One of the scariest things you can see on film is something you know is not alive acting as if it is; statues move, eyes of dolls pop open, parts of the architecture animating of their own accord. This can happen as someone is watching it, or out of the corner of the eye, ceasing as soon as the character looks right at it. It doesn't matter, it is more than enough to send some unstable souls over the edge into madness (followed quite often by death).
Note that this trope is particularly effective and chilling when the audience never knows if what they're seeing is real, or all in the character's head. And while such occurrences usually result in the demise of the witness, it's not required that they literally keel over due to fear. Quite often, the imagery of the moving/living inanimate implies a guilty conscience, if not outright stated.
Subtrope of Malevolent Architecture. Almost always produces Nightmare/Paranoia Fuel. (Although if done badly, this leads to Narm.) Often related to Your Mind Makes It Real and Clap Your Hands If You Believe.
Despite the trope name, it doesn't always have to be eyes. And while a particularly visceral, textual description is possible, this trope almost always appears in visual media.
Compare Uncanny Valley. Related to Demonic Dummy, Perverse Puppet, Portrait Painting Peephole and Living Toys. Sometimes overlaps with Eye Awaken, though that trope usually only applies to living (or at least sentient) creatures.
Not to be confused with the Charmed (1998) episode of the same name, which makes use of Eye Scream rather than this trope, or the Criminal Minds episode, also with the same name, which also makes use of Eye Scream.
Examples:
- Non-horror example: in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Disney), after taking the life of Quasimodo's mother and taking on the mother of all guilt trips by the Archdeacon, Judge Claude Frollo sees the eyes of every statue on the cathedral facade, most especially those of the Virgin Mary, seemingly glaring at him in righteous condemnation. Amazingly, however, he's able to shrug this off and dump the foundling on the churchman instead. At the end of the film, one of the gargoyles comes alive to roar a fiery wrath right in his face. This time, he's not so lucky.
Archdeacon: (singing) But you never can run from/Nor hide what you've done from/The eyes, the very eyes of Notre DameClopin: (singing narration) And for one time in his life of power and control/Frollo felt a twinge of fear for his immortal soul
- Black Swan uses a lot of this thanks to mirrors being used in virtually every shot, where the reflections sometimes don't perfectly match the real people, increasingly so as the film progresses and the protagonist's sanity collapses. One non-mirror example happens near the start when one of the images on a wall of pictures blinks, and towards the end, when the protagonist has suffered a complete mental breakdown, we see the entire wall of pictures moving and talking.
- Brahms: The Boy II: In one scene, when Liza walks by Brahms, his eyes are visibly seen following her.
- A great deal of the fear dealt out by Chucky in Child's Play (1988) derives from the power of this trope, at least before the doll starts running around openly trying to kill everyone.
- Clash of the Titans (1981): The head of the statue of the goddess Thetis falls to the floor. The eyes of the head open, indicating that Thetis herself is controlling it.
- Henry's baby in Eraserhead. While it isn't completely still, most of its other movements are stiff and artificial enough to make it look like it wasn't alive anyway. The eyes mainly move to remind you this thing is alive and is apparently some kind of human in order to add to the wrongness. Also the small cabinet and the tree cart.
- Ghostbusters II:
"You know, sometimes I get the feeling that painting is watching me? Even smiling at me?"
- In The Haunting (1999), not only does the ghost of Hugh Crain cause his house to come alive in various ways, but in one scene, a pair of stained-glass windows in Eleanor's bedroom are seen to turn into colossal, glaring red eyes.
- The animatronics in The House With a Clock in Its Walls are so creepy and unnerving that they scream to be this trope, to the point that when they finally do come to life just before the Hostage Situation that leads up to the climax, it's almost a relief. Almost, because even once the long-held shoe is dropped, they are still disturbingly nightmarish.
- In Shanghai Knights, there's a scene where the dynamic duo are searching through a library, and someone is in the walls, using the old gag where they look out the pictures through the eyeballs to watch what's going on. In a couple shots, the eyes look like they could really be the eyes in the painting moving.
- An example where much more than eyes is used: Young Sherlock Holmes, the scene where the knight in the stained-glass window leaps down to do combat with the poor priest. Notable because it is specifically later revealed, like other deaths in the film, to be caused by a hallucinogenic drug. What the priest saw was in fact all in his mind, but since it made him flee the church and run under the wheels of a moving carriage, he still ended up just as dead.
- In the Age of Steam novel Dead Iron, a room of Strangework mantics is absolutely still, except for eyes following LeFel and Mr. Shunt.
- Harry Potter: When Slytherin's locket is opened, it contains a pair of living (and red) eyes. Unlike the previously encountered horcrux, it doesn't manifest itself fully, only able to project images of Harry and Hermione mocking Ron.
- Doctor Who:
- In "The Awakening", a stone carving in a church starts blinking and later belching smoke due to the alien imprisoned behind it.
- In "The Family of Blood", Sister of Mine is trapped in every mirror in existence (possibly throughout time as well), appearing, as Brother of Mine puts it, as "that thing in the corner of your eye that goes away as soon as you look".
- The statues in "Blink". The way they move between the strobes of light, caught in new and more hideous poses as the sequence progresses so you can see they're alive, but you can't see they're alive, well... It's not nice.
- The Trope Namer comes from the Doctor commenting on the eyes in the walls of a hallway moving in "The Almost People".
- Rose Red features a scene where a statue of Ellen Rimbauer in the mansion garden rips off her own face, the eyes of which then open. The poor witness dies of a heart attack soon after.
- In the Call of Cthulhu supplement The Asylum and Other Tales, adventure "The Auction", when the Brazen Head is activated, its metal eyelids open, revealing living eyes inside the sockets.
- The stalking menace in Barrow Hill turns out to be a mobile stone from an ancient ring of Celtic monoliths.
- In Condemned: Criminal Origins, there is a level that takes place in an abandoned department store, with lots of plaster mannequins standing about, modeling old cloths. Wait, what was that motion in the darkness over there...?
- Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance]: The Pinocchio-based world, Prankster's Paradise, has a creepy-looking clown face in the background of a corridor whose eyes follow you. It does nothing but watch. It's based on the giant talking head from the Pleasure Island scene from the original movie
, whose eyes do move and follow the kids, but here, it's somehow more terrifying!
- When you grab the Morph Ball at the start of Super Metroid, the scowling eyes and mouths of the nearby statues glow... and then, as you leave, they turn to look at you.
- Parodied in a Homestar Runner Halloween cartoon when the eyes of a painting literally follow Homestar across the room. He notices, and takes down the painting, revealing that it has holes in the eyes, behind which are "a pair of weird, one-eyed crows".
- Another non-horror example: in the G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero episode "Skeletons in the Closet", the figure in a painting of one of Lady Jaye's and Destro's ancestors follows her as she passes by, indicating that it's just Destro Hiding in Plain Sight.
