The Haunt Of Fear: ILX Top 100 HORROR Movies Poll Results Thread

See also: most Fulci, which makes no fucking sense.

Possession and Inland Empire and The Tenant.

excellent examples! was thinking of IE myself, but failed to mention it. dumb of me not to have considered the other two, as they were both on my ballot.

xp really? I got the sense with Alice Sweet Alice that SPOILERS there's a hint - after the reveal of the murderer's identity - that Alice was the one somehow orchestrating it all

― Chris S, Wednesday, May 16, 2012 6:01 PM (1 minute ago)

always read alice as SPOILERS just an emotionally disturbed girl getting a bad rap, but there's obv a lot of intentional misdirection on the movie's part to implicate her. final frame is ominous but imo more about the poisoning of her mind by the cruelty of those around her rather than any supernatural force at work.

really loved that movie as a kid but it didn't hold up very well when I watched it again sometime in the 00s

speaking about the shining ... do we think that that one is a lock for Top 10 or not?!? i know that that film has some pretty vocal haters around here.

oh hell yeah, figure it for #1 myself

^ oops, shut up, you

I bet, haters or no, it'll place high. But I really hope it's not #1.

This "unexplained and unexplainable malignant force unabatedly fucking up the lives of the protagonists" is at least part of what I love about films like Possession and Inland Empire and The Tenant. Yes, in each of those instances, there is some discrete rationale alluded to, but those rationales are vague and illogical and it's never made clear whether those films aren't just about the protagonists losing their minds.

― Bob Bop Perano (Deric W. Haircare), Wednesday, May 16, 2012 3:07 PM (45 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah I love this kind of approach. kind of like Grant Morrison's Arkham Asylum

re: Alice Sweet Alice, yeah I considered that reading... what made me go with mine was Alice and the killer's penchant for wearing the same costume around and the killer happening to take out everyone that Alice had a grudge against (and then there was Alice's collecting all those trinkets related to the events as well). it's very subtle, kind of left open, which is what I like about it. the possibility is there, but you can't be certain of it

shining will be top five for sure

no offense dudes but duh

50-plus ballots = no amount of challoping, strategic voting, and batshit insanity will keep all the expected movies from placing high

I'm comfortable predicting a top ten showing for The Shining, but these results could be all kinds of wacked out. The top five is totally up in the air at this point, from where I'm standing.

it didn't even occur to me to vote for the Shining tbh

my top ten is like zzzz kanon klassics plus two 21st-century outliers

i tried very hard not to vote for the shining (for strategic reasons, mostly - i figured it was a lock no matter what i did), but in the end it felt too much like fronting to leave it off my list.

same goes for alien and the thing

can anyone suggest good examples of movies that work like this? would love to see an entity/poltergeist/paranormal activity/insidious-type movie where the scientific and spiritual "experts" are completely useless.

― The term or title antichrist, in Christian theology, refers to (contenderizer), Wednesday, May 16, 2012 9:30 PM (1 hour ago)

well there is the last exorcism SPOILER its a horrible pile of shit

kinda feel like every movie about satan should end with our heroes succeeding and then satan going "oh lol wait i'm satan" and destroying them all

The Shining totally mentally scarred me as a young'un, dunno why it didn't occur to me to vote for it. I'm sure it'll do fine, regardless.

i'm sure i've told this story before, but after the first time me and my sister watched the shining (ages 10 and 8, respectively), i wrote red rum with my mom's lipstick on the bathroom door so she'd see it in the mirror when she came out

my mother was not pleased

actually i think she secretly kinda was but then we're a sick family

I'm comfortable predicting a top ten showing for The Shining, but these results could be all kinds of wacked out. The top five is totally up in the air at this point, from where I'm standing.

― Bob Bop Perano (Deric W. Haircare), Wednesday, May 16, 2012 6:47 PM (13 minutes ago)

if you look at the nom list, it's really not that mystical, a couple of them will be the ones that place in every ilx poll whether you want them to or not

kinda feel like every movie about satan should end with our heroes succeeding and then satan going "oh lol wait i'm satan" and destroying them all

Seriously. There's way too much "winning" in those types of movies.

rosemary's baby

The Omen

SPOILERS: Satan becomes president iirc

xxxxpost

Yeah, I mean...The Exorcist will probably show up in the top ten, but it could just as easily show up at 10 as it could at 1. And a third of the top ten could be total outliers. I mean, my top five has some popular choices and some stuff I think is kinda left-field that could show up around 50 or, if there's enough support, could wind up in the top 10. Who knows at this point?

besides any religious/squeamish objections to horror films, i think that another reason why my parents didn't let us watch horror movies was b/c they thought we'd pull stunts like writing REDRUM with lipstick or worse. and that fear was credible b/c when i was 4 i went through a phase where i defaced paintings and photos around the house and scribbled out entire pages in books.

the beyond

I'd like to see a spoiler-free list of horror movies with nihilistic endings.

ed i hate to break it to you but in rosemary's baby 2 she bludgeons the baby to death with a copy of http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MQONc0LFdyk/T1hzmV2wnOI/AAAAAAAAAKU/4OIg0qf9T_A/s1600/book_spock.jpg

Rosemary's Baby 3: Rosemary's Baby's Baby is really boring. I mean, cool twist and everything, but it was just a nice baby.

I'd like to see a spoiler-free list of horror movies with nihilistic endings.

― Bob Bop Perano (Deric W. Haircare), Wednesday, May 16, 2012 11:10 PM (1 minute ago)

i would give you this but we have been asked to keep our ballots secret until the results are all posted

kinda feel like every movie about satan should end with our heroes succeeding and then satan going "oh lol wait i'm satan" and destroying them all

Seriously. There's way too much "winning" in those types of movies.

well, considering that satan's great monster-power lies in his ability to convince people to go ahead and do things they already wanted to do anyway, i'm not surprised that he's so easily defeated. satan vs. hulk, for instance....

satan: "now hulk, isn't there someone here you feel like smashing?"
hulk: "HULK SMASH!"

almost every horror movie has a nihilistic ending if you assume the survivors will ne emotionally fubar forever

haha and even being strict about that nihilism that describes 36/50 from my ballot

xpost

I always imagine really efficacious group therapy sessions taking place after horror movies.

my favorite horror movies are those in which evil triumphs and it turns out that it's not such a bad thing after all

^ these are very rare

Yeah, it looks like about 1/3 of the films on my ballot end unambiguously nihilistically.

Can you name some of those, contenderizer? I can't think of any off the top of my head.

generally if a horror movie makes me feel good at any point about anything i probably dont like it

Can you name some of those, contenderizer? I can't think of any off the top of my head.

Wicker Man

unless you've been rooting for the douchebag protagonist the whole film

Through the Looking Glass, xp, but I think that ending's dark in a way no sane person can get behind SPOILERS - a woman giving into demonic influence as symbol as her embracing cycle of sexual abuse (70s porn and midnight movies really go places that still blow my mind sometimes)

as satisfying as it is to fantasize about frying a sexually-repressed busybody who's hellbent on imposing his oppressive beliefs on folks (esp given the destruction wreaked by Sergeant Howie's American counterparts), IRL it is quite horrifying -- even especially when the deed is perpetrated by neo-pagans.

that's no way to talk about dr. morbius, tad.

IRL...?

the movie is ridiculous. the ending is the punchline to a very funny joke.

xp

Can you name some of those, contenderizer? I can't think of any off the top of my head.

stuart gordon's dagon is my go2 example, but daughters of darkness is somewhat similar. hadn't considered wicker man, which sort of fits, cuz i'd been thinking about cases where good ultimately embraces and is transformed by evil.