Leigh Whannell picks the scariest horror film scene of all time

nme.com:

The Invisible Man director Leigh Whannell has picked out what he believes to be the scariest scene in the history of horror cinema.The filmmaker, whose latest feature Wolf Man is due out early in the new year, picked a tense scene from John Carpenter’s 1982 classic The Thing in an article for The Hollywood Reporter.“The blood test scene in John Carpenter’s The Thing is a high water mark of terror for me,” Whannell wrote. “Kurt Russell’s character MacReady is using a flamethrower to heat up a wire and then stab it into a blood sample taken from every member of the science team.

We know that the blood will react and reveal which of them has been taken over by the alien, and the suspense is unbearable.”“As a filmmaker, I’m always trying to come up with scenes that deliver suspense but do it in a way that is somehow new,” he continued. “This scene does that so well.

It’s so scary, but it’s such a unique set piece. Simply testing each person’s blood becomes the engine of suspense, and it’s simple – but when the scene explodes, it gets me every time.”“In a movie that is, in my opinion, perfect in every way, this remains the highlight.