'Bring On The Night'
A place to talk about movies--old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.
I love The Ring, The Others, and The Shining. I did not love BWP though the last scene WAS almost worth the entire experience (had the theater been less than 90 degrees, thereby doubling the feeling of motion sickness, it might have been entirely worth it.)
I would put The Exorcist on there.
And if the 1963 Haunting is scarier than The Shining, then I'm not sure I can ever see it. I STILL get random nightmares about that movie, love it though I do.
Carnival of Souls is probably the scariest movie on that list for me, and I've seen all of them except The Uninvited.
I didn't find The Haunting that frightening, except for that scene in which Julie Harris and Claire Bloom are clutching each other's hands while some unknown evil being bangs on the door, then Claire Bloom later tells Julie that she *wasn't* holding her hand, and Julie is all, "OMG THEN WHAT WAS HOLDING MY HAND?" Freaky. Also, that film has lesbian subtext like whoa now that I think back on it. It's been a while since I've seen it. Time for a rewatch, I think.
The only ones on that list I've ever seen are The Shining and The Haunting, which were certainly scary and awful and gorgeously tragically atmospheric, but really not unbearable. I've heard things about almost everything lower down on the list that sounded far more viscerally, emotionally, lizard-brainily horrifying, and most of them I would happily pay good money never to see (and, even more so, Audition, which isn't even on the list). I don't know what it says about me that I'd cheerfully watch the #1 and 2 movies again anytime but the very thought of seeing most of the others even once makes me cry.
I've seen The Ring, The Others, and BWP. The Others was nice and creepy, The Ring was so boring I almost fell asleep, and BWP was just irritating.
Conclusion: I don't actually like horror movies.
Don't Look Now is deeply disturbing. Not scary but it does get under your skin in a creepifying way (and it seems to have had a strong impact on David Lynch). It also has one of the cinema's most famous sex scenes, between Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie, which is beautifully shot and edited and hot hot hot.
New SOAP interview with Samuel L Jackson.
I think the conclusion I drew from that list was that 70% of scary horror movies are titled The {Noun}.
The Others was well-made, but didn't strike me as all that frightening. Likewise The Haunting, while a great movie, wasn't just heart poundingly frightening to me.
To that list I'd add Ju-on which was a lot scarier than The Ring IMHO, The Haunting of Julia, and the creeptastic gold medal winner, The Exorcist. I've never seen Audition but I'd guess it deserves a slot too based on the reactions all those horror directors had to it.
Also, that film has lesbian subtext like whoa now that I think back on it.
Doesn't it become text at some point in the middle? With Julie Harris telling Claire Bloom she wasn't "a dirty lesbian"? I may be cracked in my remembering.
The Haunting totally creeped me out, I had to go turn on the lights. the handholding was creepy, but als when they are all locked in one of the rooms (the library?) and they hear the dragging sounds and the wall start to bulge inwards.
The only parts of The Audition were the clips from Bravo's to scary movies and that was enough to totally creep me out.