Movies You Are Scared to Watch

I still have not gotten around to ANTICHRIST

It just sounds so bleak and grim and horrible, I guess the reputation has kept me away

It's funny, I have little to no reservations watching stuff that's fucked up or graphic, stuff like HUMAN CENTIPEDE, A SERBIAN FILM, IRREVERSIBLE, CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, etc. I'm not saying I don't feel uneasy or get disturbed by watching them, but there's not really any hesitation to dive in. Yet on multiple occasions it's taken me forever to get up the courage to watch more supernaturally oriented movies that have reputations for being particularly creepy. Stuff like GHOSTWATCH, THE WOMAN IN BLACK, COLLINGSWOOD STORY, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY (this was when it had only screened at a couple festivals, and it's reputation was basically "SCARIEST THING SINCE SLICED BLAIR WITCH PROJECT"), etc. I had the dvd of MARBLE HORNETS sitting around for months before I finally decided it was time to psych myself up and watch it. You'd think this kind of self-hyping would be detrimental to the effectiveness of these films, but it actually works for me. I think I just get in the mindset that it's going to scare me and then rather than resist it I open myself up to it. It's especially funny because in terms of worldview I'm a very rational, skeptical person, but in art the supernatural scares me much more than the plausible.

I don't mind happily admitting I'm a massive scaredy-cat when it comes the original Exorcist.

Oh fuck yes! I have some fears related to Catholicism from my childhood AND I have a deep seated creepy little girl fear. I barely slept for 3 days after the first time I saw it.

 

I'll admit that The Ring terrified me when I saw it in the theatre too, blame the creepy little girl fear I guess. Ringu was very creepy but it didn't scare me in quite the same way.

 

Lost Highway really scared me too, particularly the bit at the beginning with the phone... And Mulholland Drive for that matter.... And Eraserhead. I'll just go ahead and say that David Lynch generally does a good job of scaring the crap out of me.

Ive seen The Exorcist numerous times, and each and every time, I don't sleep well that night.

 

I'll also echo Antichrist, a movie I own, and have only watched once since buying.

 

Also, Tetsuo: The Iron Man is the one example of a movie that's fucking ridiculous that, for reasons I still can't put my finger on, still creeps me out.

The exorcist

Same here, basically. I consume any and all horror because I love the genre, but only the well made supernatural stuff gets to me that way. It doesn't take me forever to watch them, but I will hold off viewing if I know I'm going to be by myself for a few nights or whatever. God I'm such a chickenshit sometimes. Yet the more a movie gets under my skin like that, the more I love it.

 

What did you think of The Collingswood Story? I think you might be the only other person on these message boards who has seen that. I loved it when it first came out, but watching it again now it would probably feel like Marble Hornets lite (crazy intensity to that series)

I'm not squeamish or anything, but I have never seen Human Centipede because once I heard about the premise, I felt like a big part of the impact was already spent.  In a weird and most likely stupid way, it almost feels like it's not necessary to actually spend 2 hours watching it just to see if it's as gross as what I imagined right after I found out what it was about.

Ha!  I was going to say the same thing Schwartz.  I'm not squeamish about anything really, although I do get creeeped out by most of the movies mentioned in here, such as Antichrist and The Exorcist.

 

However, I never really got around to seeing The Human Centepede (and I was squeamish just hearing about the premise), and then I decided I didn't really need to.  Not really scared to see it, but I think my imagination has done it's work already.  Although I still might eventually just for the fucked up doctor that I've read about on here.  I dunno.

The only place I would draw the line is the "Guinea Pig" movies. No fuckin' way, dude.

I'd throw in the August Underground films as stuff that I find intriguing, but I just can't see the value in watching. Ditto on the Guinea Pig series. 

 

As far as stuff that actually scares me, it's usually rooted in reality. Irreversible really fucked me up on first viewing. Just a nightmare. Contagion was sort of mild in comparison to the other films in this thread but I found it freaky nonetheless. 

This might sound strange but I'm sort of jealous that some of you can work yourselves up that much. I love horror and thrillers in general and watch everything I can get my hands on. Nine times out of ten what you imagined in your head when you first heard the premise is way worse and far more interesting than what you get. For me and I'm not sure if it's life experience or just my inclination but stuff like Dancer in the Dark is something I held off on for a long time. Not because it's scary but it sounded so fucking depressing. Scary to me is real, harsh and most of the time petty and pathetic. I dunno. I hope I'm not derailing the thread.

 

On a side note the Guinea Pig stuff always interested me because the effects are pretty great.

Exactly. The fact that some of these movies have that effect on me just makes me love them and the horror genre more, especially after seeing so many - I'm glad that after all these years I haven't become completely jaded and can still be a chickenshit. I live alone, so I'm by myself most nights, but I was kind of exaggerating about waiting so long . Usually it's just a day or two waiting till I'm in exactly the right mood. MARBLE HORNETS was funny though, I really did wait for months until I finally felt like committing to it. Again, partly waiting for the perfect mood, but a little bit of being a chickenshit too.

 

I really liked COLLINGSWOOD STORY, in fact I think it's one of the better found footage type horror films. They really managed to get a lot out of what is mostly people sitting in rooms talking. And I wouldn't necessarily say MARBLE HORNETS steps on its toes, in fact after all that anticipation I almost enjoyed MARBLE HORNETS more for the intrigue and mystery than the creep factor (although it certainly has some chilling moments, and some parts that are extremely suspenseful)
 

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They're not really that bad.

 

Got halfway through Salo and I really have no desire to see the rest.

 

I really do recommend watching Human Centipede though. It's nowhere near as graphic as the idea would suggest which for me was part of why I liked it - at least the first time around, Six seemed more interested in crafting a tense, well-made thriller than an endurance test.

For years when I was younger I struggled with 'The Thing'. I would hear all these stories about this dog scene and I would be scared witless. I would try and brave the film when I saw it on TV late at night and would continually watch the film right to the dog scene. After 15 or so attempts I would finally stick it out and watch that scene and be able to watch the film in its entirety.

I've has Irreversible sitting in my queue and just haven't worked up the strength to watch it. Most horror and gore doesn't bother me but I just don't want to see a brutal long rape. I have seen I Spit On Your Grave and didn't consider that too bad. How do the two compare?

 

The Human Centipede is surprisingly tame. I'm sure Full Sequence will be much crazier.

Same. Watched it when I was too young (10) and until I was about 21 I couldn';t even get beyond the opening credits (just the start of the Score freaked me out).

 

I don;t know if I'm too scared to watch A Serbian Film, but I do know I have zero desire to see it.

 

It took me a long time to get to that one too, but it was basically that knowing it was going to be a total downer, I found it hard to ever work up any enthusiasm to actually sit down and watch it.  I have the same issue with Irreversible, which I know I will at least respect on a technical level.  It's just that I don't ever really have a "transgressive, structurally challenging rape/revenge flick" mood that strikes me with any regularity, so I have to force myself to watch it as a sort of intellectual exercise, even if I know I will end up finding value in it when I do.  And like with Human Centipede, familiarity with the premise further saps the sense of urgency to do so, whether that's fair to the film or not. 

 

For me, when I avoid movies it always seems to be a question of enthusiasm rather than fear.  I relish a movie that can inspire genuine terror in me, but those seem to be few and far between these days.  Antichrist certainly provoked a visceral reaction, but it ultimately fell on the side of disgust more than fear.  The Thing also made quite an impression, but the fear was leavened with a steady stream of "holy shit, that was awesome" moments.  I was seriously freaked by the scene in the original Pulse described here, then shocked with how quickly and thoroughly the remaining 90 minutes bored me, such that I can only halfway recommend the movie as a whole.

 

Maybe I have a highly developed system for subconsciously prepping myself for scary movies, because the only times I get genuinely unsettled are when I'm taken completely off guard.  The unworldly wrongness of the Pulse ghost's movements described above, or parts of David Lynch movies are examples of things that have managed bypass whatever mental safeguards normally go up when I walk into The Hills Have Eyes or whatever (if there's a way to prepare for whatever the hell is going on in Club Silencio, I don't know it).  This might sound weird since it's not even a horror movie, but the most scared I can remember being in a theater was at No Country For Old Men.  I somehow managed to get an English degree without having read a word of Cormac McCarthy, and hadn't even seen a trailer.  All I knew was that Chud was raving about it, and that was enough for me to go alone on a whim, expecting something perhaps a shade more serious than The Big Lebowski, because that's what those guys were known for, right?  I was totally unprepared for the relentless nightmare that actually unfolded.

 

I guess what I'm rambling around is that if a movie is notorious enough for me to hesitate watching it, certain mental barriers go up that prevent it from having a fully terrifying effect when I do. 

 

 

Certainly one of the most haunting sequences in modern horror, though I'm a fan of the whole move. I think that sense of the uncanny, the inscrutable is why good supernatural horror is more likely to work on me than the stuff that's grounded in reality.  The idea of something that defies your basic understanding of how the world works and what it contains is more deeply terrifying because it taps into the primal fear of the unknown. David Lynch absolutely touches the same nerve, although for some reason for me his work, while unsettling, doesn't generally have as intense or lasting an effect on me as something like that scene from PULSE or similar otherworldly horrors.

Kind of a diversion but I've got a problem with films that have broken bones, I was literally cringing for one and a half hours during Black Swan waiting for Natalie Portman's ankle to snap in half or something. I don't know why, but broken bones are just a thing that I can't deal with (I still shudder over something tame like The Prestige leg-snap) and I go into films like The Fighter or Warrior having to psyche myself up in case anything happens.

I absolutely have the same issues with that (No Country back in this!), but again, that falls more into disgust than horror.  While there is a "legitimate" field of body horror that blends the two, for the most part making me gag is a different (and simpler) task than making me afraid.
 

Although this does remind me of a movie I have been avoiding largely because of this issue:  127 Hours.  I'm sure there's some cracking and crunching in there that's going to make me queasy, so maybe I'm just a big pussy after all.

I'll watch anything — A Serbian Film, Human Centipede, fuck it — but I won't watch The Cove.

 

I'll donate to any saving-the-dolphins charity you name. I just don't want to watch them getting butchered for real.

That Gulliver's Travels movie with Jack Black. A friend tells me she enjoyed it...

I hate to say it but I'm the same. I know it's horrific, I know it's monstrous, I don't need to see it. I'm sold on the cause already.

Yeah, I'm the guy who'll watch Fulci and H.G. Lewis every day and twice on Sunday but changes the channel when those fucking Sarah McLachlan ASPCA commercials come on. "Why do they beat me?" "Why did they shove my paws into a garbage disposal?" AAAGH HERE TAKE ALL MY MONEY BUT STOP MAKING THESE COMMERCIALS.

 

 

Same. Actually,  I think I might be a massive wuss, because I've avoided a lot of the movies listed here. Even bailed out of The Last King of Scotland on DVD because I'd been warned about some of the later stuff and wasn't enjoying it enough to perservere.

 

It wasn't always the way though - I used to love gore/broken bones/graphic stuff in my teens and early twenties. Not sure what changed.

I will say I'm up for anything, but I honestly kind of regret A Serbian Film.

When I first heard of the movie Slaughtered Vomit Dolls, I cracked up at the ludicrous title.  

 

Then I saw the trailer.    You could not pay me enough to sit through that.   I would just feel way too soiled.  

 

I can not abide body horror. I will tell you this: 127 Hours... closing your eyes will not save you.

Same here. The reality stuff just comes off as more depressing and gross to me.

 

You need to track down Noroi: The Curse. It's an Asian found footage horror film (Japanese, I think) that has no US distribution. I managed to track down a copy on the interwebs somewhere. Search the IMDB message boards and if you have trouble finding it, maybe I can work up a MegaUpload for you or something.
 

 

I'm that way about United 93.  I've just lived through that event enough in my imagination.  Maybe someday.

 

But I have simply no interest in that fucking centipede thing.

Theres one the WWF does here which is all chimps and baby orangotangs and shit and then its them in distress as loggers destry their home while animals in cages scream in distress - all set to The Pretenders I'll Stand By You.

 

I will never, ever watch a Lucifer Valentine movie. Ever.

Guys like Lucifer Valentine and Bill Zebub who give themselves desperately-meant-to-be-badass names crack me up.

 

I AM...LUCIFER VALENTINE!!!! MUAHAHAHAHAHHAAAHAHA

real name: Bert Sneed

Yeah, I was about to say I'd never watch a Lucifer Valentine movie based on his retarded name alone. But seeing the name and the titles of his films I think I can safely infer what his work is like, the kind of z-grade schlock that would only offend me with how incompetent it is and how desperately hard it's trying to be THE MOST FUCKED UP GONZO SHIT YOU'VE EVER SEEN, MAAAAAN.

 

Incidentally that's kind of why I didn't find A SERBIAN FILM to be that disturbing. Not that it's incompetently made (in fact it's quite slick), but that it's trying so hard to be THE MOST FUCKED UP GONZO SHIT YOU'VE EVER SEEN, MAAAAAN that a lot of it was just cartoony to me. I know people, including the filmmakers, have tried to argue that it has political subtext but that seemed pretty flimsy to me. And with all the visual style and the high production values I never had that sleazy, underground, "I need a shower" feeling either.

Nearing my 40th birthday, and having feasted on the horror genre since I was a rugrat, there have only been a few films which really have gotten under my skin, even as an adult.

 

The Exorcist  and Paranormal Activity. As Werewolf Girl alluded to, the fire and brimstone religious indoctrination you are assaulted with as an impressionable child seems to leave your adult head still rooted deeply in those fears. I'm an agnostic, and have been for decades. I'm also probably the least religious person you could ever meet. Religion is just not on my daily radar. At all.

 

However, demons and demonic possession, when presented to me, really touch a nerve in me. I saw The Exorcist when I was growing up, and have never revisited it. I've been avoiding it all these years like a little kid.

 

Paranormal Activity was a case to where I wasn't actively scared while watching the film itself, but when I was home alone later that night, in the silence and in the shadows of my abode, its impact was undeniable. I literally didn't get an honest night's sleep for a week after seeing it. In my estimation, given that my first viewing came so well into my adult years and that its effect was so profound, I have to say that Paranormal Activity is the scariest film that I have ever seen.

 

The sequel? Not so much...

 

The only other film that owns me is actually outside of the demonic possession genre, and that's Brian De Palma's Dressed to Kill (1980), which I saw as a teenager. The killer's look has literally haunted my nightmares and the ending's [spoiler]haunting dream sequence[/spoiler] just creeps me out, to this day.

 

Like The Exorcist, I've also managed to avoid revisiting Dressed to Kill since my first viewing.

 

Like a little kid, safe underneath my covers.

 

 

Noroi: The Curse has been uploaded to YouTube and I recommend watching the first 5 minutes or so as a trailer to get a feel for it. I wouldn't watch an official trailer for fear of spoilers. This is a slow moving film and I would get a high quality version to watch on the big screen because you'll need a comfy chair. Lots of dread throughout this film and you are left to make your own connections and creep yourself out (the film does spell it out eventually). I guess it would be one film I would psych myself up to watch again.

 

 

Like the Italian CANNIBAL flicks, I've avoided these. I love monster movies and splatterfests and supernatural horror, but I'm so picky with what I put myself through in the "man VS man" violent horror. And yet I love a great violent action flick or martial arts movie. I don't know if it's fear that keeps me from seeing rape/revenge flicks like I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE and LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, or the rest of the torture-porn genre (I've seen SAW 1 and HOSTEL 1), but the stuff just doesn't appeal to me. The sadism and deliberate/intelligent (ie: not a creature trying to feed/impregnate) personal space invasion is what bothers me the most.

 

I also have a strong phobia with anything resembling realistic "trauma unit" style violence due to a car accident I was in as a teen. Anything that involves exposed bones are sliced up arms and hands. For example, the accidental leg break in COLD PREY was rougher on me than the pickaxe murderer's kills. But. so much of the slasher genre for me is an endurance test. OTT goofier stuff like FRIDAY THE 13TH and NOES goes down ok. But I just can't swallow the grislier realistic stuff. I also prefer more of a mystery/procedural with serial killer elements instead of just the rote "slasher" genre. Sue me.

 

Ironically, I can handle chest-bursters, zombies munching on guts, and demonic-possessed kids just fine. As one who has surfed, I do have a strong fear/fascination relationship with sharks. Love sharksploitation flicks (and any Shark Week show) to death though.

 

I'm more freaked out by "this could actually happen" type situations and beyond shark attack flicks (and survivalist reality TV), don't bother much with them. Home invasions (unless it's a poltergeist), hillbilly kidnapping (unless they're mutants), etc. Add a fantasy element and I'm ok. But I can't watch most medical shows either (SCRUBS being the exception).

Edited by DARKMITE8 - 9/13/11 at 9:58pm

 

Exactly. While SALO really did give me that "need a shower" feeling, I found SERBIAN FILM to be downright hilarious. By the by, I dont think the political subtext argument is flimsy at all. I mean, stuff like the Newborn Porn bit is kind of on-the-nose.

The supernatural gives me no pause, I can handle monsters, Slasher flicks are okay too, It's the torture porn that really gets to me.

I have never seen Funny Games, the Human Centepede, any of the Hostels, Saws* and similar films. I just can't shake the little voice in my head saying "there is someone in the world this is giving ideas to," or "There is someone in the world who gets off to this stuff." That disturbs me no end.

I don't see the point of the torture porn genre.

*In retrospect, I might catch a few of the Saw films as a friend explained to me that the first couple of films focus more on story that the violence.

You're right, flimsy wasn't the right word. Maybe just shallow or not adding much? As you said, kind of on the nose. Like, "okay I get it" but it didn't inform my take on the film or the experience of watching it in a significant way. But I admit maybe I just didn't put enough thought into that aspect of it when I saw it.

The third one is what turned me off on the series completely as far as torture porn aspects go.

Funny Games (either version) really doesn't deserve to be part of the torture-porn debate. It's more an essay on torture porn than the thing itself.

Pretty much what I came to say. There's something about watching human beings acting so fucking depraved towards other humans, in a non horror movie setting, that just rattles me the wrong way. I'm sure it's all for some reason that is artistic in Salo's case, but no, I can't be a part of it. Funny Games is the same thing.

 

And also Gigli, because much like Bruce Banner...'I'm afraid I'll like it.' (As a fan of trashy trash like that.)

 

It's a film I don't feel I could enjoy on any level other than the technical (cinematography, editing, ect...). It's Psychological torture porn if you will, The utter mental and demoralizing defeat of a family done for the entertainment of the antagonist brothers (at least that how it was described to me).

I'm not denying that these film are well crafted, they just weren't crafted for me.