It's now been 19 years since the first broadcast of one of the scariest jump scares ever filmed.
We've all been there. Nice and relaxed on the sofa watching a movie, everything seems fine. The film is actually a bit quiet, could you just turn it up. Needless to say that was a terrible mistake, which you quickly discover as you spray coke and popcorn everywhere and fall off the sofa.
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A recent Reddit thread asked people to name what they thought to be the best jump scares in cinema, or worst depending on your point of view.
They came out with some big suggestions. There was the aliens appearing in Signs, the tall man in the door in It Follows, the man behind the restaurant in Mulholland Drive, and the decapitated head appearing in the boat in Jaws.
But it seemed one video topped them all, and it wasn't even a horror movie, but an advert for energy drink.
One person posted: "That one video of a car driving through the country side," referring to the infamous 'Ghost Car' commercial.
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In it, a car drives through a serene countryside. It's all very scenic and lovely, then the car disappears underneath some trees.
Then, a screeching zombie appears in the frame.
The advert fades to the slogan: "You've never been so wide awake" as a can of the drink pumps like a heart.
The campaign was one of the earliest examples of 'screechers', a not particularly subtle take on the jump scare where something comes into frame very quickly screaming.
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They were common as prank videos, or in this case as an advert.
It got the most upvotes on the Reddit thread, beating all the other suggestions.
People were quick to come in with their comments on why it was so scary.
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One person wrote: "This traumatized me as a middle schooler!"
Another replied: "My mother showed me this when I was in like 6th grade and I screamed for so long she slapped me in the face lmao".
A third posted: "My teacher got us with this one. A classroom full of 6th graders, first class in the morning, turned the lights off and put that on the projector. We all got comfortable thinking it was a movie day."
Jump scares have long been a staple of horror cinema. A scene in the 1942 film Cat People is widely considered to be the first use of the trope.
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It features a young woman walking home alone at night, and as the tension builds there is a screech, only for it to be a bus arriving. Since this first use, the technique has become a common trope of horror movies.
Some have even said that it's become overused now and drawn away from more slow-burning styles of horror.
Whatever you think, nothing quite gets the blood pumping like the ghost car commercial.
Topics: TV and Film, Cars, Weird
Kit Roberts