I love horror but apparently I don’t vibe with a lot of recommendations I find online.
I’d seen so much hype about Event Horizon and I absolutely hated it and didn’t find it scary. I just watched Late Night With the Devil and whole it was definitely enjoyable, it wasn’t the least but frightening. I also just watched Let the Right One In and really didn’t like it. It also was not a horror movie in my opinion.
I will say one of my favorites is Sinister or the first Conjuring. Sinister for the stomach twisting dread and suspence throughout and Conjuring for the same.
So, what movies do you find to be the scariest?
can recommend Coherence
Not a horror film per se, but definitely leaning that way:
The original ‘ALIEN’.
The building of tension throughout the entire movie is brilliant.
Alien is definitely a horror film. In fact it was originally marketed as such
I know it scared the shit out of me the first time I saw it.
I was 15 and my family rented it. So I didn’t get to see it in its full theater screen glory. Just a 25" console TV from a well worn VHS cassette where the top 25% of the screen was wavy.
And yes, I’m old.
I think Alien is a great movie (and definitely horror), but whether it scares modern audiences is pretty hit and miss. It’s very slow paced and while I love the practical effects, the alien looks downright goofy in some scenes. I certainly don’t find it scary having seen it, and new viewers I’ve shown it to usually aren’t that scared unless they’re self-identified wimps when it comes to horror. Aliens is scarier I think, even though it’s more action than pure horror.
Same goes 10x for The Exorcist. It tops a lot of “scariest movie ever” lists online, but watching it today is more comical than anything. I think you have to be scared of demonic possession actually happening IRL to get scared by that movie.
the alien looks downright goofy in some scenes
Not sure how great it holds up today since it was a while ago I watched it last, but The Thing is for me still one of the best ones.
While a great movie, I wouldn’t necessarily call it a horror. The Thing is a suspense movie based on mistrust and paranoia, but I wouldn’t call it scary.
The Ring remake (not the original Japanese one) takes the cake for me. I couldn’t sleep the first nor second nights I saw it.
Blood Quantum, for the humour and great cast. Outback, for being based in a true story.
I liked Noroi: The Curse.
No jumpscares, but really quite unsettling
Perfect Blue
I absolutely love and hate how they mess with your perception of not only time but what’s real because I could see myself in situations where I couldn’t tell you how long has passed and/or having to question if what I’m seeing is real or not.
Thanks for reminding me about this movie. Been meaning to watch this for a while.
edit: it was really good!
Rec (2007) and Climax (2018) are some of my personal favourites that have scared me to some degree
The original Rec and Rec 2 are great, the third movie was terrible and the Hollywood remake of the first Rec is a disaster.
I don’t get scared easily, but Kothanodi had me watching through my fingers. It has four vaguely connected stories, and two of them are very fucked up. There’s a decent amount of infanticide and other atrocities inflicted on minors, so be warned if you have any childhood trauma.
Also by the same director, the movie Aamis is about cannibalism acting as a replacement for sex. It’s pretty fucked up as well.
My vote goes to The Vanishing (1988).
Many other good ones have already been mentioned, so I won’t repeat those titles. But “Suspiria” (2018 edition) definitely deserves a mention. The ending is just … well, clearly somebody amongst the original writers had some issues regarding reproductive systems … but the other 98% of the movie feature brilliant suspense & eiriness at all times. And Tilda Swinton is simply to-die-for in it. ;)
The original is a significantly better film.
Megan is Missing (2011) is one of the most horrifying films I’ve ever seen. Fair warning though, the last ten minutes are excruciatingly painful to watch. It is not for the faint of heart.
In the gore porn genre Cannibal Holocaust (1980) and Hostel (2005) are vile, but so pointlessly gorey the actual horror (the brutality of men) is almost entirely lost.
Funny Games (1997), or the 2007 American remake for those who don’t love subtitles, is another unnerving portrayal of ultra violence. It’s not gore porn, but is graphic. The original version’s pacing will make you squirm in your seat.
Hush (2016) and Creep (2014) are two of my movie-night-with-friends films. Still very much about the human monster, but not overly graphic and prefers to build by making the viewer a partial participant. You have to be a certain level of broken to enjoy some of the others on my list, but these two are disney movies compared to Cannibal Holocaust.
Made me think of something that Brett Easton Ellis would write.
I have a candle scent called Jacob Elordi’s bath water
The latest one that got to me, was “When evil lurks” (Cuando acecha la maldad). A pretty fast-paced horror from Argentina.
This movie was so good until the end. I was like “oh, ok.”.
And my favourite one before that was “The Descent”. A claustrophobic horror following a group of cave explorers.
A Tale of Two Sisters is one of the only movies that has genuinely scared me, some great scenes in it.
Saw that at the cinema when I came out, scared the hell out of me!
