{"id":624229,"date":"2026-09-14T09:22:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T09:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/624229\/"},"modified":"2026-09-14T09:22:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T09:22:11","slug":"the-10-greatest-movie-jump-scares-definitively-ranked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/624229\/","title":{"rendered":"The 10 greatest movie jump scares, definitively ranked"},"content":{"rendered":"

People tend to think of jump scares as a gimmick \u2014 and yeah, they are. But done right, they can also be an art form. (Ah yes! The great artistic pursuit of making you drop your guts.) In horror movies<\/a>, they’re the cornerstone of eliciting good ol’ terror, and also entertainment. Perhaps they’re even the not-so-secret engine behind the great horror boom in 2026: no other genre is quite such a laugh to watch with a crowd of strangers, in part because it’s hilarious to watch and hear others scream their lungs out. But maybe that distilled sense of collective fear also made you feel better about watching Obsession<\/a> through the gaps in your fingers. For all of our modern division, it’s nice to be reminded that we’re still united in cowardice.<\/p>\n

More to the point, there just isn’t a more effective weapon in the horror movie arsenal than the jump scare. Hence why they’ve been a staple of the genre since the birth of movie monsters, creature features and teenage-babysitter-slaying slashers. Clench up, folks: here’s our rundown of the best.<\/p>\n

10. Shaun of the Dead (2004)<\/p>\n

\u201cPete? Peeeete?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/p>\n

A tried-and-tested staple of the jump scare: creepy figures appearing behind people in mirrors, usually after the camera moves, or the mirror itself is adjusted. Always a fun shock \u2014 and also why I subconsciously get the creeps brushing my teeth in front of my medicine cabinet. Call me a damn baby, but the mirror trope is so effective that they made an entire \u2014 although not very good \u2014 movie revolving around it, and it has been deployed in countless horror scenes, each time a spooky slap in the face, no matter how heavily choreographed. Perhaps a little weirdly, given it’s more of a comedy than a straight horror, the example that jumps to mind is in Shaun of the Dead, when the titular sad-sack hero (Simon Pegg) tilts his bathroom mirror to reveal the eerie silhouette of his zombified flatmate (Peter Serafinowicz). Maybe it hits harder because of a subversive take on the trope that comes earlier, that time revealing a grumpy, not-yet-undead Pete behind Shaun, so you’re a little less guarded. Also: the rest of the film, up to that point, is hardly scary. Whatever the case, we all yelped.<\/p>\n

9. The Others (2001)<\/p>\n

The closet<\/p>\n

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