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Kitsa · #1

Since it's Halloween and the last semi-official "scariest movies" thread seems to be from 2006 or something, I thought I'd post an updated one. I thought for sure I'd done one a couple of years ago but it didn't show up in searches.

Which movies scared the everloving shit out of you, and why?

Colonel Flagg · #2

Event Horizon.

Sam Neill does creepy real well. Plus the scene where "Baby Bear" walks into the airlock in a daze, then tries to get back inside before the auto-open kicks in creeped the crap out of me. The rotating Gravity Drive also made me skeevy.

But, really, who would send a team with all those personal issues out to Neptune for GOD'S SAKE?

Kitsa · #3

You know, Event Horizon scared the shit out of me too. I couldn't quite put my finger on why. I've been creeped out by space ever since I saw 2001 as a kid, with HAL and that guy convulsing as he floated away. Event Horizon found a way to completely amplify everything that was scary about space and add in a bunch of freaky psychological undercurrents, too.

There's another one that was up there on my list, but I can't remember the name. It's something about alien abductions and owls looking in the windows.

I think the movie that messed me up the most is the Ju-On that the American Grudge is made from. The Grudge is a total joke, but that Ju-On was creepy as all hell. There's one scene where a very quiet, freaky atmosphere has already been set, and this girl is watching tv in a quiet apartment. As she's watching the reporter talking, the audio slowly distorts and the picture does too, but in a way that doesn't quite match the audio distortion. The reporter's face sort of morphs and it ends up with one big staring eye looking out at her. I had nightmares about it. That particular Ju-on was the only one I ever watched that felt like even the DVD had an aura of evil around it. I just wanted to get the hell away from it as quickly as possible.

There are freaky scenes in a lot of J-horror movies. Uzumaki is beautifully done on the whole, but there's one jump scare that always gets me. I'm used to a lot of their jump scare techniques, but I was unprepared for this one in particular.

Colonel Flagg · #4

The Omen - it gave me nightmares for at least a month.

Not only a good suspense/horror movie, but a good movie in its own right, too. Gregory Peck and Lee Remick, with David Warner as the photographer.

Spoilers!
Not much of one, since the movie premiered in 1976, but when Jennings got his head chopped off (in somewhat ridiculously slow motion, for movies of the present day) I practically lost my popcorn. It was incredibly intense, for that era.

ThrashO · #5

Quote:

Originally Posted by Colonel Flagg

The Omen - it gave me nightmares for at least a month.

Not only a good suspense/horror movie, but a good movie in its own right, too. Gregory Peck and Lee Remick, with David Warner as the photographer.

The 2006 Omen wasn't too bad, and the remake of that scene was amazing. It's so life like it gives me chills.

Spoilers!

Zomboid · #6

What? That remake was fucking terrible. For one thing: Julia Stiles. It's shit to begin with, but it's damn near unwatchable compared to the original.

Kitsa · #7

The scene was ok, though. I didn't see the remake.

ThrashO · #8

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zomboid

What? That remake was fucking terrible. For one thing: Julia Stiles. It's shit to begin with, but it's damn near unwatchable compared to the original.

Yeah that's what I meant.

Another great movie that I saw a long time ago was Session 9. It's about a group of workers who are removing asbestos from an old mental hospital when weird shit starts happening. Freaked me out when I was a kid.

k0k0 · #9

I still won't swim in the ocean because of Jaws. I first saw it when I was 3 years old and it really screwed me up. Sometimes in rivers if I'm swimming around, I'll just get one of those "something could be under there about to bite me" feelings and panic.

Krythor · #10

I don't fear any body of water like you, I can swim in the sea and everything, but watching Pinocchio over and over again as a child made me terrified at the thought of just being dropped into the middle of the sea with no land around and just thinking "there could be anything under here." I don't have any phobias or anything but even in movie trailers and stuff, or the end of X-Men 2 when you see a huge shadow under the water, I get nervous.

In connection to that, seeing as the whale is huge, I find the thought of giant things pretty scary sometimes. The actual film Cloverfield is not scary at all, but the thought of a huge fuck off thing being in the sea is scary. No film other than Pinocchio has captured it enough to really traumatize me yet though.

Maybe all the dinosaur shit I watched as a child did that too. No one under ten should have been allowed to watch Jurassic Park.

King Hadas · #11

Quote:

Originally Posted by ThrashO

Another great movie that I saw a long time ago was Session 9. It's about a group of workers who are removing asbestos from an old mental hospital when weird shit starts happening. Freaked me out when I was a kid.

Session 9 is so good. I love how there's no evil force accountable for what's happening, it's just a tragedy. Love the scene where that guys nephew is stuck sucking asbestos because he's afraid of the dark.

Evil Dead - I know most people don't even like the first one but I loved it. I love how things get crazier and crazier as the movie nears its end. Stop animation always fucks me over too. The tree rape scene is stupid though, I thought so even when I was a kid.

ThrashO · #12

I also want to reccomend the Paranormal Activity movies. First one I really think is a classic. People either love it or hate it. I think it's great.

Mad Melvin · #13

I've mentioned these before, I think, but what the hey.

In The Mouth Of Madness

Couple of really creepy scenes (the highway scene in particular), but gets a bit comical at the end. Still, great movie.

REC

Everyone's propably seen this, but the ending creeped me the fuck out. Avoid the remake and all sequels.

Dead End http://akas.imdb.com/title/tt0308152/

The acting is a bit hammy at times, but something about this scared me.

Kitsa · #14

The Fourth Kind. That's the one I was thinking of. It's mostly shit but there's this eerie, creepy part with some sort of flashbacks to owl-like alien creatures looking in windows. Since I spent some formative years smack dab in the middle of Mothman territory, the idea of some birdlike alien entity looking in a window scared the bejesus out of me quite handily.

Colonel Flagg · #15

To each their hangup.

Mine is Alien Possession (e.g. "Passengers" a short story by Robert Silverberg written in 1970). As such, 2 movies that creeped me out were the original "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"(not the remake) as well as the more recent "The Puppet Masters". There was a scene in the second film where a young boy approached his mother (?) who was being restrained (and screaming for dear life) while her dear child held out an alien pod in his hands, which immediately uncoiled and zapped her in the neck. Then they all go on their merry way as if nothing has happened. Not good for my sanity.

Kitsa · #16

I was just fine through the Invasion of the Body Snatchers remake until Donald Sutherland did that freaky-ass point-and-screech. That really bothered me for a long time.

When I was around 7 or 8 years old, those Time-Life "Mysteries of the Unknown" commercials used to creep me out, particularly the one that flashed a picture of the classic "gray" alien. Then I got a book at the book fair that had one of those in it, and I had to get rid of the book. This was also around the time the paperback copy of "Communion" was on the shelves, with the alien on the cover. Now it doesn't really affect me (I was startled by the one in Dreamcatcher, but that was more of a suddenness thing).

Kitsa · #17

Also, I had nightmares for years that were about half Body Snatchers remake and half Strange Invaders. The pods were there, but people were also chased by balls of blue light. When the balls of light touched them, they immediately and graphically shriveled like raisins and fell. In Strange Invaders, people who were "released" by the aliens traveled as orbs of light, I think, so as a kid I must have gotten it backwards.

dextire · #18

Insidious. That man-child thing dancing creeped me out something fierce.

Kitsa · #19

I re-watched Event Horizon last night and it was waaaay less scary this time around. Partly because I knew what was coming, but partly because the special effects have gotten pretty dated.

There was still some disturbing fucking imagery, but like I said I knew it was coming. It's the kind of stuff that would have given me nonstop nightmares as a kid.

Now...eh, it's got some scary overtones (mad scientist falls victim to his own creation, and so forth) and some not so scary overtones (opening a portal to hell results in an eyeball-gouging orgy of violence). But, you know, evil ship, it had been done before and would be done after. Mr. Kitsa was watching it for the first time and kept saying it was like playing Dead Space.