unhinged jaw
10 titles
Horror films with one shot in common: a person's jaw drops open far wider than a jaw can. Until that shot the person looks ordinary.
In The Taking of Deborah Logan, a documentary crew films a woman with Alzheimer's, and hair-raising events begin to plague the family and the crew. Jennifer in Jennifer's Body has a demon in her, and her best friend has to stop her. Charley Brewster in Fright Night is sure his new neighbours are vampires, and the only person who will help him is a washed-up host of a TV horror show. The jaw is the same each time, and you sit through the setup knowing it is coming.
The jaw does not belong only to the possessed. In Legion, strangers trapped in a desert diner with the Archangel Michael meet an old woman whose mouth opens far wider than it should. In Grave Encounters, a ghost-hunting crew has locked itself inside an abandoned psychiatric hospital, and a ghost turns her mouth down to her chest. In The Mummy, a curse on the dead priest Imhotep is let loose at the dig at Hamunaptra, and he drops his jaw. Blade II, V/H/S, Resident Evil: Afterlife and I Am Legend round out the ten, with a vampire hunter against the Reapers, burglars among stolen tapes, and the last human in New York among the Infected.
