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Horror movies are supposed to provoke terror and fear in the hearts and minds of movie-goers. While they're meant to be the stuff of nightmares and often inspire nightmares in their viewers, there are also times when characters in horror movies have nightmares of their own. These scenes can often be some of the most terrifying of all.

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While reality can be scarier than dreams for horror movie characters, it doesn’t stop some legendary moments during the history of the horror genre from coming from dream sequences that go wrong. Sometimes, this is even where the majority of the terror in horror movies takes place.

7 Aliens

Sigourney Weaver In Aliens

If any nightmare sequence in horror truly convinced the audience for just a second that something could be real, it was Aliens. Ellen Ripley spent the entirety of Alien running from a terrifying fate, the same which befell one of her Nostromo crew mates right in front of her. The chest-bursting scene in Alien was legendary, and it was replicated in Aliens with Ripley herself.

Fortunately, this time around it was just a nightmare and Ripley woke up safe. Having watched her run from this fate for so long and fight against the possibility of it so hard though, audiences had their hearts in their mouths watching this nightmare sequence.

6 Pet Sematary (1989)

Andrew Hubatsek In Pet Sematary

Pet Sematary is generally made up of the things of nightmares. A family that loses one of their children and puts him in the ground only for him to rise again is a haunting experience and the movie doesn’t stop there. Rachel is haunted by the loss of her sister, Zelda, who died in the house years earlier of spinal meningitis.

When Rachel comes home one night and hears calling from a bedroom upstairs, she finds Zelda returned in there and laughing that she will make Rachel just like her. Zelda, in this terrible deformed state, was a true source of terror every time she appeared on-screen, even though this was just a dream sequence.

5 The Exorcist

Mercedes McCambridge In The Exorcist

The face of Pazuzu is one of the earliest and most legendary nightmare scenes in cinema history. It remains one of the most haunting sights ever put on a screen, despite much of the terror from The Exorcist having lessened as time goes by since the initial release.

Father Karras has a dream of him running after his mother as she enters a subway, and while he runs the frightening white face of Pazuzu flashes up, only briefly, on the screen. This image was terrifying and haunted viewers long after they’d left the cinema when the movie was first released.

4 The Conjuring 2

Bonnie Aarons & Vera Farmiga In The Conjuring 2

The Conjuring movies have some better jump scares and tension-building sequences than any horror movies this century. However, there is one particular dream sequence where Lorraine Warren has a vision of the Nun who seems to swear that she will murder Ed, Lorraine’s husband.

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This vision was absolutely haunting, and the moment where the Nun comes out of the portrait to attack is the most surprising shock of the entire movie. The franchise has become known for the terrifying demons produced by it, particularly Annabelle and the Nun. This moment was one of the definitive ones that set the Conjuring movies apart from other demonic horror movies.

3 Friday The 13th (1980)

Adrienne King In Friday The 13th

Friday the 13th is not what many casual viewers would think. Not only is Jason Voorhees not the primary killer of this original movie, but he does appear at the end in a final jump scare moment as a mutated child ghost who jumps at the final girl Alice out of the water of Crystal Lake as she tries to escape from the camp.

All of this came after she finally defeated the killer, Jason’s mother Pamela Voorhees. However, Alice would awaken to find herself safe in the hospital, and Jason’s sudden appearance was just a nightmare. Of course, he would later appear to become the killer of every sequel, taking over as the main character of the franchise.

2 The Fly

Geena Davis In The Fly

The idea of one's husband mutating himself slowly into a fly monster is one thing, in fact, it’s just a regular Cronenberg movie. Getting pregnant and having a nightmare in which the baby also comes out as a horrifying mutation is on a whole other level though and is a much more painful and terrifying experience for both the character and the viewers.

Jeff Goldblum’s version of The Fly made this nightmare sequence a reality for Geena Davis. It was such an iconic scene because David Cronenberg starred in it himself as the gynecologist delivering the monstrous baby from her womb.

1 A Nightmare On Elm Street

Robert Englund In A Nightmare On Elm Street

There is, however, only one franchise in which dream sequences can end in the deaths of the dreamers. Of course, the scariest nightmare sequence in all cinema has to belong to A Nightmare On Elm Street. The franchise is filled to the brim with terrifying dreams, Freddy Krueger lives in the dreams of his victims and manages to kill them there.

It is a gloriously great idea that constantly reinvented itself through the sequels, providing Freddy with the means to continually terrify his soon-to-be victims. Nancy’s initial dream sequence featuring her dead friends covered in bugs remains one of the very best and scariest moments in the franchise and helped make the first movie one of the defining moments of '80s cinema.

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