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Nightmare Fuel / MouseHunt

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"I don't think we're dealing with an ordinary mouse."
Ernie Smuntz

  • The beginning of the teaser trailer just screams "monster/murder movie".
    Narrator: Late one night, as it must to all men, death came to the old man. (as the camera enters the house) To his two sons, he left this house. But behind this door, inside these walls, someone... watches. (entering the kitchen) He sees all, knows your fear. Because in this house... (a monster-esque creature's shadow is seen, until it's revealed that it was a shadow puppet done by the mouse) ...he's the big cheese.
  • During their search for the noise in the attic on their first night in the house, they're scared by a demonic shadow illuminated by lightning, which leads to both Ernie and Lars, who jumps into Ernie's arms, screaming and clinging to each other. Fortunately for them, it turned out it was just a jack-in-the-box. Not that it stops Lars from screaming...
  • The scene where the mouse is evading oncoming nails courtesy of Lars using a nail gun. Surrounded, he was about to meet his fate when Lars was about to hammer one that didn't go all the way in, which is one that was near the mouse's face. Fortunately, Ernie unexpectedly came in at the last minute before the mouse was impaled to death.
  • The painting of Rudolf Smuntz is moody throughout the film, but then magically changes to a grin, when the sons finally work together for real. In intention, a beautiful event to show the father being proud of his sons even after death, but the goddamn painting changes through supernatural forces. Not intentionally scary, but if you think about it, it's chilling.
  • A more chilling example is when the brothers enter the city pound to find a cat, and there's a little girl being dragged out by her mother screaming about her kitty being left behind... The kitten is taken inside, and the room fills with smoke hopefully for decontamination... It doesn't help that a great deal of the imagery, music, and visual cues are reminiscent of the Nazi death camps, surely intentionally so.
  • Just Catzilla's establishing moment where he breaks out of his crate and roars like Godzilla before going after the mouse. Later that night, he catches him in the dumbwaiter, but he suddenly meets his demise when the mouse cuts the rope. Poor kitty.
  • Catzilla screaming as he falls to his (presumed) death in the laundry shaft.
  • The moment where Caesar's dragged around the house and screaming while causing damage. This is one of the moments that's NOT Played for Laughs. After that, he was locked in a trunk in the attic and, if you listen to the recording on his tape recorder, he must have been tortured; which could be the result of his Sanity Slippage.
    Ernie: I don't think we're dealing with an ordinary mouse.
  • Ernie losing his sanity after being blasted out of the chimney and crashing into the lake to the point where he has no other choice but to shoot the mouse dead with a shotgun, determined to make sure he rids the mouse.
  • The flood during the auction at the end. It all starts when the Smuntz brothers had spotted the mouse and Lars was gonna douse Hilda's burning spool. Ernie uses the hose and puts it in the mouse's mouse hole and Lars turns on the water and accidentally breaks the knob off, which results in the inner-part of the house is overflowed with water and resulting in breaking through the whole inside of the house that washes away the people that were inside.

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