That setup was done so cleverly. They only dropped this in a tale in the beginning (that a child had to stand in the corner while the other child was being gutted alive) and then don't mention it a single time for the next 60 minutes and then BOOM, your brain still connects these dots immediately and it hits far more than if they actually showed one of the people being gutted. Just that abstract fear of what looks like will likely happen ... damn.

One night as a teen, I was staying with some cousins and we were just goofing about and shooting the shit for a whole weekend. When we went to sleep we decided to watch a movie on cable. We eventually landed on a choice between Blair Witch and The Parent Trap. Three tough teens, landed on the decision to just watch the latter because we had already seen the Blair Witch before as kids and we were just scarred by the impression the movie had left in us.

Watched it later again as an older adult and it certainly isn't really all that much. It was revolutionary horror at the time, but it still leans heavily on the “bunch of idiot young adults who have no critical thinking skills make a long string of bad decisions, get killed” trope.

Same here. I thought it was super stupid, but everyone back then was like aaaaaa scariest movie ever zomg. I felt the same about the Ring, or any Japanese or Korean horror. Still kind of do.