This could easily get my #1 vote. Ever noticed how creeped out the soundtrack to Texas Chain is ? It's pretty brutal and adds unbelievable tension to the movie. Cannibal Holocaust is another low budget one that fucked with the brain when i was 'younger'... now i almost feel it single-handedly started the whole 'camcorder forest fear' genre.
Seeing Ring for the first time, not knowing what I was actually watching, at 2am in the dark scared the shit out of me. I think the Orphanage is brilliant and creepy. Repulsion and Peeping Tom are both disturbing and brilliant. The Exorcist definitely has it's place in any film collection as does the Shining, I often forget how effective they are since I take them for granted. There's a couple specific scenes in R Point and The Eye (original) which really stand out. I'm also with Alice on Don't Look Now and Suspiria, esp the beginning of Suspiria, Goblin's soundtrack just drives the dread straight into you.
I meant to mention "Juon" (the Japanese one). Most Japanese 'horror' is squarely aimed at 13-15yr old retards, and I never managed to 'suspend my disbelief' in "Ring" ("You what? The ghost made a VIDEO? Hahahaha!"), although similar urban legends, including some about the internet, abound in Japan. "Juon" however is a truly creepy, classic haunted house/ghost story. The originals were two short, maybe 30min, straight-to-video movies (also, confusingly, called "Juon" & "Juon II", the same as the full-length movies). Can you guys see those?
I think they're available on a Japanese horror compilation DVD of short films that hit right after the US Grudge was released. I agree with Ring. I enjoyed it, but was never scared or anything.
So from that I am forced to assume that most american horror is then aimed at infants. One of the thing I like about select Asian horror is that it is usually far more intelligent than American horror, and certainly more than the American remakes. I can't think of a single recent american horror film* that competes with Tale of Two Sisters or Audition (which I think is kind of over rated) or Ichi etc. *OK, That is a broad over simplification used only to make a point. And hopefully get more horror movies out of people.
This is in all honesty. Most movies don't scare me, in the classic "HOLY SHIT!" kinda way. Idiocracy, the Mike Judge movie was supposed to be a "comedy" that movie literally scared the shit out of me. Sure there wasn't guts or killer zombies, or guys dressing up as Zombies. But it was a very disturbing portrayal of what the future could be like. Otherwise in the actual realm of horror, Tale of Two Sister's. I don't know if Korean horror movies are also aimed at 13-15 year olds as Alice said. But the last 20 or 30 minutes was intense.
The creepiness of the "black-eyes, black-mouth" ghouls of The Grudge and Ring really gets me, as does all-out gore, to a certain extent (Devil's Rejects, with the homage to Leatherface), but the ones that I really consider classics are The Exorcist, The Shining, and The Omen. I can watch those over and over... I sometimes think that the "Psychological Thriller" genre is oftentimes more scary that what passes for "Horror"...not sure where something like Oldboy fits in, but it was horrific in ways---not terror so much as revulsion, I suppose. Another S. Korean movie I saw not long ago and enjoyed was "A Tale of Two Sisters" (Bryan beat me to it!) which was kind of creepy in a slow creep style. Another bit of insane fun was Sheitan (with the amazingly nutso Vincent Cassel, in my av.), where family values take a turn for the weird... Add in a dose of Satan, a little possession/human nature exploitation, and a couple of black-mouthed kids and you've got a pretty good basis for scary...and maybe a chainsaw...
Blair Witch was good, and genuinely creepy, as it dropped you right into what was going on, I enjoyed it, although it was much better at the theatre. Exorcist is fine, but if you are saying about having to witness the horror of a loved one going through something really traumatic, then I have one that will ace that movie... ...The Entity. I still watch this now and it makes me really creeped out, the suspence is incredible. The soundtrack is really unnerving too, which adds to the unpleasantness of it. Another good spooky film to really raise the hairs is The Changeling. A movie that doesn't have to have creepy weird shit happening on screen, as the lighting, wide shots and camera angles do all that for you. Great stuff!
i've seen scarier senior citizens walking down the street than 99% of the films mentioned (ju-on especially).
I think you scare too easily! I remember the original Night of the Living Dead scared the piss out of me when I first saw it, at about 8.
I'm not entirely sure if it was "scary" but I still get totally shaken by "Cutting Moments" especially the title short story. The lead actress' performance was actually very touching and I think that's what made it so utterly disturbing. And scary too I think.
The Exorcist is not scary at all! Also Skylar showed me Texas Chainsaw Massacre and thought I was going to be completely freaked out, and I just was like "I don't get it, what's the big deal?" I find Leatherface to be a pretty laughable villain. I'd have to say that the Shining fucked me up pretty bad, but I saw it when I was like 8. Anything with Ghosts gets to me, but slashers are not scary to me at all, and definitely not "religious" horror. There is a scene in the Sentinel that is totally freaky (the female main character's dead dad is standing in a corner of her home, and walks by her really fast at the camera, and you almost think he's going to come right through the screen at you), but the rest of the movie is not that scary. I am scared by the dumbest stuff: IE: The dogs chasing the girl in Tenebre, Not the killings. haha.
. I agree, I think its all the messed up stuff thats playing in your head that makes TCM an interesting movie. People (the ones who haven't seen it) make out its the goriest movie, but the only blood in it is when the hitchhiker cuts his hand with the knife. The rest is all suggestion to the viewer, who can ultimately make it more disturbing than a filmmaker ever could. The remake I thought was pretty good.
You find Leatherface laughable (I do too) but got messed with by The Shining? I'll never find The Shining scary, I don't find ANYTHING Stephen King wrote scary. Overall, I don't actually get scared while watching any movie. It's not like I watch them and go "OMG SO SCARED." It's all after the fact for me. And Exorcist doesn't have anything to do with religion, not really, but I ranted on that already. Leatherface is funniest at the end when he's shitting his pants cause that girl got away with the trucker. West Side Story scares me.
I'm finally starting to make some headway in the scary movie front with my wife. When we first got married she refused to watch anything remotely scary, but now she's getting a little better. We watched X-Cross the other night (Japanese movie about a small town cult that cuts off girls' legs as a sacrifice... actually more of a comedy than anything) and she was able to chill with that. She also made it through Rika the Zombie Slayer (about a high school girl who cuts up zombies with a katana...dunno what the English title would be) and One Missed Call 2. This means that I am slowly unlocking the ability to watch most of my DVD collection!
If you watch the begining of TCM, i think it does a really good job of setting the scene for the rest of the film, you can almost feel the heat and stench of the Texas wasteland and rotting flesh. I don't think Jason is a very good villian, but then I'm not a huge fan of serial films at all. His mother on the other hand is quite good. I totally forgot Bug, directed by Friedkin, it's based on a play and in the same vein as Repulsion in that decent into madness. It gets really really mixed reviews, but I quiet enjoyd it and found it unsettling. Unsettling is more accurate than scared for me anyway. Speaking of unsettling, Visitor Q is mental.
To me leatherface was scary because of Ed Gein. I know it wasn't based on him but loosely based but as a kid..if you hear of an adult who killed a few people and wore there skin it's pretty freaky. I think as an adult all these 'evil scary' people seem dated and gimmicky.
That is particularly true when there are so many truly scary people in real life...just read something about someone finding a baby's remains in a suitcase...and Dahmer was scarily evil (same as Gein)...then theres the incestuous Austrian guy...every day there's some new sickness of humanity reported out there that is far scarier than an immortal with a machete on film...the news makes horror films look mild...
Same here. I saw it when I was 11 or 12, it was on MTV on Halloween, uncut and uninterrupted, and I was home alone. There was a graveyard up the street, and when I went to bed I had vivid nightmares about being locked out of the house while the dead shambled out of there. Years later, the Dawn of the Dead remake gave me similar nightmares. I think those are the only two movies ever to do so. Exorcist totally bounced off of me. I find nothing scary about that movie, but a while back someone told me that if I didn't have any Christian upbringing in my childhood then I probably wouldn't find it scary. Does anyone remember Don't Be Afraid of the Dark? That really creeped me out during my childhood. The scariest thing about that movie is that the creatures are after the protagonist for no reason, and even though she tries to do everything right, they still get her in the end...
I watched the original Evil Dead the other day, and recall this movie scaring the pants off of me when I was a kid. Still, one of my all time horror favorites, but I can't say it made me gasp like it did when I was young. Great movie though. The sparse dialogue sense of being trapped is still errie. The following two movies were such a change for the franchise, going from genuine occult horror to comedy, but Ash is still the coolest anti-hero ever. I want a chainsaw hand. And a boomstick.
Though it's much much less now. Zombie movies used to scare me alot. When I was younger (around 12) I came home from school and it was on uncut on PBS. Scared me so much I was terrified to attend funerals. I remember 'Don't Be Afraid of the Dark'! Those little creatures were scary as fuck! C.
Who doesn't Paulie... Who doesn't... PS. None of the Evil Dead movies are scary. but they are very very awesome.
