From classic cinema to video game malformities, these are the most disturbing horror scenes Igorrr has ever witnessed.
Ever since the release of his 2010’s debut LP Nostril, French composer Gautier Serre -- otherwise known as Igorrr -- has reigned as one of the most wide-ranging, idiosyncratic, and downright weird artists of his time. Mixing elements of baroque classical, trip hop, breakcore, and more into his black metal foundation, Igorrr's work conjures greats like Mr. Bungle, Diablo Swing Orchestra, Ihsahn, and Björk while remaining satisfyingly distinctive and surprising. Naturally, the perpetual addition of more players over the years -- including major guests and frequent collaborators -- has only increased that lunatic dexterity.
Of course, he’s also a big fan of all things grotesque and bizarre -- just look at the official music video for Very Noise -- which is why, in anticipation of his latest LP, Spirituality and Distortion, we asked him to list those scenes of body horror within pop culture cinema that most unnerve and repulse him. Ranging from demonic gymnastics to homicidal neighbors, these are the scenes that truly make Igorrr’s skin crawl...
“This is definitely my #1 pick; I get chills just thinking about this scene right now. As a young boy, I was a huge consumer of horror movies. There was a videotape store in my village, and I went there, like, almost every day for a period. Those movies were fascinating to me because of what they were, and also because they were forbidden to a little boy like me. I felt like I was crossing the red line watching those horror movies and it was very exciting—that is, until the day I watched The Exorcist.
"That movie just killed me and I was actually unable to watch any horror movies for many, many years after that. Seeing that possessed girl getting out of her room with a completely inhuman and insane walk made me feel like her room was not protecting me anymore; suddenly, the nightmare I was watching -- which was being controlled inside that room -- was now free to go anywhere, including a visit to me. It has been freaking me ever since, so hats off to William Friedkin. You traumatized me!”
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“There is a scene in Hereditary in which Peter is walking at night in the living room, silently, only to discover with horror that his father has been burned on the floor. What scared me to death was not that image itself, but rather what was happening in the background: Peter’s mother, Annie, is on the celling, watching Peter from behind. She had been stalking him from some time in the house, and we can see her in the background when Peter is discovering his dad’s body. It is one of scariest scenes I’ve ever seen in a film. You don’t notice Annie right away; you need a few seconds to do it, and when your eyes see it, you’re frozen.”
“This is the following scene, when we see Peter trying to escape from his mother by entering the attic. He closes himself in the attic and locks the door; meanwhile, his mother is running after him. When she finds the closed door, she tries smashing it open it, but not with her fists. Instead, she uses her head, very quickly and brutally. It’s the most disturbing image I’ve seen in years.”
“At some point, Lorraine looks at a little mirror that she finds when she arrives in the basement. She sees a kind of yellowish and fat creature from the back, behind her, and this creature is just turning back to her, silently. Lorraine watches it from the mirror. The profile of that face freaks me out completely. It feels like Lorraine knows that she is not alone anymore in this basement, as the creature notices her. Thus, she is in imperceptible danger.”
“This is not what I would call ‘scary,’ but it is at least a very, very intensive scene. Gary is contaminated and wants to bring everybody else with him; the scene really starts to get very severe when he opens the windows to let the light get in and to contaminate everybody else. The lady with the baby is the first to be taken, and it forces her to commit a suicide once she sees the daylight. Luckily, Malorie saves the baby, but Gary keeps going and forces the old lady to open her eyes in front of the daylight before killing her with scissors in the throat. As if that wasn’t enough, Douglas is trying to kill Gary with a shotgun, but because he’s blind, he is not sure when to shoot. This is one of the most intensive scenes I’ve witnessed in a recent horror movie.”
“The little possessed girl is in her bed with the priest beside her; he ties to save her and get rid of the demon. Yet, the demon is having fun with the priest, and she spin her head around completely while watching him. It’s a very shocking moment.”
“Steve is coming back home, and he finds his youngest sister, Nell, in his apartment. Nothing scary happens here, but at some point, Steve receives a phone call from his dad, who tells him that Nell is dead. Steve then watches as the person he thought was Nell in his apartment becomes a ghost. That is the scariest part of this scene: the morphing of Nell’s face from human to ghost. It freaks me out like hell, mostly due to that insane face-morphing. This is also scary because you feel like Steve: closed in a room, without any possible escape from the ugly ghost right front of you.”
“There are a few scenes in particular, like when the two guys -- dressed all in white -- are already inside the house and being extremely polite. They’re so nice and polite that you know something is wrong, and when they start being overly intrusive and brutal, you start feeling a real discomfort. Their speech and appearance indicate nothing really different about what and who they really are. Those scenes make you feel very uncomfortable.”
“We are not speaking about a movie here but about a video game on PlayStation 4, so spoilers ahead. The scene I want to make reference to happens in the middle of the game, just after the moment in the garden when you have to change houses. Once you arrive at the next house -- a wooden house that you have to get through -- you need to walk up the stairs. There is a barred window front of you, and you have to keep going on and turn left on the stairs, passing in front of this window. At some point, there is the old lady [Marguerite Baker] coming from outside and smashing that window to grab you with her deformed long arms. This scene made me jump on my sofa and destroy my joystick, as I was pushing in all the controllers just to get out of her disgusting arms.”
“Here, I’m not speaking about something scary but something extremely disturbing: when Jeff Goldblum is starting to transform into a fly. Eventually, he watches himself in the mirror and notices that his fingernails are kind of soft. So, he starts to remove them one by one, just by pulling them off. This is a scene I saw when I was young and that I still remember; back then, I probably thought that Jeff Goldblum was doing it for real! Through the screen, I was telling him, ‘Don’t do it, man! Just don’t do it. Stop it!’”
“There’s no need to say more about it, really. Being in the same room with this deformed creature swinging a hammer in the dark is a real nightmare. You have to keep silent, but this thing is so scary that it’s impossible to stay calm and not be noisy. The whole end of this movie is crazy.”
