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?
I really enjoyed Pandorum and The Babadook.
Not a horror film per se, but definitely leaning that way:
The original ‘ALIEN’.
The building of tension throughout the entire movie is brilliant.
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
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.
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.
If you want something a bit different, seek out Threads. It’s on the Internet Archive (here, in fact)
Not a traditional horror film at all, it’s set in the north of England in the early 80s (depending what n where you’re from, the accents might prove a challenge!) and shows the ordinary people of a small city gradually coming to terms with escalating tensions between East and West, which result in all out nuclear war.
And then we get to see the actual on the ground nightmare that that would be. Not in a showy Hollywood way but in a grim, horrifyingly real feeling gritty British drama way. Bleak isn’t the word.
It’s something that’s never quite left me since I saw it for the first and so far only time some years ago. Truly disturbing, and not fun at any point after things start getting serious. Brilliant though.
I’ve seen this one recommended a bunch, but I always thought it was a documentary. Interesting. I’ll give it a watch.
Some of it is presented like a documentary, but most is done as drama. Hope you enjoy it (although enjoy isn’t the word!)
Annihilation is great cosmic horror.
The scene with the bear…
Horror movies don’t scare me, but Hereditary was the one movie that made me come close to experiencing genuine fear from watching a movie.
Tell me about it. Horror movies are such a snoozefest but Hereditary gave me the creeps.
When people say this they’re just talking about the one single moment in the first half of the film, right? The rest of the movie was interesting but idk about scary.
You mean after like 15 minutes?
Meh. Towards the end I was laughing at the Spiderman bit. Hilarious.
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 latest one that got to me, was “When evil lurks” (Cuando acecha la maldad). A pretty fast-paced horror from Argentina.
And my favourite one before that was “The Descent”. A claustrophobic horror following a group of cave explorers.
I’m noticing a distinct lack of Terrifier and Terrifier 2 in these comments. Art the Clown is perhaps the best antagonist I’ve ever seen in the horror genre and true originality is rare in the modern horror filmscape.
The Ring is also good for originality as far as modern classics, though it’s a whole book series in Japan.
Edit: I also liked The Shrine, forgot to mention that one. Again, originality.
Some suggestions from my side - in addition to many already posted suggestions I would add to my list as well:
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The series Twin Peaks (all three seasons plus the feature ‘Fire Walk With Me’) is not 100 % horror but it has it’s tense of mystery and some scary scenes as well
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Don’t Look Now from 1974 - a classic mystery drama with great Donald Sutherland in the leading role - also more mystery/suspense than horror
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IT (reboot) - still scarier than the Terrifier movies which are more slasher / fun-splatter
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Quarantine - until I saw the original ‘REC’
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Schock - Italian horror movie classic
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Barbarian - I expected different but I was surprised in a positive way
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If you are a muslim then dabbe 3. It is the most terrifying movie i have ever seen.
Why is it only scary for Muslims?
It has a lot of black magic and jinns in it, which are quite consistent with islamic mythology. The horror hits you differently if you have heard stories about it in your childhood.
I mean for me, i can shrug off almost anything with “yeah right” but when it comes to islamic mythology, i kinda believe in it so it’s more scary.
A Tale of Two Sisters is one of the only movies that has genuinely scared me, some great scenes in it.
“Ju-On: The Grudge” from 2002 was probably one of the scariest movies I’ve seen (if you don’t mind reading subtitles). The US remake did not do it justice IMO. I don’t know how well it holds up nowadays since it’s so old and I was a lot younger when it came out.
I absolutely love horror movies and have a long list of fantastic ones but not very many of them actually scared me. Most of them have been named already but two I didn’t see were The Babadook (2014) and surprisingly a Netflix movie called His House (2020) was actually awesome. One of my favorites in the last few years.
Yeah I actually think that my favorite horror movies are the ones that get me asking questions, rather than being scared. I like being intrigued by the evil, like in Smile (until the twist at the end, it was a perfectly good psychological horror that did not need a monster)
