1. Exorcist
2. Martyrs
3. Exorcist 3
4. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
5. The Shining

Here are my 5:

1. The Shining (Kubrick knocked it out of the park)
2. Silence of the Lambs (overwhelmingly creepy feel)
3. Halloween (Incredibly scary)
4. CandyMan (Looking in a mirror for a while felt uncomfortable)
5. Alien (eerie, scary and the tension was unbearable)

Don't care at all for the gore and human torture films.

Event Horizon also was also pretty scary.

The Debt said:

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Electrical_Ag said:

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1. Red Dragon
2. IT (original)

Stopped watching horror movies.

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As in Ralph Feinnes and Ed Norton "Red Dragon"?

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Yes. The part with the mirrors in their eyes scared the shiot out of me.

The Exorcist gave me horrible nightmares to the point that I laid awake not wanting to go to sleep. I tried so hard not to "think" about the devil so as to not "call" his attention to me because I didn't want to be possessed. And I'm pretty sure that was from watching it on network TV.

Friday the 13th - watched this around 7th grade at a neighbor's house who had cable before we did. He had seen it already. Jumped out from behind the couch at the scene at the end of the movie when "Jason" came out of the lake. i screamed like a little girl.
The Shining
Halloween
Aliens

1. Paranormal Activity
2. The Strangers
3. Insidious
4. Jaws
5. The Witch

(Didnt include exorcist or shining because those are a given...)

So many great ones mentioned already so nothing to really add . I am really impressed with the love for Prince of Darness though. As said it's a highly underrated carpenter flick. A modern telling / version could be awesome minus the fact no Victor Wong ( that would suck) but the story is great and could really use a redux.

Add me to the list who thought Blair Witch was scary as F when it first came out. I saw it at a small art house theater before it was big. Back then they were promoting it as a true story. With the filming style it made it totally believable. I think when it became a big thing with big expectations it totally ruined the movie. I saw it a second time a month or so later, and I wasn't really into it. Still, though, the first time I saw it was maybe the scariest thing I've seen in a theater. I don't have a top 5, but the movies I can think of are:

The Shinning
Halloween
Blair Witch
Alien
Event Horizon

I don't watch many scary movies so my list is probably weak.

AGnBCS said:

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So many great ones mentioned already so nothing to really add . I am really impressed with the love for Prince of Darness though. As said it's a highly underrated carpenter flick. A modern telling / version could be awesome minus the fact no Victor Wong ( that would suck) but the story is great and could really use a redux.

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Carpenter had some very underrated films.

Prince of Darkness was very good, as well as the criminally overlooked In the Mouth of Madness.

Another film that I had forgotten about that was truly disturbing (for both scare value and uncomfortable gore) was Cronenberg's remake of The Fly.

I'm not sure how Silence of the Lambs hasn't been mentioned - guess it's nit a traditional "horror" flick but the plausibility of the two serial killers made it super scary to me.

Also: Jaws, Shining, Alien, NOES (first one) and FTT (also first one).

Dad and brother took me to see An American Werewolf in London in the theater when I was 7. When the werewolf jumped the guy at the beginning, I was up the aisle and gone. Dad finally caught me in the parking lot.

It may be an unpopular opinion but I just feel like most horror movies age pretty poorly. I've tried going back and watching older horror movies like the Exorcist, Alien, and Halloween, but they just don't get me that excited. I remember seeing the Ring in high school and thinking that was the scariest thing I've ever seen. I rewatched it a few months ago and my memory of it greatly surpassed it.

I will say there's one exception. The Shining holds up like no other movie in the genre. It's in a league of it's own.

OldShadeOfBlue said:

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I will say there's one exception. The Shining holds up like no other movie in the genre. It's in a league of it's own.

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I think that's Kubrick...

Quote:

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I will say there's one exception. The Shining holds up like no other movie in the genre. It's in a league of it's own.

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A very underrated scary movie. I mean, chicks playing baseball?!

OldShadeOfBlue said:

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It may be an unpopular opinion but I just feel like most horror movies age pretty poorly. I've tried going back and watching older horror movies like the Exorcist, Alien, and Halloween, but they just don't get me that excited. I remember seeing the Ring in high school and thinking that was the scariest thing I've ever seen. I rewatched it a few months ago and my memory of it greatly surpassed it.

I will say there's one exception. The Shining holds up like no other movie in the genre. It's in a league of it's own.

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I'm with you on The Ring, somewhat. First time I saw it, it freaked me out and scared me big time. Part of it was the quick and unexpected shots of the victims' deformed faces. Now that "shock" is gone on subsequent viewings, which takes out some of the sting. The TV scene, however, endures. I know it is coming, I know she is going to be on him in a millisecond, but I still get a hair-raising chill and stomach drop when it happens.

Same for the hospital scene in Exorcist III.

The Cell

Found it really disturbing.

The Pale Man in Pan's Labyrinth was disturbing. The transformation of Smeagol into Gollum in ROTK was disturbing. The creature sound effects in The Thing are wonderfully nightmarish.

No particular order...

• Halloween
• Paranormal Activity
• Poltergeist
• Blair Witch Project
• Hell House LLC
• The Phoenix Tapes '97

I'm going to throw LOTR - Fellowship of the Ring into the mix.

The first time I saw it I was by myself and it was really late at night. The Ringwraiths and the drums scared the bejeezus out of me.

It's now one of my favorite movies and those scenes don't bug me anymore.

bushytailed said:

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I'm going to throw LOTR - Fellowship of the Ring into the mix.

The first time I saw it I was by myself and it was really late at night. The Ringwraiths and the drums scared the bejeezus out of me.

It's now one of my favorite movies and those scenes don't bug me anymore.

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How old were you at the time?

schmendeler said:

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bushytailed said:

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I'm going to throw LOTR - Fellowship of the Ring into the mix.

The first time I saw it I was by myself and it was really late at night. The Ringwraiths and the drums scared the bejeezus out of me.

It's now one of my favorite movies and those scenes don't bug me anymore.

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How old were you at the time?

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Early 20's

WaltonLoads08 said:

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The Cell

Found it really disturbing.

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skin hooks really freak people out for some reason

Trilogy of Terror
The Fourth Kind
Nightmare on Elm St
Alien
Candy man

"Night of the Creeps" (roach-like aliens laying eggs in your brain, hatching; then your head explodes with new roach-aliens)

I saw "Thriller" when I was 6. When Michael Jackson looked up with his yellow eyes and said, "Go away!", I nearly went through the roof.

Not a movie, but playing Resident Evil 2 late at night legitimately scared me. I'm still a little creeped out by plants.

The first movie that gave me nightmares as a kid was Terminator 2, and solely because of the opening scene with the wall of fire sweeping across the land and destroying everything in its path. Although, the scene where John Connor's guardian reaches off screen to stop her husband from drinking the milk, and then, oh by the way, it's actually the T-1000 and there's a metal spike through the carton and his head... yeah.

Silence of the Lambs has a special place in the dark corner of my mind. The first time I saw the full, unedited version, I was crashing at my best friend's house. We watched it, and basically fell asleep on the living room floor. The next morning we were awakened by his dogs licking our faces. Woke us up real damn fast.

LeonardSkinner said:

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Silence of the Lambs has a special place in the dark corner of my mind. The first time I saw the full, unedited version, I was crashing at my best friend's house. We watched it, and basically fell asleep on the living room floor. The next morning we were awakened by his dogs licking our faces. Woke us up real damn fast.

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Most of mine have been mentioned but Hellraiser legitimately screwed me up. I was about 10 when I saw it and had no idea what was going on but pinhead and the cenobites are legitimately the things that haunted my nightmare for years. Also, I watched the Dark Crystal when I was like 5 and didn't sleep for a week.

Gone Girl by far. Scares the **** out of me.

In no particular order and these are really my top five horror movies in general. They aren't necessarily scary but still top shelf movies:
The Shining
The Ring (Ringu)
The Witch
Hereditary
Oculus

Does anybody else think Sinister was scary? I do not want to watch the sequels.

Insidious was scary but I like the story so I wanted to watch all of them.

Woman in Black is probably the scariest for me.

People really think the Shining is scary...LOL.

dcAg said:

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People really think the Shining is scary...LOL.

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What are your picks?

It's tough to list what are the scariest because once a movie is dated by 10 or so years it's going to lose it's impact. The Shining is tops for many people simply because even though it's not necessarily as scary as it once was, it's still a near flawless movie... and that's with Kubrick absolutely butchering the plot.

The Ring scared me in theaters, but it's pretty tame to watch it now. I imagine that's how people who watched Nightmare on Elm Street back in the day felt. Freddy Krueger was basically my childhood, but going back to NOES1 and he just really is more goofy looking than scary (and this was before they made his character "hip"). New Nightmare actually has the scariest version of him.

The Thing is my absolute favorite film and I think more than any other movie it holds up. The acting, the paranoia, the special effects. All still brilliant. But it's not really all that scary. Alien is very similar... except when you see the alien in the dark tunnel right before it strikes you can't help but laugh at how bad it is.

The marketing for The Ring was awesome. I think the first trailer was the video that they watched in the movie and that's it! Not even an indication that you were watching a movie trailer.

Thing (original)
The Fallen
Cape Fear was just creepy
The Howling
Nightmare on elm street 1