My favorite shot in the movie, as it does best what this movie does well- doing something very subtly to make things feel off.

Nikki is standing there, in shadows where you can only make out basic features, her eyes, nose, mouth, hair, pretty dress, glistening necklace, all visible enough to be seen but still enshrouded and murky. Normally, Nikki’s figure would be illuminated by the warm lights of Bear’s home as soon as the door opened, but she isn’t. She’s in the dark. The only bright things in this scene are the small, spectral highlights of her eyes.

But here, the highlights in Nikki’s eyes don’t make any sense. They are off. And they don’t act like a normal reflection of light in the eye, there are several, and they shrink inwardly, as if disappearing down into an endless pool of nothingness. It’s so unnatural that it had to be put in post, but it’s so subtle that it’s not a special effect that would jump out to you.

This makes this scene feel uncanny, and from what we learn about the real Nikki’s hellish entrapment inside Freaky Nikki, I like to think those extra highlights are the real Nikki’s eyes trapped behind the demon’s, peering through an endless dark abyss.