There's that frightening albeit curious scene where E.T. throws the ball back at Elliot from inside the shed, but there's another horror trope that presents itself not long into the movie. It's a trope that I call the "horror hands." You know them — those long-fingered bony hands we see in horror movies edging toward a character, its body (if it has one) often out of frame to cause some extra dread. In this case, we have E.T. shuffling that lung sack of a body up to Elliot like it's going to attack the kid or something, only to stretch out its knobby hands and drop Elliot's candy onto his lap. What follows is a whole sequence of "horror hands" as Elliot lures the alien into his house.