10 Scariest Horror Movie Scenes of 2025 (So Far)

Recent years have been particularly good for horror, with instant classics like director Ti West’s X and Pearl, the return of classic franchises to their former glory with Alien: Romulus, and plenty of wild, wonderful stuff we aren’t even sure what to do with, like Longlegs, Men, The Substance, and Possessor.

2025 has kept up the momentum with some new frights and memorable scenes. Whether it’s a particularly creative kill, a jump scare we absolutely did not see coming, or just something super gross, the year has already provided some moments that won’t leave our brains anytime soon. Here are 10 terrifying moments from some of the best horror movies of 2025.

10) Wolf Man’s Creepy Monster Vision

Director Leigh Whannell’s domestic werewolf horror-drama takes some cues from 1986’s body-horror masterpiece, The Fly. As in that film, the transition from man to beast plays out like succumbing to a disease. Blake (Christopher Abbot) suffers from a fever, confusion, and concerning tooth and hair loss, followed by even more concerning tooth and hair gain.

Another part of the transformation is Blake’s increasing inability to understand his family. Whannell communicates this with blue-tinted “Wolf Vision” and garbled audio that puts viewers into the same uncomfortable position as the character. We know that Charlotte (Julia Garner) and Ginger (Matilda Firth) are speaking English, and we know we should understand it, but we can’t.

The later, full-body transformation, including breaking bones and claws sprouting out to replace Blake’s fingernails, is also pretty scary. But the existential horror of seeing how his condition is affecting him mentally as well as physically hits just a little bit harder.

9) M3GAN 2.0’s Grotesque Jaw Injury

M3GAN 2.0 leans way more toward sci-fi than the original, but we’re including it because it’s still about a killer robot, and the eponymous android’s uncanny doll face gives us the willies no matter how friendly she is.

Late in the film, we’re “treated” to an even more haunting version of M3GAN’s rubbery mug. After losing a fight with several armed guards, they drag her off, eventually depositing her into Christian’s (Aristotle Athari) secret lair, right in the middle of his villainous “master plan” speech. When she looks helplessly up at Gemma (Allison Williams), we see that M3GAN’s jaw is horribly dislocated.

While robots in these movies don’t have blood, this visual is still pretty gnarly. It’ll stick with us longer than anything else that happened in the movie.

8) Jurassic World: Rebirth’s Swimming T-rex

Bringing the series back from a small break after Dominion, Jurassic World: Rebirth eschews the previous trilogy’s globetrotting and corporate schemes of world domination via locust to deliver some old-fashioned sauropod action on a remote island.

One memorable sequence has the Delgado family—father Reuben (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), daughters Teresa (Luna Blaise) and Isabella (Audrina Miranda)—along with Teresa’s boyfriend Xavier (David Iacono) paddling a flimsy life raft down a river with a Tyrannosaurus in pursuit. Despite its size, the T-rex is both able and agile in the water, which lends the sequence even more tension: Not only is there a huge, hungry lizard coming after our heroes, but it is super good at swimming. That’s a dangerous combination, and this set piece is easily the best in the movie.

Readers will recognize this scene from the original novel, Jurassic Park. In the book, Alan Grant, Tim, and Lex suffer a similar attack while trying to boat their way back to the park’s nerve center. So along with being super effective and scary, this sequence in Rebirth also serves up some long-overdue fan service.

7) Sinners’ Return of the Stack

Sinners is all-around one of the best films of 2025, and it’s full of striking moments both frightening and otherwise. One of its best, however, is one of its most subtle.

The revelers at the juke joint belonging to twin brothers “Smoke” and “Stack” Moore (Michael B. Jordan) have already had a scare after the bouncer, Cornbread (Omar Miller), revealed himself as a vampire. They’re still recovering when they hear small knocks on the door behind them.

That room is where they left Stack’s body after his vampire ex-girlfriend Mary (Hailee Steinfeld) bit and killed him. But now, Stack has risen. He’s in no hurry, though; he knocks politely and waits—although he also puts a knife through the door to create a peephole.

Moments later, Stack easily knocks down the door, anyway, revealing the full horror of the scene. He didn’t need his friends to open up after all, but he preferred to play with his food.

6) Opus’ Hugely Uncomfortable Bean Bag Chair

In Opus, it’s clear that something odd is going on at the compound of pop legend Alfred Moretti (John Malkovich), and that’s not just because if you’re in a horror movie, going to anything called a “compound,” “commune,” or “retreat” is never a good idea.

When a group including journalist Ariel (Ayo Edebiri) and influencer Emily (Stephanie Suganami) arrive for the scoop on Moretti’s new album, they notice the place is full of people who follow something called “Levelism,” but ascribe it to Moretti’s eccentricity.

At one point, Emily falls ill, and the Levelists take her away. Later, the group sits on bean bag chairs to watch a children’s puppet show; suddenly, Ariel’s seat starts moving. She gets away just before Emily comes crawling out of the bag, her poison-stricken face grotesquely bloated.

While the audience likely knew what kind of movie they were watching, this is the moment the characters catch on. Emily’s abrupt and unexpected entrance, combined with her unsettling condition, push Opus from merely strange to horrific.

5) Weapons’ Car Invasion

Weapons has plenty of jump scares and creepies, but one scene stands out.

Julia Garner plays Justine Gandy, a schoolteacher whose entire class but one student—Alex Lilly (Cary Christopher)—disappears one night. The community suspects Justine had something to do with it, and her isolation has her reaching out to Alex, as they’re “the only ones left.”

After Justine falls asleep in her car while staking out Alex’s home, the door to the house opens, and a figure comes to her window. It stands there for a moment before walking away … and then we hear the back door open.

A hand holding scissors emerges from the back seat and lingers a bit before carefully snipping some of Julia’s hair. That could have gone way worse, but the fact it happened at all still gives us the shivers.

4) Final Destination: Bloodlines’ MRI Death

Somehow, six movies deep, the Final Destination series served up its best entry yet with this year’s Bloodlines. In this one, Death is taking out entire families after Iris (Brec Bassinger) rescues a restaurant’s worth of people in 1969.

The most memorable fatality in the movie occurs when Erik (Richard Harmon) ends up on the wrong side of an overclocked MRI. Its powerful magnets start tearing the numerous piercings from his body before picking up a wheelchair behind him and pulling them both into the tube. Erik doesn’t bend that way, but that is no matter to the machine.

In a series full of creative and messy deaths, Erik’s stands out on both counts.

3) Together’s Unfortunate Puppers

Together, the most surprisingly romantic movie of the year, tells the story of Millie and Tim, a struggling couple whose troubles worsen when their bodies start trying to fuse together. And somehow, the scene in which Millie uses a reciprocating saw to separate their conjoined arms isn’t the scariest one.

The scariest, by far, is the opening sequence, which has a search party exploring the woods for missing hikers. Joining it are two dogs who enter an underground cave and drink from a pool of water there. Afterward, they can’t stop staring at each other. And if you love dogs, that’s where this ends. Wasn’t that scary?

What actually happens is that that night, their owner investigates noises coming from the kennel and finds his two dogs in the process of becoming one. We only see them for a few seconds, but it’s an image that will unfortunately be in our heads for a while.

2) Bring Her Back’s Stabby Snack

Bring Her Back is an unsettling time throughout, but one scene in particular outdoes all of the others.

Andy (Billy Barratt) is attempting to bond with his new foster brother, Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips) over some melon. He spears some onto a kitchen knife and hands it to the boy before turning around for a moment to get him a plate. And then, Oliver’s chewing starts to sound a little … metallic.

Confused, Andy turns around to see that Oliver is gnawing on the blade of the knife like it’s a stainless steel carrot. His attempts to retrieve the utensil only does more damage, but if we provided any more details, we’d have to go lie down for a bit.

1) The Ugly Stepsister’s Most Eye-Opening Scene

The Ugly Stepsister is an adaptation of the Cinderella story that has all the body horror of the original and more. It follows Elvira (Lea Myren), who undergoes a battery of primitive cosmetic procedures and other “treatments” to ensure she’s presentable enough to land Prince Julian (Isac Calmroth) at his fancy ball.

The one we’re talking about involves surgically attaching new, longer lashes to Elvira’s eyes, which the doctor achieves with a needle and thread. We see enough of this process to get the idea, and then it just keeps going.

While The Ugly Stepsister is full of scenes that make us squirm and recoil, this one wins out due to Elvira’s inability to move or even look away.

Now that we’ve ruined your entire day, feel free to share your own picks for the scariest moments from 2025’s horror offerings in the comments.