Visions of horror
November 1, 2014 9:50 AM   Subscribe

 
Event Horizon. Seriously; I hadn't seen any previews or read any reviews when we walked into the theater, so I figured it was just going to be your standard sci-fi flick.

Then things got... creepy.

For my wife, it was The Ring. She used to love horror films, but after that one, she just won't have anything to do with them any more.

The Guardian's list is good, though I feel like Clockwork Orange and Alien should fit in there somewhere. But with a limited staff, each picking their one favorite, there are bound to be missing examples in the decades and decades of films that represent the horror genera.
posted by quin at 10:04 AM on November 1, 2014 [3 favorites]


I saw Threads late night on TV in the 80s. I think it may have been on TBS back then? Not sure at this remove. I was a sobbing, gutted mess at the end.

Then, in an absolute GENIUS programming move, they played the James Stewart movie Harvey right after it. That was probably the best unicorn chaser possible for me. I stayed up to watch it all the way through, even though that meant I got to bed at 4 AM or something ridiculous like that.
posted by Archer25 at 10:14 AM on November 1, 2014 [21 favorites]


The relentlessly horrofying Threads (1984) borrows variously from seventies disaster movies, dystopian sci-fi flicks, and BBC documentaries to create a worst-case nuclear nightmare for the Cold War. Watching a marathon of all the other movies would be preferable to seeing it again, but it's well worth watching once.

These days we could use a similar project for climate change at the end of this century, 'cos even Mad Max sequels aren't as grim and bleak.
posted by Doktor Zed at 10:16 AM on November 1, 2014 [8 favorites]


Good to see Watership Down ... We went expecting Disney bunnies, we left scarred for life.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 10:18 AM on November 1, 2014 [17 favorites]


I have been reading this series, great post!

When I saw Blair Witch Project in the theater, it was a delightfully frightening movie. Threads and The War Game were indeed pretty horrifying. The only movie that has ever given me nightmares was the original Mad Max, a total grindhouse classic.
posted by Nevin at 10:21 AM on November 1, 2014


Of course Threads is first. That movie broke an entire generation of Brits.
posted by eriko at 10:36 AM on November 1, 2014 [4 favorites]


I don't know if glad is the right word. So let's just say, I'm impressed to see Threads and War Game getting mention here. Because much as I can enjoy a solid creepy fright, nothing is as resolutely horrifying as the all too possible reality that those two present.
posted by philip-random at 10:38 AM on November 1, 2014


Threads is the scariest movie I have ever seen, but it sure isn't something I would include in, like, a Halloween horrorfest schedule. Like, I hope no one sits down and is like, "Yay, I'm ready to be scared, let's do this!" because no. No. It's like Martyrs times a billion, plus a root canal performed on you while they screen a documentary about the Trail of Tears. I think the only film I've ever seen that was as upsetting is this one right here.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 10:45 AM on November 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


My daughter, unlike most kids, was never scared of anything under her bed or in the closet. Then she saw The Ring at a friend's house, and I had to make sure her closet was closed every night. Pre-tweens should not watch horror films.

I seldom watch them myself, but when I found myself in a theater watching The Two Sisters in 2003, half-way through I asked myself, "Why am I watching this? This is really disturbing." It is first on this list of South Korean horror films.
posted by kozad at 10:52 AM on November 1, 2014


I recently came across a thread on reddit about unusual animated films, which led me to check out Plague Dogs, whose medical experiment scenes at the beginning would probably scar a child for life.

And speaking of Grave of the Fireflies, there's true horror to be found in both the manga and 1983 animated adaptation of Barefoot Gen. (I'm so sorry if you are just becoming aware of the these. But in discussing Threads, and perhaps this is a Reagan era thing, but the no jump scare or dumb spooky demon movie is as chilling as the reality of nuclear horror.)
posted by Catblack at 11:06 AM on November 1, 2014 [4 favorites]


Getting a phone call in the middle of watching the Ring is BAD.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 11:09 AM on November 1, 2014 [6 favorites]


You can't THREADS and WATERSHIP DOWN, that's just unfair. You might as well throw in PLAGUE DOGS and WHEN THE WIND BLOWS and make it a suicide quadrilogy.
posted by Artw at 11:17 AM on November 1, 2014 [11 favorites]


which led me to check out Plague Dogs

DO NOT CHECK OUT PLAGUE DOGS.
posted by Artw at 11:18 AM on November 1, 2014 [27 favorites]


Plenty of things scared me as a kid but the only film that's really got to me as an adult is Ringu. There's films that are tense or have jump scares but Ringu was several orders of magnitude above that and I honestly thought I was going to have a heart attack at the end and I had nightmares afterwards. The effect was probably not helped by watching it on tv in a pitch black room (because the bulb in the lamp had blown earlier and I thought watching with the main light on would kill the atmosphere). Even the notoriously spoilering introduction by film critic Mark Kermode could not quash the evil. And yeah, I'm not a normally superstitious person but if anything is genuinely infected with dark forces it's that film.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 11:21 AM on November 1, 2014


When I was young, my parents bought a new TV and let me put the old TV in my room. I felt so cool with that TV in my room, like I had real ownership and control over what I could watch. It was one of the older (now ancient) cathode ray models with a curved, reflective screen, but despite its age, it signified a right of passage into adult responsibility for me.

Then I watched The Ring.

I eyeballed my TV as I pulled the covers up to my chin. I told myself it was just a movie, there was no reason to be frightened at all. I rolled over to face away from it and shut my eyes. I slept fitfully, my mind buzzing with all the horrifying images in the video, the ghastly masks of terror on the victims' faces. I told myself I was being irrational, if I just rolled over and looked at the TV, there would be nothing there. Just as I did so, the headlights of a passing car illuminated a white shirt hanging on my closet door, which happened to be perfectly reflected in the center of the TV.

I can't recall experiencing a more intense moment of physical terror in my life, before or since. The shock was so great that all the muscles in my body, like a great spring, launched me out of bed. Once I realized what had happened and my heart started beating again, I unplugged the TV, picked it up, and marched it down to the basement.

That was many years ago now. This halloween I was considering watching the Ring with my wife... but I couldn't quite convince myself to do it.
posted by buriednexttoyou at 11:29 AM on November 1, 2014 [25 favorites]


I don't know about "frightened me most," but Night of the Living Dead has to be on some sort of Scariest Movies Ever list. It starts out as what we would now (after 45+ years and way too many sequels and other spawn) consider a campy, cheesy B-movie and turns rapidly into something much more complicated and, yeah, scary.

(God, that Psycho commentary by Joe Queenan was just what I would expect from him -- trite, obvious, and awful.)
posted by blucevalo at 11:32 AM on November 1, 2014 [2 favorites]


I had just gotten my very own black and white TV for my room. I was supposed to be asleep but I wanted to see what was on late night. I'm in a dark room, trying to be silent and listening with an earplug. The movie after the 10:00 news is The Haunting (1963). Jeebus that scared the shit out of me...
posted by jim in austin at 11:32 AM on November 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


Oh god, how could I have forgotten about Miracle Mile? That was one that spooked the shit out of 17 year old me.

I honestly think I might have blocked it from memory because it's one of those movies that, while excellent, wasn't something I ever wanted to see again. Kind of like Pan's Labyrinth.
posted by quin at 11:40 AM on November 1, 2014 [5 favorites]


The original version of The Vanishing scared the shit out of me.
posted by brevator at 11:43 AM on November 1, 2014 [5 favorites]


Plague Dogs and Watership Down were done by the same production house/ animators.

Water ship Down scared me greatly when I saw it in the the theater at age 5. But it's also beautiful and haunting to this day , I think.
posted by Liquidwolf at 11:48 AM on November 1, 2014 [3 favorites]


They are both based on books by Richard Adams. Presumably there was a third part to this trilogy set in a glue factory.
posted by Artw at 11:50 AM on November 1, 2014 [18 favorites]


I was surprised at how well done Eden Lake was. I am not a horror movie kind of person, and it has its cringe moments, but I was compelled to watch it all. The cast is excellent (Michael Fassbender, for example). The thing that was most unsettling about it was how internally ugly people could become. It creates moments of unpredictable evil that come from inside of people that you feel that you should have been able to trust under normal circumstances, and in disproportionate ways. It also ties into the horror of seeing people go along with the "bad thing" even though they might normally be half-way decent people otherwise.
posted by SpacemanStix at 11:57 AM on November 1, 2014


When I was ten or so I walked into the living room where my parents and some friends of theirs were watching Jaws...at the exact moment where [SPOILERS I GUESS] Quint gets eaten alive by the shark. I was like 25 before I actually found the nerve to watch the rest of the movie.
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:57 AM on November 1, 2014


Se7en was recommended to me by a friend who doesn't really like scary movies, so I rented it thinking that it might be some harmless fun for the night.

Man did that scare the bejesus out of me! I was still shaken days later.
posted by eye of newt at 12:02 PM on November 1, 2014


I was thirteen when we were shown the first half of Threads and all of When the Wind Blows in an English class. We were all from the UK, born in the early ninetie. The cold war, at the time, made no sense to any of us, especially the fear it inspired. It was heavily hinted by the (beloved) English teacher that although school rules meant he wasn't allowed to show us the end of Threads that we should go and do so.

We giggled at the beginning of both films, but by the ends my class understood more about that period of 'history', and our parents, than should have been possible in a three hour time span. Something about the normality of the grandparents, the BBC drama. Both films left a significant impression- I couldn't tell you a damn thing that we covered in science or our actual history lessons that year.

All this said, the scariest horror film I've ever seen was probably Sinister.
posted by Braeburn at 12:04 PM on November 1, 2014 [3 favorites]


They are both based on books by Richard Adams. Presumably there was a third part to this trilogy set in a glue factory.

Theres a book about sex slaves in the style of The Hunger Games, except her super power is swimming instead of archery. I picked it up after Plague Dogs proved too depressing for 8 year old me to finish. Don't let your kids loose in the Richard Adams part of the library unsupervised, folks.
posted by fshgrl at 12:07 PM on November 1, 2014 [2 favorites]


For me it was Alien. I saw it in the theater when it came out and I was 11. I watched almost all of it from behind my hands, and I sure had to pee a lot. I never wanted to see it again because I was sure it would ruin the scary.
posted by chavenet at 12:13 PM on November 1, 2014 [3 favorites]


I was 5 when I saw Alien on TV. I ran out screaming when Kane gave birth. HOLY SHIT. I never saw the whole movie from beginning to end until my 20s.
posted by Renoroc at 12:24 PM on November 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


Different people respond to different things. I have a friend who was literally put in an emergency room by The Abyss.
posted by Naberius at 12:34 PM on November 1, 2014


The bit of Alien that freaked me out the most was recently ruined for me by the words "Jazz Hands", so thanks Cortex and Griph.
posted by Artw at 12:40 PM on November 1, 2014 [11 favorites]


I was five or six, the same age as Danny, when I watched The Shining. My big wheel didn't look so appealing afterwarda.
posted by benzenedream at 12:41 PM on November 1, 2014


Plague Dogs and Watership Down were done by the same production house/ animators.

Well, that must have been a fun place to work.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 12:46 PM on November 1, 2014 [15 favorites]


I was pretty much terrified of the dark from age 8 to 18. Saw Nightmare on Elm Street in third grade at the birthday party of some kid with "cool" (absent) parents... I spent the next 4 years dashing from the light switch to the covers every night. Then when I was just getting over those childish fears, I saw The Believers at a church overnight ("cool" church). I still think I'm going to be electrocuted every time I encounter a household appliance in the kitchen.
posted by pjenks at 12:53 PM on November 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


Battle Royale was a tough movie to watch. Partially as I didn't check out any reviews or information beforehand and assumed (I have no idea why) it was some kind of cute Japanese rom-com. And partially, based on that assumption, because it was a date movie for myself and my (very quickly to become ex-) date - a school teacher - of the evening.

(Me, partway through, in a desperate attempt to lighten the mood. "Oh, that's a nice lighthouse. Ever visited one?" Just before nearly everyone inside ... yeah. Le sigh.)
posted by Wordshore at 1:08 PM on November 1, 2014 [8 favorites]


I love horror novels, short stories, comics, tv and films, and as it is such a major element in my life that I have enjoyed a larger than fair share of dreadful frights. I have seen most of the above mentioned movies - several are personal favorites - and agree they are all phenomenal. Yet oddly enough, the movie that terrifies me the most is the relatively subtle The Others. It also has the distinction of being the only film (or show or story for that matter) that gave me a nightmare. MASSIVE SPOILERS IN THE NEXT PARAGRAPH... PLEASE RECONSIDER READING IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THIS WONDERFUL FILM.

The idea of being dead and not fully aware of it/ in total denial, and clinging to some semblance of normalcy by insisting on endlessly performing the same stifling routines that gave you misery in life (because these helped you feel you were still alive)... The horror of being reunited with your loved one after death and finding only disgust, emptiness and grief instead of solidarity... The possibility of even the innocent and young children suffering in the afterlife due to the mistakes of others or for no clear reason at all ... The thought of some innocent dead never being able to cope with the reality of what the afterlife is or not having a loved one to long for reunion with... The lack of a comforting God or benevolent guiding force...

It is all so depressing and far more emotionally devastating than any gorefest. Regarding the one nightmare I had, it was of the servants slowly shambling towards me (in a similar way as in the movie) to explain I was really dead all along and my whole existence was a lie I created in order to cope.

END OF SPOILERS

I know for some this is a slow moving film, that said, I truly enjoyed the way it presented established ideas in an unexpected and emotionally powerful way.
posted by partly squamous and partly rugose at 1:13 PM on November 1, 2014 [10 favorites]


kindergarten Kurtz

Holy shit, that's going to the top of my list of potential band names.
posted by klanawa at 1:15 PM on November 1, 2014 [5 favorites]


kittens for breakfast: "Grave of the FIreflies" would wring tears from a corpse. It made Roger Ebert's "When a movie hurts too much" list, I believe.

I managed to watch "Burnt Offerings" this morning without having to watch through my fingers. That's progress for me. (Note that I did NOT watch it at night!!!)

Maybe with getting older comes some acceptance that yes, evil (or whatever you want to call it) lives in you as it does in most people, but you don't have to act on it... and that very acknowledgement diminishes the horror in a lot of horror movies. I still enjoy them, though.

I hope someday to get through "The Exorcist," which is my favorite movie that I've never seen. And I'll mention the 1989 version of "Woman In Black" for the second time this week. If you watch "Woman In Black," keep the sound turned down to a reasonable level, perhaps lower than you might otherwise have it. Really.
posted by Sheydem-tants at 1:21 PM on November 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


I first saw "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark" as a teenager in Venezuela (on television, dubbed into Spanish), and it scared me and my best friend like nothing we had ever seen. I still can't watch it without my skin crawling, decades later. I haven't seen the remake, but I doubt it could match the creepiness of the original.
posted by dbiedny at 1:34 PM on November 1, 2014 [3 favorites]


Threads kept me up for a week straight. I could basically only sleep once the sun came up, and even then only from exhaustion. And I watched it only a few years ago; I can't imagine what it did to people who lived at the height of mutually assured destruction. I've probably written about Threads a dozen times on Metafilter.

There are a few movies I'm not sure I'll ever see because I imagine them to be even worse: Grave of the Fireflies, Requiem For a Dream, and Testament.
posted by chrominance at 1:39 PM on November 1, 2014 [2 favorites]


I generally avoid horror movies because I'm an enormous wuss. I saw The Blair Witch Project when it was in theaters - I must have been 12 or 13 - and it scared the ever-loving shit out of me. My backyard bordered a wood that I used to love exploring; my bedroom window faced it. I didn't go into those woods for like three months. I had to close the blinds to my bedroom window because even looking at the woods freaked me out after seeing that movie. After that, I didn't watch another horror movie until years later, when my husband and I were staying at his parents' house and The Grudge happened to be on TV. I could barely sleep and had horrible nightmares that night. A few days ago, when my brother-in-law recommended Cabin in the Woods to me, I told him about my reaction to The Grudge. He remarked that I'd just happened to stumble across one of the few genuinely scary horror movies made in the last ten years. Lucky me.

The only other movie I've seen on this list is The Sixth Sense. I saw it in theaters (probably around the same time as BWP) and again more recently. Watching it as an adult, I was struck by how it was way less scary, and way more touching, than I remember. I cried several times, but I wasn't afraid to go to bed or anything. Maybe I just remembered all the scary parts, and that took the bite out of them.

chrominance: I wouldn't call Grave of the Fireflies scary, just unbelievably sad. Keep two full boxes of tissues on hand; you'll probably go through all of them.

partly squamous and partly rugose: Wow, your spoilers really made me want to watch The Others! Will I still like it now that I know?
posted by Anyamatopoeia at 1:44 PM on November 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


Once I had a bad acid trip and a few days later my friends decided to watch Jacob's Ladder. That... was a bad idea.
posted by fungible at 1:52 PM on November 1, 2014 [7 favorites]


When I was in grade school, I had a sleepover at a friend's house and we watched a scary movie in which a boy and his family were terrorized by monsters that were trying to eat them while on vacation in a creepy rural town where they were vacationing. At the end, after defeating the monsters and returning home, the big scare/twist is that the monsters were undefeated, and the boy witnesses them eating his mother. As a young boy, I was horrified and disturbed by the film.

Years later, in high school, a friend of mine asked if I had seen it. I said yes, thinking back to how scared I was at that final scene. The way he described it, though, made it sound completely stupid and laughably bad. In fact, it turns out, the film has amassed a cult following who routinely watch it for laughs. There's even been a documentary about it. In case you haven't guessed it, that film is Troll 2.

I routinely watch it now, as it's one of the best of the so-bad-it's-good genre, but I like to think the director would be happy if he knew that his film had its intended effect on at least one little boy.
posted by buriednexttoyou at 1:58 PM on November 1, 2014 [13 favorites]


It's like Martyrs times a billion

Jeeze, it's hard to believe that's even possible. Martyrs just... stays with you for a while after watching it.

Another French film, Inside, will fuck with you pretty good too. It's not as brutal as Martyrs, but has no shortage of disturbing scenes...
posted by crank at 1:58 PM on November 1, 2014


I put together a post on my site here a few months back with a load of embedded versions of Threads/When The Wind Blows/public information film style stuff.

For me, there's something really creepy about ones like The Hole In The Ground, where it's treated like it's going to be like a conventional war. You know, rather than the end.
posted by MattWPBS at 2:00 PM on November 1, 2014 [5 favorites]


Oh, and the film which personally fucked my head up the most in a horror way (as opposed to crushing fear of humanity) was the remake of The Grudge. Something about the croaking sound the boy ghost made, and the way it happily goes into generally off limits spots like modern office blocks.
posted by MattWPBS at 2:02 PM on November 1, 2014 [2 favorites]


For me, as a child, it was The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I haven't seen it recently but I'll bet it still holds up.

This thread reminds me just how high on the horror pantheon The Ring is. For folks around 30-ish it seems to be the high water mark of horror. I'll have to watch it again, but frankly don't remember it being terribly scary. I do recall that the plot gets really convoluted and jumbled by the end and I was bit confused. Maybe I was just high.
posted by zardoz at 2:03 PM on November 1, 2014


When we first saw Ringu, we were watching it on VHS.




What were we thinking?
posted by Katemonkey at 2:17 PM on November 1, 2014 [4 favorites]


How is The Exorcist not on this list?! The sound effects alone could give you a heart attack.
posted by funkiwan at 2:27 PM on November 1, 2014 [2 favorites]


In the vein of the post-apocalyptic movies, Children of Men disturbed me for some time. I was expecting the same from The Road after I read the book but the movie didn't quite have the same impact as the book did. It didn't capture the horrific, bleak despair the book did.

I'm not one for gory horror and can't really make it through movies like Hostel or the Saw movies other than the first - they don't scare me so much as it's just unpleasant but I do like the more supernatural ones. Session 9 isn't often mentioned but damn that movie touched on a nerve with me - moreso than The Ring I think. The other one that really scared me was Wolf Creek.

In terms of surrealist horror, The Oregonian is an interesting one.
posted by jimmythefish at 2:30 PM on November 1, 2014


I must be an anomaly because when I saw The Ring in theaters as a teenager, I thought the ending was so stupid that I burst out laughing, much to the chagrin of my fellow moviegoers. I was laughing all the way back to the car. I saw Ringu much later and was just really bothered by all the sexism.

But Blair Witch Project is still one of the scariest movies I've ever seen. Texas Chainsaw Massacre definitely ranks up there too.
posted by Librarypt at 3:09 PM on November 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


Oh, and recently The Mist, for the ending.
posted by MattWPBS at 3:09 PM on November 1, 2014 [4 favorites]


Also I know it's not exactly a horror movie, but Pan's Labyrinth has some terrifying shit in it.
posted by Librarypt at 3:17 PM on November 1, 2014 [3 favorites]


13-year-old me would second Burnt Offerings and add that Sssssss was boy-howdy-I've-got-to-leave-the-theater-right-now creepy. And, yeah, The Exorcist. And The Omen. (Sue me, I grew up Catholic.)

Adult me concurs on the original The Vanishing and The Blair Witch Project, notes that one very famous part of Reservoir Dogs (NSFW) might be the single most disturbing scene I know, and submits for your creep-out consideration the original The Wicker Man and Cronenberg's Dead Ringers.

P.S. I'm not an actor, but if I were I'd LOVE to be in a creepy movie. Seems like it must be so much fun.
posted by Lyme Drop at 3:18 PM on November 1, 2014 [2 favorites]


The bit of Alien that freaked me out the most was recently ruined for me by the words "Jazz Hands", so thanks Cortex and Griph.

Ahhaha, that really was the silliest "man in a rubber suit" part of the movie for me.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 3:29 PM on November 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


Also I know it's not exactly a horror movie, but Pan's Labyrinth has some terrifying shit in it.

It does indeed. It also has about five scenes where someone dies by a gunshot wound to the head. Lulled in by marketing that made it look like something between Finding Neverland and a Narnia movie, I went to see it with a friend a few months after her husband died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. It was... fraught.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 3:33 PM on November 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


P.S. I'm not an actor, but if I were I'd LOVE to be in a creepy movie. Seems like it must be so much fun.

I used to live with a bunch of actors and artists in a big Victorian house in an artsy part of Toronto. Next to the TV was a VCR and a bunch of videocassettes (this was more than twenty years ago) heavy on the arthouse fare and very actor-y movies -- stuff that in the DVD era would be Criterion titles. In the midst of all these highbrow flicks was Part II of a mediumweight horror franchise (not Friday the 13th or Hallowe'en, but one rung down the ladder from those. I was puzzled at this odd one out until one day the roommate who actually owned the house volunteered that she had had the lead in it. That flick bought the house.

She described it as quite a lot of fun, and she showed me the scenes she got to play with some titans of B-movies.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 3:41 PM on November 1, 2014 [4 favorites]


I've never really been one for horror movies, but Village of the Damned scared the hell out of me when I was 7.
posted by Daddy-O at 4:20 PM on November 1, 2014


Has anyone seen The Babadook yet? Because yikes.
posted by hap_hazard at 4:58 PM on November 1, 2014 [2 favorites]


I think The Exorcist is considered even scarier in Catholic countries.

I was visiting Italy after college with a friend of mine. He said "I know this really popular gelato place where lots of local students go to at night, where there's a lot of energy." We go there and it is crowded but dead silent. They had a projector TV in an alcove showing The Exorcist. Everyone was staring in shock with their jaws dropped.
posted by eye of newt at 5:08 PM on November 1, 2014


Eraserhead.
posted by kinnakeet at 5:12 PM on November 1, 2014 [5 favorites]


Jaws, age 7, in a theater with my parents.

Thirty-five years later I still won't be the farthest one out from the beach.
posted by gottabefunky at 5:29 PM on November 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


There's a lot of comic elements, but I always thought Barton Fink was underappreciated as a horror movie. The walls sweat, the pipes moan, and the hotel is apparently completely abandoned except for Barton, Charlie, and the staff - notice how no one runs screaming from their rooms when Charlie sets the place on fire. Besides that, nearly all the characters are off in a way that reads to me as an intentional artistic choice, not as a fumble. They're all just flat enough that they don't seem quite human.

But as far as scaring the hell out of me, I dunno. I can't think of any horror movies that really stuck with me long after I'd watched them. The video game Silent Hill, sure, but no movies.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 5:34 PM on November 1, 2014 [3 favorites]


MattWPBS , I was JUST thinking about how the Protect and Survive series, due to its official matter of fact presentation, imbues this cumulative sense of creeping hopelessness and dread that never quite leaves - it might be because I binge watched the whole series at once, and being from the US I can only imagine the impact it had on a country that had been heavily bombed within the living memory of much of the population.


Films like Threads and When The Wind Blows(which is not necessarily frightening so much as achingly sad) were directly influenced by that series.

If you would like to skip directly to it, here is the installment on "Casualties."
posted by louche mustachio at 5:35 PM on November 1, 2014 [5 favorites]


The one that did it for me was Hellraiser. I'd read some Clive Barker stories and thought I knew what to expect from him. I expected gore and elements of dark fantasy, but I didn't expect the sheer brutality or the claustrophobia that film induces as you get further into it.

I was also deeply in the closet and still under the (fortunately waning) influence of the Christian fundamentalism. Having this "dark sexual secret" that I thought might damn me to hell certainly played a big part in making me vulnerable to the psychological terrain this film covers, but I still contend that this this film is unfairly maligned in light of its somewhat lower-budget special effects and awful, shlocky sequels. If you overlook those things and watch it straight through, it's an intense ride.
posted by treepour at 5:36 PM on November 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


Most scared I've ever been at a movie theater: Pinnochio. Yes, that's right. When he talks to strangers and they take him to a place where they're turning children to donkeys I was like no no NO NOO NOOOOOOO PINNOCHIOOOO WHY DID YOU FOLLOW HIM???!!!???!!!!! I still get goosebumps.

Most scared I've ever been watching a video: Children of the Corn. I can take gore and splatter and ghostly shit, but tense scenes with Mennonite-looking kids lurking in cornfields with sharp farm implements and ill intent, no. I watched the first fifteen minutes of it, then tried again a few years later, got to the same point, and stopped. Never.
posted by Ice Cream Socialist at 5:56 PM on November 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


I was a 22 year old bad-ass ex-hippy (and, yes, lapsed Catholic) when it came out, and
just reading ABOUT The Exorcist, just seeing the promotional material, scared
the bejeezus out of me. When I finally saw it, with all its subliminals and spliced frames, etc.,
it was ... oh, so much worse. People were hospitalized after seeing the original
theatrical release! I understand that it was later toned-down in terms of special effects, etc.,
Still and all, get thee behind me, Linda Blair!
posted by Chitownfats at 6:12 PM on November 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


The only film that's ever truly made me want to crawl out of my skin is The Descent, specifically the first half, when it's all about having to slither blind through dark, damp, crumbling rock fissures, never more than a hair's breadth away from suffocation, drowning, or being flattened under tons of falling rock.

When it (SPOILER) turned into a goofy-ass monster movie at the halfway point, it was actually an immense relief. I'd probably have had a stroke before the end if the whole thing had been about being lost underground.
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 6:19 PM on November 1, 2014 [5 favorites]


I was JUST thinking about how the Protect and Survive series, due to its official matter of fact presentation, imbues this cumulative sense of creeping hopelessness and dread that never quite leaves - it might be because I binge watched the whole series at once, and being from the US I can only imagine the impact it had on a country that had been heavily bombed within the living memory of much of the population.
Probably best to ask Danny Boyle about that.

I always loved the narration from the myriad mixes of Two Tribes ..."mine is the last voice that you will ever hear, do not be alarmed"
posted by fullerine at 6:20 PM on November 1, 2014


The sound effects alone could give you a heart attack.

It makes use of one of the most unsettling LPs of all time, "The Wind Harp: Songs from the Hill".

The only other movie I've seen on this list is The Sixth Sense. I saw it in theaters (probably around the same time as BWP) and again more recently. Watching it as an adult, I was struck by how it was way less scary, and way more touching, than I remember. I cried several times, but I wasn't afraid to go to bed or anything.

For a way, way more frightening exploration of the same theme, check out the sadly underrated and basically forgotten "Stir of Echoes".
posted by ryanshepard at 6:31 PM on November 1, 2014 [3 favorites]


I saw The Other at a drive in theater when I was seven. I'd been taken by my aunt and uncle, against my will, to see the first feature, and I guess they assumed I'd be asleep for the second. Clearly, they didn't know me very well.

And the scene with the well actually formed the basis of a very frequently recurring nightmare, which persisted into adulthood. (In my version, there's also a large owl that covers the well with its wings and a very specific chant made up of nonsense words.)

I've been trying to recreate that feeling ever since, and haven't even come close. I can feel mortification, shock, disgust, etc., but I have never been that scared again. Obviously, it had something to do with being seven, and being very uncomfortable and a little scared to begin with. It was the perfect confluence of factors for a perfect, primal fear. I realize I'll probably never recreate it, but I keep trying.

(Wow. I just realized how much that sounds like someone talking about a drug addiction.)
posted by ernielundquist at 6:36 PM on November 1, 2014 [2 favorites]


It is first on this list of South Korean horror films.

I just went through that list and I must repeat the very first comment, "Where is 'I Saw The Devil'"? Japanese and Korean spattercore is some of the most intense horror shiz around, imo. Because so often they try and bring human emotions and reactions into the proceedings, rather than just murdering them with Texas chainsaws.
posted by Purposeful Grimace at 6:41 PM on November 1, 2014


ernielundquist, THANK YOU! I ran across that movie on teevee when I was 10 or 12 and remained terrified of it for years but not until this thread did I know what movie it was.

Now, I'm going to have to watch it again.
posted by crush-onastick at 6:59 PM on November 1, 2014


I can't deal with torture scenes. If it's a feature film, I'll walk out of the theatre. Sometimes. I made it through Pan's Labyrinth because there's much more to it than mere brutality.

I've made my way through the Saw movies and similar, but not without feeling disgusted at the director and wishing a quick and immediate death upon them. In my private life I'm fixated on the worst of humanity, always have been, and torture isn't some kind of cinematic novelty to me. People really were, and are, monsters to each other.

Aside from that, I've never seen a horror film that has actually scared me. Psychological horror is fun, not scary.

Unless it involves puppets. That's some Uncanny Valley shit. Horror has nothing on me, but puppets, moving teddy bears, animatronic animals, or dolls? No. Just no. A friend remarked: "No wonder you don't like kids. Everything about childhood scares you."

But horror without torture? Never. Isn't Night of the Living Dead a perfect makeout movie?

*cheerfully goes to download the films mentioned in this thread*
posted by quiet earth at 7:01 PM on November 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


I am seriously surprised that I've gotten this far into the thread and no one's mentioned The Exorcism of Emily Rose. I woke up at 3am on the dot for weeks, and couldn't look at my cats at night for a long, long time.

If we're on movies that aren't horror movies but are still scary as hell, A Beautiful Mind was my personal bugaboo. I don't want to spoil it in case anyone hasn't seen it, even though it's old by now, but... put it this way, I knew nothing about the movie going in, I'm scared to pieces of losing my mind, and I caught on at precisely the same time as the protagonist did. It was worth seeing once, and I won't do it again.
posted by joycehealy at 7:16 PM on November 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


For my wife, it was The Ring. She used to love horror films, but after that one, she just won't have anything to do with them any more.

Reading this thread I don't feel so bad for giving up horror films for good. I was a big wuss to begin with, but after watching the Ring and suffering through it just to go home and wait up alone until my parents or sister got home and then still try to go to sleep with the lights on. Gosh, what a terrible night that was. I haven't watched a scary movie ever since that day.
posted by CrazyLemonade at 7:28 PM on November 1, 2014


Audition THIS IS WHY I WON'T DATE.
posted by um at 7:46 PM on November 1, 2014 [5 favorites]


Theres a book about sex slaves in the style of The Hunger Games, except her super power is swimming instead of archery.

Maia? I remember finding the sexualization aspect kind of iffy, but it was more than 20 years ago that I read it so maybe it's not as bad as I remember.

I mostly skip horror movies because I'm a big wuss, but the movie that scared the crap out of me was the first time I saw The Silence of the Lambs, during the scene where Clarice is in Buffalo Bill's basement. I saw it alone, in a basement, and I'm sure that's where my first grey hair came from. (I saw it again a few months ago and that scene wasn't scary at all the second time around.)
posted by Dip Flash at 7:53 PM on November 1, 2014


... and submits for your creep-out consideration the original The Wicker Man and Cronenberg's Dead Ringers.

Dead Ringers was showing one night at my college's theater back in the early 90s, to a full house. I've never had a movie experience since that was as tense and nerve-wracked... the projectionist had to stop the film twice, once because someone was having an epileptic seizure and the second time because a girl in the row behind had me passed out.
posted by Auden at 8:19 PM on November 1, 2014 [2 favorites]


Jesus Christ, if your parents let their kids watch Jaws or the Exorcist they deserve to be whapped with a newspaper. Bad parents! BAD!

As for Watership Down, I never found the book scary, because maybe imagining a rabbit fight isn't as horrifying as seeing it animated? It's one of my favorite books. It has lots of humor and adventure. It's the Odyssey with rabbits, basically.

The Plague Dogs was marketed as kind of "like" WD, but was bleak as fuck and not really good for kids to read. Had a nominally happy ending, but only after too many terrible things had happened.

Horror movie wise, the thing that gave me nightmares as a kid was not even a movie, but a movie ad, for It's Alive, a cheesy-as-fuck demon-baby flick, but the TV ads had a heartbeat sound, ominous music, the scary announcer dude's voice, and an black screen with only a glimpse of the demon-baby, and that shit haunted me for years.
posted by emjaybee at 9:00 PM on November 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


I always assumed that for anyone roughly my age (born in early 70s), Salem's Lot was the standard answer to this question. I haven't seen it again for 30+ years, so I don't know if it was actually scary, or I was just the right age.

Also, for sleep-over late night viewing, some episodes of The Twilight Zone packed a pretty good punch at that age.
posted by TheShadowKnows at 9:29 PM on November 1, 2014 [2 favorites]


I can't honestly claim to know what the fuck actually took place in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, but it has been the most frightening movie-watching of my life so far. When I lived alone, my friend who had an apartment one floor down from me would come over every few nights. We would drink wine and put a movie on, and I would generally doze off well before the first hour was up. Although that first abrupt daylight murder terrified the shit out of us both, the night we watched the Texas Chain Saw Massacre, I still fell asleep basically immediately. The rest of the movie was like a slow-motion heart attack. My friend would squeal or squeeze my arm and I'd open my eyes to witness some evil crisis -- a sudden episode of brutality or sinister car ride or freakish, freakish dinner party -- and then my eyelids would come down on me again and I'd sink back into anxious sleep until her next outburst. At the end, I woke up with an awful cloud over me that lingered for days. To me, the film is still the scariest thing there is. But, I never watched any of the intervening scenes of the movie. I have no idea who those people were, or what on earth their problem was. I gather they kill people, but Lawdy Jesus, who can tell what really went down that night?

:(
posted by two or three cars parked under the stars at 9:36 PM on November 1, 2014 [5 favorites]


The Birds is hands down the most frightening movie ever made. I still get a feeling of dread when I see more than two or three birds together - and I haven't seen the movie in 35 years!
posted by MissySedai at 9:50 PM on November 1, 2014


The Exorcist had to have been one of the first movies on HBO, because I remember watching it uncut on TV when I was about 12, and running out of the house and into the garage at one point.

As an adult I had to walk out into the lobby of the theater three times during Silence of the Lambs.

I still can't watch The Wizard of Oz.
posted by stargell at 9:57 PM on November 1, 2014


As a kid, the dog with the man's face from the 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers creeped me right out. I didn't actually see the movie until years later, but there was a brief shot of it in the trailer for Terror in the Aisles.

As an adult, I went to see The Ring in the theater, and it was good and creepy. But two things made it worse:
1) I had the marquee clock screen saver on my computer, spinning at ludicrous speed, and with the door shut, the pulsing light that crawled across the floor of the hallway made me just finally shut the monitor off.
2) I got out of the movie around ten pm on a Saturday.
I was most scared by the movie in the hour leading up to ten pm the following Saturday.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 10:11 PM on November 1, 2014


The Birds is hands down the most frightening movie ever made.

I have strong opinions to the contrary.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 10:12 PM on November 1, 2014


Oh, that trailer for It's Alive! That really clobbered me as a kid. Of course, like a lot of things, it doesn't exactly hold up.

Like quiet earth, I can't abide watching extreme suffering. I know that any horrible thing I can imagine has happened to someone, including children. Watching it painstakingly acted out is so far from entertainment to me that I can't fathom it.
posted by argybarg at 10:40 PM on November 1, 2014


For me, Earth vs the Flying Saucers, The War of the Worlds, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, anything about aliens. I have this recurring hypnagogic hallucination of aliens standing right over me while I'm in bed and calling my name. I've mostly learned to ignore it. Mostly.
posted by SPrintF at 10:53 PM on November 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


Oh man, Audition was a total surprise to me when a friend studying Japanese in college brought it over.

For people around my age, I've always nursed the pet theory theory that Poltergeist is why we find clowns creepy.
posted by axiom at 11:04 PM on November 1, 2014


Has anyone seen The Babadook yet? Because yikes.

I am watching The Babadook right now! Great stuff. (now back to movie)
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 11:47 PM on November 1, 2014


You're not reading Metafilter at the cinema, I hope?

The scariest things I've ever seen were the BBC Ghost Stories for Christmas - they were very much of the it's-not-what-you-show-but-what-you-don't-show school of horror (which doesn't usually work for me - I don't think I've stayed awake through a whole Val Lewton movie), but the fact that I was a child, and that after them television shut down for the night and you had to go to bed in a cold, dark, quiet house...

(Also Schalken the Painter - the fact that it was shot on 70s videotape in a black studio meant that you didn't need to suspend your disbelief as hang it by the neck until it was dead, but it had a remarkable sense of slow creeping terror to it.)
posted by Grangousier at 3:05 AM on November 2, 2014


Dead End is one of my less obvious favourite horror movies. It's atmosphere is so claustrophobic and oppressive.

I can completely understand how this low budget movie managed to take in $77 million in DVD sales (according to Wikipedia). It's just one of those movies that I end up making all my friends watch.
posted by ianK at 3:06 AM on November 2, 2014


Okay this is how you watch The Ring:
During opiate withdrawal.
This way you hallucinate every fucking terrible image except you don't know whether it's real or not.
Yeah. Scariest fucking two or three days of my life.
posted by angrycat at 5:46 AM on November 2, 2014 [1 favorite]


And every time I read "Kubla Khan" I'm all, damn Coelridge, because you know that dream the poem was based on was fucking terrifying
posted by angrycat at 5:47 AM on November 2, 2014


Why is the answer to this not "anything the BBC etc put out", ie: Doctor Who, Enchanted Castle, Clifton House Mystery?
posted by Mezentian at 7:03 AM on November 2, 2014


You can't THREADS and WATERSHIP DOWN, that's just unfair.

Ghostwatch.
Live.
Without warning.
posted by Mezentian at 7:08 AM on November 2, 2014 [5 favorites]


I have no idea what The Enchanted Castle was about except weird stone dinosaurs you could crawl into from underneath, but that freaked me out too.
posted by Artw at 7:12 AM on November 2, 2014 [1 favorite]


I was thirteen when we were shown the first half of Threads and all of When the Wind Blows in an English class. We were all from the UK, born in the early ninetie.

I just want to give you all the hugs.
posted by Mezentian at 7:15 AM on November 2, 2014 [1 favorite]


Jesus Christ, if your parents let their kids watch Jaws or the Exorcist they deserve to be whapped with a newspaper. Bad parents! BAD!

I was always allowed to watch whatever I wanted even as a very young kid. I was traumatized by so many horror movies as an 8-year-old. I turned out fine and I still love horror movies.

Also, yes, Dead End! I forgot about that movie!

And how has no one mentioned House of the Devil yet?
posted by Librarypt at 7:15 AM on November 2, 2014 [1 favorite]


ArtW The Enchanted Castle is on the YouTubes! And, I am watching it now, as an adult.
The stone dinosaurs are creepy still.
posted by Mezentian at 7:17 AM on November 2, 2014 [1 favorite]



As an adult, I went to see The Ring in the theater, and it was good and creepy. But two things made it worse:


for me it was moving to rural Japan and finding a well RIGHT OUTSIDE MY BEDROOM DOOR.

I unplugged the TV, picked it up, and marched it down to the basement.

Why would you do that?! (Sorry, just watched The Conjuring)
posted by ikahime at 8:37 AM on November 2, 2014 [1 favorite]


The boat scene in Willie Wonka & the Chocolate Factory was the purest experience of moviegoing terror I've ever experienced. I was four years old and saw it on the big screen. I've seen many movies since then, many ostensibly scary movies, but that movie and that scene, seen at that age, remains the ultimate experience of cinematic terror for me.
posted by Pliskie at 8:49 AM on November 2, 2014 [4 favorites]


I've said this before, but the most grueling films for me -- not the scariest, but the ones that inspire the greatest sense of dread and loathing -- are the humiliation comedies of the Farrelly Brothers and their ilk. I would rather watch a marathon of Audition, Martyrs, and Inside than ever see Kingpin again. Ditto Meet the Parents. This stuff is the real torture porn, as far as I'm concerned.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 9:24 AM on November 2, 2014 [1 favorite]


I also was frightened recently by the Slenderman youtube series.

So was my wee niece; she is obsessed with My Little Pony, and one of the (what -- brony-made -- I do not understand it) youtube videos had Slenderman stalk and kill all the ponies, so she saw that on her own and began babbling about her and my brother was like, okay, clearly we gotta screen these.
posted by angrycat at 9:52 AM on November 2, 2014


Yeah, YouTube and the intrusion of fan made stuff is a menace. Tricky when our kids are obsessed with Equestria Girls: Rainbow rocks and want the songs on all the time.
posted by Artw at 10:10 AM on November 2, 2014


Oh man, my mom watched Cronenberg ' s The Brood on cable when I was 4 or 5 and I had nightmares for years. I watched it recently for the first time since then and yeah, it's a little messed up. So seventies though! !
posted by rabbitrabbit at 10:25 AM on November 2, 2014 [1 favorite]


Getting a phone call in the middle of watching the Ring is BAD.

One of my fondest memories is watching Ringu (the Japanese film version of The Ring) with my brother, his later wife, and a few other friends. This was years before the US remake, and the only reason we even knew about the movie was because my brother's girlfriend was Japanese.

My friends and I had no idea what to expect. My brother, however, had already watched the movie and knew exactly what was coming.

There's a scene in the movie where you, the viewer, see the murderous Sadako film for the very first time. We were all really into the movie so as that scene ended, there was a moment of complete silence.

Then the fucking house phone rang.

We all jumped out of out seats like we'd just been set on fire. Except for my brother, who doubled over laughing his ass off. He'd queued up the house phone number on his cell right as the scene started and then, with no one noticing, called right as the scene ended.
posted by Panjandrum at 12:03 PM on November 2, 2014 [7 favorites]


My ex didn't have a TV back in the day when Threads was shown on Canadian television, but he said he could tell the next day who among his friends had watched it because of the way they were acting.

One of the clearest and saddest revelations I have had about the world was the day I realized that Threads is not fiction. It's happening every day-- in Syria, in Iraq, in the Congo. Every scene has a counterpart in real life that is taking place this second, somewhere. Your infrastructure destroyed, your economy in ruins, your family dead, the sense of utter loss: welcome to a war zone. A real one, not a heroic narrative gaming one.

I know there was the extra horror of the nuclear war we were all terrified of back in the 80s, but the essential parts are the same.
posted by jokeefe at 1:28 PM on November 2, 2014 [2 favorites]


Battle Royale was a tough movie to watch. Partially as I didn't check out any reviews or information beforehand and assumed (I have no idea why) it was some kind of cute Japanese rom-com. And partially, based on that assumption, because it was a date movie for myself and my (very quickly to become ex-) date - a school teacher - of the evening.

My date, a school teacher, invited me over for the first time: we had a drink and she suggested we watch 127 Hours. We didn't see each other again.
posted by ersatz at 2:08 PM on November 2, 2014


I watched Watership Down once as a kid - not by choice, I suspect I was forced to watch it - and it has traumatized me forever.
posted by turbid dahlia at 2:24 PM on November 2, 2014


You are 4 years old playing Star Wars while your parents watch The Love Boat.
This comes on.
You get uneasy every time you see even a frame of it for the next 36 years.
posted by Senor Cardgage at 2:31 PM on November 2, 2014 [1 favorite]


The movie that easily had the potential to be the scariest ever made was World War Z if it had been a HBO miniseries but of course Hollywood fucked it up completely because they are all assholes.
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:06 PM on November 2, 2014 [1 favorite]


Since no one has mentioned it yet, I'm going to add the scene in Who Framed Roger Rabbit where Christopher Lloyd kills the cartoon shoe in the Dip. Jesus H. Christ, I walked out of the theater and spent the rest of the movie in the arcade, waiting for my family. I didn't watch the rest of that movie until I was 25.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 8:36 AM on November 3, 2014


A recent film that wasn't pushed as a horror film, but had several scenes in it that have stuck with me in an unpleasant way: Under the Skin.
posted by Wordshore at 10:57 AM on November 3, 2014


>Has anyone seen The Babadook yet? Because yikes.

Yes, I have and it does have it's scary moments during the hellbus ride that it is. It really ventures far into psychological horror. Great Edward Gory-esque imagery featured highly. (Her house looks like it's interior decorated by Wednesday Addams, too.)
posted by Catblack at 12:22 PM on November 3, 2014


Yeah, it scared the crap outta me, but I'm super-reluctant to say anything about it since it isn't legitimately out yet (I hadn't realized that) and practically nobody's seen it, and I figure the less said the better. Maybe it'll show up here later.
posted by hap_hazard at 2:55 PM on November 3, 2014


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