The following piece includes mild spoilers for “The Invisible Man” and major spoilers for five earlier films.

Like many horror fans, it’s hard to scare me with garden variety maniac killers and grisly deaths.

But there’s a moment about midway through the new film “The Invisible Man” that shocked me so vividly, I did something I’ve never done at a horror movie: I shot out of my seat and let out a scream. As the scene continued, I couldn’t move. The woman next to me also screamed, uncontrollably. It was heaven.

(To avoid compromising the integrity of the scare, let’s just say it involves a nice restaurant, a big knife and Elisabeth Moss.)

What makes the scene so stunning isn’t how startling and bloody it is. (It’s both.) It’s how the moment thrillingly and thoroughly befuddles the viewer’s expectations. Unlike a plot twist or a killer reveal in the final moments of a horror movie, an unforeseen shock early or midway in a film reorients the story and disorients the viewer. Just when you think the film is this, it actually becomes that. It’s like experiencing two movies for the price of one.