I love Halloween. What's not to love, candy and costumes, without the stress of cooking a turkey, or buying a pile of presents.
It helps that I love scary movies, love them. I've seen an embarassing amount, and I hold them to a high standard. They have to try and scare me, not gross me out, or make me squirm in discomfort, but make me jump and get sweaty and nervous from the tension of waiting to see what will happen next.
So in the spirit of Halloween, here is a list of my favourite scary movies.
1) Aliens. No secret, my favourite movie hands down. A war movie in space with the most chilling villains and the strongest movie heroine in a scary movie. Love it.
2) 28 days later. I find Zombie movies pretty boring normally, and I've gone on record with my belied that they are more a disaster movie than horror movie, but this movie I loved. Amazing tension, characters I got totally invested in, and the turn around in the end, which I know some people did not buy, but I completely did. For me the difference between disaster and horror movies are the control the characters have over what is happening to them. In a horror movie, the characters have some semblance of control, and they can eventually turn the tables around on their attackers. In a disaster movie, they are just trying to get out of the way. When the main character goes on the attack in this movie, that's when it became a horror movie to me.
3) The descent - A group of women go spelunking, get lost and things go awry. Loved this for the tension and the atmosphere and how they still managed to differentiate the different characters and none of them were just victims.
4) High Tension - A french movie, and starting from almost the first scene, it's crazy tense and has a really cool ending I did not see coming.
5) Blade 2 - not sure if this technically belongs in hororr, but it's direected by Guillermo del Toro and has some of the most interesting and scary vampire villains ever created.
6) Halloween - the original, watched it again the other day and it still stands up.
7) The Thing - trapped scientists, an alien that can take on any form, and it still scares me.
8) Hellraiser - because what's scarier than a trip to hell and pinhead it all his logical, reasoned calmness is truly scary.
These are mine, and I didn't include jaws, although I love it, because I'm not sure it's horror, and same for Seven and The Silence of the Lambs, but they are scary, and amazing movies.
Did I miss any important ones. I never really loved the Exorcist, and didn't find The Shining to be all that scary. Does that make me a bad person?
9 comments:
Adam loves Halloween (the movie) too. And the second it comes on I have to leave the room. The music is enough to do me in. He had a lot of fun the other night switching back and forth to that just to make me angry.
The exorcist is so scary to me. So is The Shining - everything about that movie works for me except for the pacing in parts of it. A liiiiiiiitle long.
I have terrifying memories of that voodoo movie that came out when we were in high school The serpent and the rainbow? Don't remember anything but being freaked out.
The Ring was tough to watch - but then....I found Monster House tough to watch.
Wow. I've only seen 2 on your list (first 2) and one of them because you took me to see it. :) And the other because I try to see everything Danny Boyle makes.
Did you see Community this week? They were taking off both Aliens and zombie movies. I thought it was pretty funny. That show is so growing on me.
Movies that gave me shivers were Dead Again (okay, suspense, not horror) and Pan's Labyrinth (kind of horror?) Oh, and speaking of Danny Boyle, Shallow Grave. But that's not horror, either. I'm not good with that genre, clearly.
Also the upcoming Black Swan gave me shivers a few times... but it's more suspense than horror, too. (But definitely had horror elements. I think the TIFF programmer used some word like grotesquerie.)
Molly... I've never managed to sit through either The Exorcist or The Shining. But have seen bits of both.
Face it, I find Scooby Doo cartoons scary. (and the movie adaptation scary, but for entirely different reasons.)
I saw the Serpent and the rainbow, and it was pretty good.
I also loved Pan's Labryinth, but not sure how to classify it. Seriously scary in parts.
I saw Halloween in the theater when it first came out (yes, I'm that old) and was so terrified that at one point I actually tore my boyfriend's sleeve on his shirt.
You are a brave brave woman, Sinead. I bow to your strength.
I can't really do scary either... Freddy Krueger, Friday 13th... no way.
But I did see Aliens and loved it. Silence of the Lambs too - but that's about my threshold. When she's in the basement with the gun, and the hand is waving in front of her face... I lose it everytime.
Eileen, not brave. Some people skydive, climb mountains, I watch scary movies for my thrills.... it's a little sad.
And Steph, loved Silence of the Lambs. The one thing I love about a lot of horror movies is that the women in them are empowered in a way that is absent from the action film genre.
My daughter is a horror movie connoisseur. She was talking the other day about all the ones she loves. I've never seen a single one as I'm a big wuss.
Yes, I finished the book that's due Monday. Today, as a matter of fact. Thanks for asking. (Sorry, I'm a bit punchy. Been sitting in front of my computer for ten hours straight today.)
Karen, congrats on finishing the book. Are you taking the weekend to relax?
Post a Comment