moving by itself and imploding blood. Marty sees it and drops the chicken out of his mouth, maggots crawling all over it. Marty can only react in horror as he stumbles over to the sink in the closet where comes another famous moment where he begins to suddenly start peeling the skin right off his face! Only to see it was some kind of hallucination made by the spirits.
