Movies…with a little bit of obscure culture and sports mixed in
Below are 10 of my favorite basement scenes in movies. By nature, many of them are iconic, but sometimes you have to break the mold and branch out. Let me know what I’ve missed, because surely there are some deep cuts I’ve forgotten.
You know the feeling. You are standing at a doorway of some sort, looking down a tunnel of darkness knowing that something is looking back at you. Your eyes don’t look away from the descent as your hand blindly moves its way along the wall looking for the proper switch. If you are lucky, there is a string right in front of you to pull, but illumination is never guaranteed with such an ancient tug.
Basements are a fixture of horror. From a story standpoint, it’s a relatable place that audiences can understand. From a symbolic standpoint, it’s a place that’s underneath you, unseen and mysterious. The scope of underground dwellings can change, but the eeriness that a story can embalm into an already often dark and messy area can vary.
Below are 10 of my favorite basement scenes in movies. By nature, many of them are iconic, but sometimes you have to break the mold and branch out. Let me know what I’ve missed, because surely there are some deep cuts I’ve forgotten.
That nail on the steps. That nail still haunts me. The way it is staged by John Krasinski is perfect. He lets the audience know that this IS going to happen and you DO NOT have any chance at avoiding it. That stress, built upon the crazy anxiety of the child being born and the fireworks going off; it is suspense done right. Bravo.
Also, if you are telling me that I get to see Emily Blunt turn into an indestructible action hero holding a shotgun, then I am going to be clamoring for more. Yes please and thank you.
Barbarian is a crazy movie. It’s nuts. You can’t predict it even if you tried. I had someone tell me that they didn’t like how it turned into a creature feature, and I would contest that it is not. Mama is not a creature, She is human. She is deformed. She is something…else. I wouldn’t call her a a creature.
In terms of the basement setting, it’s impossible not to applaud the unique horror that lies beneath in Zach Cregger’s demented basement. When Tess is first making her way through the cage-filled deep, the screams of Keith or her guide. But when that jump scare happens (and it is well fucking earned let me tell you that), you will have a visceral and physical reaction. Going into Barbarian having now idea what to expect makes it a million times more enjoyable.
Perhaps the terror of the tunnel wears off once Justin Long finds it and the comedic aspects breach the story. But when the scares go away, the weirdness increases. Milk bottles, baby films and demented parental mindsets make it so you can’t forget what Tess and everyone endures.
Also (I feel like I am going to be adding add-ons to a lot of these write-ups), the way the mirror is set up to look down the tunnel allows for some outstanding visual shots.
It doesn’t need to be a horror movie to have a good basement scene! It doesn’t! Don’t come at me!
Honestly, there are two scenes to pick from when it comes to Inglourious Basterds. We have the opening scene with a young Shosanna escaping the clutches of Colonel Hans Landa while her family gets mowed down. That includes an underground area of a home and is one of the greatest opening vignettes in cinematic history.
But that is not what I am selecting here.
If you didn’t think I was selecting the underground bar scene then you are a wee bit loko. This scene is one of, if not my favorite Quentin Tarantino scene of all-time. It is tense, arguably tenser than a few of the horror movie scenes still remaining on my list. The dialogue is laced with the threat of violence, and when all hell is unleashed, it’s frantically fast. If you blink, you’ll miss it.
Michael Fassbender comes in for 20 minutes of Inglourious Basterds and nails it. He and Diane Kruger are trying to keep the game on the rails, but Sergeant Hugo Stiglitz is staring daggers sharp enough to kill a man. The whole scene works on so many levels and is immensely rewatchable.
And yes, it’s a basement scene because you need to go down steps into the area and you can see from the windows that the eating area has settled underground.
The scene isn’t very long, and in all honestly probably won’t be on many other “basement” lists. But with that being said, It sits on my list.
“You’ll float too!” Beginning in George’s voice and devolving into Pennywise’s demonic voice is scary enough, but the lurching Bill Skarsgård followed by his slithering away with that evil grin is a great visual.
This scene is the reason why everyone is scared of the basement. The light wasn’t working, and still Bill went down there because he could not resist. He was terrified, and rightfully so. Dark creepy wooden stairs, a swinging broken light, a monster in the corner. It takes all the basics of our childhood nightmares and makes it interesting and new.
The Baba Yaga.
When John Wick is standing atop the stairs with the sledgehammer, I mean that silhouette of a man clouded in shadow about to become unearthed is perfect. Keanu Reeves taking those descending steps downward into his hellish past while Viggo is educating Iosef about the horrible decision he’s made is sublime.
Yes Ken, it is indeed sublime.
When Wick puts the sledgehammer on the ground, he is like a baseball cleanup hitter getting ready to tee-up a fastball that has been left middle in.
The wide shot of Wick breaking ground, followed by a succession of quick cuts, ending with our hero literally using his hands to dig up the past he thought he had left long buried.
In this basement scene, we are watching the nightmare come to life, and those scared are far away. It is a twist on the traditional basement spooky scene because we see the monster descending the steps. It’s great stuff.
Where the fuck did this basement come from???
Bong Joon Ho’s masterpiece blends genres, and when this basement was unveiled, holy shit did Parasite get scary for a second. The fact there is a basement is one thing, and then what’s down there is even crazier. Hell, what happens in the basement over the last half of the movie is nuts.
Maybe we should have sensed something was up when the kid saw the ghost? There are many scenes in Parasite with those steps and they are used artistically and terrifyingly. The sequence when the home-owning family is coming home and it’s a race against time is all-time showmanship in editing and framing.The kick down the stars at the tail end…those basement steps are not kind. Severe head trauma.
If you haven’t seen Parasite, you need to. It is a must.
I mean, listen, you can’t have a basement list without Psycho.
Alfred Hitchcock made sure that people didn’t spoil the movie. He pleaded for it. Can you imagine seeing this for the first time? Psycho is an all-time classic because it broke so many molds, so I ask you, is Psycho the first movie to have an iconic basement scene like this? I am no movie historian, but this is the first one I think of. For me, its 63 years ago now, (holy shit, that just broke my brain a little bit), and that’s a long ass time. But there were decades of films before Psycho.
When young Karen stands up in the silhouette light after munching on a man’s body and she looks at her mother…that visual is something that lives on forever. George A. Romero created a new monster and genre with Night Of The Living Dead, and the most memorable image of his masterpiece is a young girl coming at her mom with a trowel with the intent to kill.
Karen’s expressionless face as her own kin kills her without remorse or thinking is the opposite of what people might expect. Many would expect frantic pandemonium and a fight to survive. Karen melts into the floor and seemingly submits to the terror, and who would blame her after having seen her undead daughter munching on some human flesh.
One of my all-time favorite movies, and naturally it has an all-time ending.
It starts with the bait and switch. We think that Scott Glen is going to capture the killer, but its Jodie Foster as Clarice who knocks on the door of Buffalo Bill. The smarts of the detective to realize what’s happening sets the chase in motion, and once we descend into the layer of the killer, then the anxiety really cranks up.
The night vision goggles give Buffalo Bill the edge, and much like the rest of the movie, Clarice has to find a way out of a seemingly impossible situation. We saw her fail an FBI test when it came to entering a room with armed adversaries, but nothing in the FBI training manual could prepare you for being in the dark with a mad man on your tail.
Foster is great at flailing in the dark. Sure, that would seem like a natural thing, but the fear in her eyes when she can’t see what’s happening around her is something that needs to be practiced and artfully done.
Jonathan Demme did the damn thing. He created a perfect ending to a perfect movie, and that is a really hard thing to do.
Also, is this the most disgusting basement of basement scenes? We have a woman screaming in a well, a dead woman in a tub, a sewer of skin with hygiene not meaning a thing. It really might be the grossest thing, but the scene is a thing of beauty.
I have written about how much I love Zodiac and how I think it’s David Fincher’s best movie. I have written about how the eeriness of this basement walk through is a build up of the 2.5 hour anxiety spin cycle. There is no gore, and no jump scare. It is not horror, but fear. It is the emotion of fear and that’s a hard thing to bottle up.
Special shoutout to Charles Fleischer for being a true scary and creepy ass individual. He has the hunched back that makes him seem like an evil carnival character. When Vaughn appears behind Graysmith at the front door with the keys to allow him to escape, oh what a delightfully slow moving finish.
There is a great article on The Ringer about the scene and Zodiac as a whole, which I encourage everyone to read if they have the time.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
The Black Phone
The Conjuring
The Evil Dead
Nightmare On Elm Street
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