Illustration by Jillian Tamaki.
Top-10 movie lists are always subjective. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the horror genre, where the level of psychological scarring easily trumps any fancy notions about quality or historical importance. Your scariest movie could be some Z-grade monster-chiller-horror-theatre flick you watched when you were 11 while you were supposed to be babysitting your little brother. And could there be anything more personal than your very own “eyeworm scenes” — those images that have burrowed into your skull, burned themselves into the back of your retina and set up house in the dank, dark corners of your brain? To celebrate Halloween, here are 10 flicks that scared us.
Photo by MGM/Courtesy of Getty Images.
The Haunting (1963) This
eerie adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s haunted-house
novel does more with its sound effects than most
contemporary horror flicks do with $20 million
worth of overwrought CGI. Director Robert Wise
doesn’t want to do anything as vulgar as scare
you: he wants to manoeuvre you into scaring yourself.
Eyeworm scene: The door that
bulges ... but never opens.
Accept no imitations: Avoid
Jan de Bont’s bloated remake. Even Catherine
Zeta-Jones prowling around as a gorgeous lesbian
in Prada boots can’t liven it up.
The Blair Witch Project (1999) Despite
the title, this pop-cult phenom is not about
the fear of witches — it’s about the fear of
camping. With nerve-ripping verité techniques,
directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez probe
the primal terror of being disoriented and lost.
Eyeworm moment: Nothing about
this minimalist movie sounds scary in print,
but the filmmakers get macabre mileage from twigs
and rocks.
Accept no imitations: Book
of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 proves that
it’s hard to follow up a fluke.
Dead Alive (1992) Back
in his pre-Lord of the Rings days, Peter
Jackson shocked with this slapstick splatterfest,
about a good lad who’s just trying to look after
his undead mom and a house full of uninvited
guests. While this fanboy favourite may be one
of the goriest movies ever made, it’s also strangely
cheerful.
Eyeworm moment: The “lawnmower
scene,” which should be of particular delight
to anyone who would secretly like to apply lethal
gardening methods to those damn hobbits.
Accept no imitations: Stay
away from anyone who wants to wallow in Jackson’s
extremes without bringing along his humour and
intelligence. (Like, say, Rob Zombie.)
Photo Warner Bros./Getty Images.
The Exorcist (1973) Everyone
remembers the spinning heads and green bile in
this classic of demonic possession, but it’s
William Friedkin’s long, slow lead-up that really
unnerves. (The E-word doesn’t even come up until
about the 45-minute mark.)
Eyeworm moment: In a quiet
preview to the big shaking-bed show,
Regan interrupts her mom’s radical-chic ’70s party
by standing in her white nightgown and urinating
on the floor.
Accept no imitations: Avoid
Renny Harlin’s hack-job on the Paul Schrader
prequel, which just confirms rumours that the
Prince of Lies has a branch office in Hollywood.
(On the other hand, Jennifer Shiman’s animated
web short, The
Exorcist in 30 Seconds, and Re-enacted by Bunnies, is definitely worth
a look-see.)
The Fly (1986) This
remake of the 1958 horror classic
is ostensibly a creature-feature,
but this account of Seth Brundle, half-scientist/half
housefly, is actually David Cronenberg’s very
squishy version of Love
Story, wherein Jeff Goldblum
and Geena Davis try to hold on to each other
in the unlovely face of decomposition and death.
Eyeworm moment: In the interests
of science, Goldblum sets out his eating habits:
“Brundlefly regurgitates on his food, it liquefies,
and then he sucks it up.”
Accept no imitations: Be very
afraid of Fly II, a mutated cinematic
mess with Eric Stoltz playing Brundlefly, Jr.
Frankenstein (1931) James
Whale overcomes a weak script with sheer directorial
will and atmospheric style, finding both irony
and poignancy in the idea that the bolt-necked
Karloff is not a monster, but a victim.
Eyeworm moment: The scene
in which the creature accidentally drowns a little
girl was cut because it was considered upsetting.
What remains is a shot of the monster moving
toward her and then an uncomfortable gap. Many
viewers fill it in with something much worse
than drowning.
Accept no imitations: This
is that exceptional case in which
the sequel, the gloriously Gothic Bride of
Frankenstein, might
actually surpass the original.
Photo Kent Miles/Getty Images.
Halloween (1978) John Carpenter becomes the father — wait, make
that the insane older brother — of the teen-slasher
flick with this seminal movie, an unstable mixture
of tantalizing topless shots and punishing puritanism.
Eyeworm moment: The opening
POV sequence forces you to identify with an unknown
murderer.
Accept no imitations: Gee,
where to start — the seven sequels or the countless
knife-wielding-maniac-stalks-horny-high-school-kids
knock-offs?
The Tenant (1976) As
a child, Roman Polanski escaped the Krakow ghetto
for the Polish countryside, where he survived
by passing as a Catholic. All that film-theory
chatter about the annihilation of identity is
completely and tragically concrete for Polanski,
and it shows in this unsettling psychological
study about a man who might be turning into the
suicidal girl who previously occupied his squalid
Paris apartment.
Eyeworm moment: Who is that
figure standing in the opposite window? And why
is it motionless for hours at a time?
Accept no imitations: There
are none — though Polanski’s Repulsion can
be seen as a creepy companion piece.
Photo Pictorial Parade/Getty Images.
Night of the Living Dead (1968) Rookie
director George Romero and buckets of fake blood
(actually, Bosco chocolate syrup) kicked off
a gory, low-budget revolution, combining B-movie
scares with social comment and ruthlessly bleak
endings.
Eyeworm moment: Actress Kyra
Schon, who played the little girl who eats her
parents, now runs a website offering engraved
reproductions of her matricidal garden trowel.
There’s a reason they sell.
Accept no imitations: Skip
the “colourized” version, which tints all the
zombies green.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) Director
Tobe Hooper admits that the film channels “my
own fears and terrors of, you know, family get-togethers.”
He’s referring to that grotesque parody of the
all-American supper hour, in which a girl is
strapped to a dining-room chair and tortured
by the slack-jawed, snaggle-toothed rural relations
of cannibalistic serial killer Leatherface.
Eyeworm moment: Leatherface’s
little “happy dance.”
Accept no imitations: Forget
the 2003 remake, which plays like a Guess Jeans
ad with disembowelment.
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