Scariest. Movie. Ever.

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Don't Look Now is the winner for psychological horror, it just insinuates itself into you. You know those Holly Hobby pictures with the little girl and that big hood, always in profile so you can't see her face? I can't look at Holly Hobby without getting chills, thanks to Don't Look Now.

[SluttyMary]

Everything with Tori Spelling.

[palefire]

Picnic at Hanging Rock. Not necessarily scary, but completely unsettling. What happened to them, dammit?
I'm awfully fond of The Thing as well, but that could just be the amusement factor of Wilford Brimley being in a horror flick.

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january said:

Is The Witches the one where the one kid gets turned into a mouse and one of the witches steps on him? Or something to that effect. It may have just been in the book. But either way, that image has stuck with me since I was a child.

I haven't seen the movie in God knows how long, but I believe so, yes.

[emersende]

The parts of Picnic at Hanging Rock that scared me were the quiet parts, especially when the girls are going up for the last time, they're walking away from the camera and you can't see their faces, and they just disappear into the rock.

[Deleted]

I have to agree it's The Shining That film is some really twisted, scary shit. I have only watched it once. I was home alone on a Saturday night..I had intended to study..and my housemates had all gone out. We lived in an old creeky house which would make old creeky house noises whenever anyone was alone in the house. You know the deal.

Anyway the movie started off fine but by the end I was scared shitless.

That was a couple years ago but I swear to you even if my mother was sat right next to me holding my hand through it I am never going to watch that movie again unless there is medical attention and on site professional counselling on hand.

I am not the type to be scared by movies too much. I always snap out of it and realise/rationalize it's just a movie on the box in the corner and it ain't real. But not this time I tell ya. Knowing it was just a movie it was still scary as f***!

[carrier76]

Well, y'all can laugh if you want, but "Clownhouse" gets my vote. Now, the premise is stupid--escaped mental patients kill circus clowns, take their costumes and wreak havoc. What's freaky about it is that there is very sparse dialogue and lots of jumping out from behind things, and they go to this house in the middle of nowhere where three boys are home alone, and yeah. Was I home alone watching my brothers while watching this w/ the lights off? Yes. I was permanently scarred.

[missunderstood]

For me, the scariest movies are "The Exorcist" and "Stigmata". Yes, things that screw with my supposed religion scares me the most. Probably because I know that there are things out there that can not be explained oh and yeah, the fact that there were supposedly recorded accounts of such experiences with exorcism and stigmata. (I'm scaring myself just typing this. I'm such a chicken!)

[kafka]

(A big Thank You to Brookie for bumping this for me.)

I saw a discussion in the Halloween Costumes thread about The Exorcist and I wanted to recommend Possessed. It stars Timothy Dalton, Henry Czerny and Christopher Plummer and focuses on a true incident from the 1950s. In fact, it's the story upon on which "The Exorcist" was based. The victim was a young boy and not a Catholic, but his situation was so bad that a priest was called in. It's supposed to be the only American exorcism rite performed by the Roman Catholic Church in modern times! Really creepy film but really, really cool, especially when you read the postscript they show at the very end.

Misunderstood, I share your love for Stigmata. Whenever it comes on, I can't help but drop everything to watch it. Gabriel Byrnes might have something to do with that as well.

[Deleted]

The scariest thing about Stigmata was that they actually thought the audience would buy that a hairdresser could afford that 5000 square foot loft. I'm going to have to rent Posessed; it sounds good. But I'll admit in advance that I'll have a hard time erasing the memories of Henry Czerny showering across from me every week at Toronto's downtown Y, long before he made it big.

Ghost Story was one of my favouritest scary books ever, yet it was made into one of the least-frightening movies ever. If I win $200 million, I want to buy the rights and remake it.

Blair Witch Project gets dissed a lot, but for a movie that has spawned countless parodies, it must have something going for it, like that iconic, nose-dripping camera-in-face confessional moment. And, frankly, the very last shot is one of the most riveting in modern cinema.

But The Exorcist holds a place dear to my heart, because it was one of the most flat-out, contrived, no-holds-barred attempts to manipulate the audience through music, shocking visuals, astonishinly layered sound design and subliminal imagery. I lied about my age to get into the theatre on opening weekend. I also own both versions (the original cut was by far the superior). One of my top ten movies, period.