WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Spider-Man: Far From Home, in theaters now.
Before Marvel put him in charge of the MCU's Spider-Man movies, Jon Watts was primarily a horror director. His first feature film was the Eli Roth-produced slasher Clown, which he followed with the intense thriller, Cop Car.
Watts is far from the only horror director to go into superhero films. The first Spider-Man trilogy came from The Evil Dead's Sam Raimi; Scott Derrickson went from Sinister to Doctor Strange; Aquaman's James Wan and Shazam!'s David F. Sandberg worked on The Conjuring Universe before the DC Universe; Zack Snyder's first film was the Dawn of the Dead remake and both cinematic incarnations of the monster-superhero Hellboy franchise came from horror directors, Guillermo Del Toro and Neil Marshall.
Watching Watts' first Spider-Man film, Homecoming, you might not be able to guess the director came from this kind of creative background. The genre elements that stand out from other superhero films lean more towards a John Hughes-esque comedy. Watt's comedy experience working on The Onion News Hour likely played a bigger role in preparing him for Homecoming than his horror/thriller movies. Only in the threatening car conversation between Adrian Toomes and Peter Parker do you really get the sense of Watts' skill for tension and terror.
Spider-Man: Far From Home gives Watts the opportunity to show off his horror filmmaking skills. The mind-bending nature of Mysterio's abilities, the way he can create illusions just to mess with his victims, allows for frights both surreal and psychological. While the film as a whole is still more focused on laughs than on scares, Far From Home might very well be the Marvel Cinematic Universe entry most likely to give children nightmares and even leave adults a bit spooked.
The big frightening sequence comes when Peter arrives in Berlin to meet with Nick Fury. Fury is suddenly shot dead in what's revealed to be an elaborate Mysterio illusion. Mysterio then proceeds to do everything in his power to psychologically torture Peter, throwing him through a barrage of nightmarish scenes presented in such an intense, dreamlike fashion that it almost matches the visual craziness of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.
Two particular images in this sequence stand out as particularly terrifying. One involves MJ falling from the Eiffel Tower, an image especially loaded with impact in how it evokes the classic "The Night Gwen Stacy Died" and, in general, Spider-Man's comics history with dead girlfriends.
The other unforgettable fright is a scene where a zombified Iron Man crawls out of Tony Stark's grave. This is the perfect use of horror imagery on every level. It's more grotesque than anything else in the MCU thus far and is also the most psychologically scarring thing you could show to a young man still mourning his father figure's death. (It's also probably going to make a lot of comic geeks want a Marvel Zombies adaptation.)
The Berlin illusion sequence also knows how to pull the rug out from under the audience. When Fury appears to save the day and shoot down Mysterio, it plays like a possible real victory even as we know not to trust anything we see from now on. The visual style returns to realism as opposed to the heavy CGI of the earlier illusions, and the scene goes on just long enough that you wonder if it's actually a return to reality. Of course, as soon as Peter reveals the names of his classmates who know Mysterio's secrets. "Fury" turns out to be Mysterio, and Peter gets hit by a train.
Though it has included many frightening elements, the MCU hasn't really ventured much into horror territory yet. Pre-Far From Home, the various deaths (both temporary and permanent) in Avengers: Infinity War are probably what sticks out in most fans' minds as the MCU's scariest moment, but the emotions are more sad than scary. Far From Home is a lighter movie than Infinity War or Endgame, but it's also the most directly the franchise has ventured into full-on horror. We wonder how much further the MCU can go in this direction. Blade reboot, anyone?
Directed by Jon Watts, Spider-Man: Far From Home stars Tom Holland, Samuel L. Jackson, Zendaya, Cobie Smulders, Jon Favreau, JB Smoove, Jacob Batalon and Martin Starr, with Marisa Tomei and Jake Gyllenhaal.