Movies that are . . . actually scary?

I did pretty much list all my choices in the thread Old Lunch just posted.

Possession (1981)

i'm not a horror movie guy so ymmv, but this one got under my skin in a way that no other 'scary' movie has. it starts with manic acting in a completely abandoned post-nuclear landscape and just builds from there. the disorientation and dread i felt from that it is hard for me to pin-point and isn't even directly related to the most grotesque elements of the plot. i was definitely 'changed' by this movie.

it's a soviet bloc 'blue velvet' on pcp

I don't find most movies scary, but there are a couple of particularly suspenseful/intense ones. Like "The Invitation."

One of the many things I love about Possession is that the elements that earmark it a horror movie (to the extent that it even is a horror movie per se) are among the least uncanny and disquieting elements of the film.

Possession is the film I haven't seen yet that I'm most positive I'm going to love.

I haven't seen it in years, but I would cosign on Threads.

After missing its original run I saw Mad Max: Fury Road recently in a mostly empty theatre. I found it almost unrelentingly oppressive, for the first two thirds or so anyway — it conveyed a really visceral threat of bodily obliteration. Maybe not the kind of scary RVW is thinking of, but not a million miles from Texas Chainsaw either.

Loved Posession, but wasn't that scared by it.

Films which have genuinely scared me:

* The Haunting (1963 version)
* The Ring (original Japanese version, US version very much not)
* The Descent (watched with a weirdo roommate who gave me the creeps anyway)
* The Lady In Black (The 1989 version which is just getting re-released for the first time)

really annoyed that there's another cut of The Descent where they ruined the ending, nobody needs to see that

Come and See was the last film that left me genuinely shaken. It's not fun-scary, though.

the most I get is "vaguely unsettled" but The Innocents managed it.

imo Ghostwatch is probably the scariest thing I've seen

(I am also not easily scared at all)

watched Ghostwatch last halloween, and yes, still scary

Nothing has ever scared me as much as seeing the 1985 Australian TV movie 'Fortress' when I was younger. It's about 3 guys with shotguns wearing the creepiest masks imaginable kidnapping a teacher and her students on a field trip (based on a true story supposedly). The masks and violence are bad enough on their own, but it's low budget origins give it all a layer of fuzzy sleaze that really makes the difference.

Older movies seem creepier on the whole

Never seen this, but these two guys always creep me out.
https://collider.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/insidious-patrick-wilson.jpg

The only movie that gave me the actual shakes in the theatre was Don Coscarelli's Phantasm.

Polanksi's Repulsion is very scary.

not many films have actually scared me as an adult but the one which keeps me up at night is the documentary, The Nightmare, with people recounting their terrifying stories of sleep paralysis with reenactments. I always always always close my wardrobe door now

We watched The Autopsy of Jane Doe last night. I'd seen it before, but my daughter was suitably scared. It's a clever spooky setup.

Thank you DL! Sleep paralysis sounds like the ultimate horror

(so I will definitely be watching this)

Come And See.

I really liked It Follows.

The Descent.

When I saw Blair Witch on VHS before it was out and nobody knew anything about it.

So many movies it’s hard to say because I saw them as a kid. The exorcist terrified me but so did the amityville horror. The latter at least would probably seem pretty silly.

As far as fun house gimmicks go, I thought the Paranormal Activity movies, at least the first three, were pretty scary.

Kill List

Agree on the first Paranormal Activity

Re: Blair Witch, I know I've mentioned before that some friends and I got free passes to a preview screening, knowing absolutely nothing about the movie going in, and I can confirm that that's the best way to see it. The entire audience just sat quietly in their seats for an unusually long time after it ended. It's the one time I recall being legitimately frightened at the movies.

(The effect was, eh, considerably diminished upon a second viewing.)

I refuse to believe that Blair Witch isn't really scary.

Yeah I’ve told my story before but my friend who was an NYU film student brought over the VHS and before watching it he didn’t even know if it was a documentary or what. It was like oh this is some thing that’s been copied around. We were terrified.

I thought it was proper scary

scared the shit out of me

so strange that Blair Witch was able to do what it did. you couldn't really pull that sort of stunt off these days where you convince a significant amount of people that what they are watching is in fact real

I could imagine something like that turning up on youtube and people debating whether it is real

There was one made in 2007, by a Britisher in fact, "Louise Paxton"

The Blair Witch crew were really canny wrt promotion. IIRC, the actors' IMDB profiles were modified for an entire year to show them missing? I can't imagine a working actor giving the okay on that nowadays.

That could easily have the opposite effect too, though. Personally, I wasn't aware of any of the promotional stuff and hadn't heard anything about the movie beforehand. Had I known that there were people claiming that THIS IS TOTALLY A REAL TAPE, the skeptical asshole in me probably would have kicked in and ruined the experience.

I would love a Criterion or equivalent Blair Witch release with docs and stuff detailing their efforts

As OL, points out: The Blair Witch marketing was INDEED super grassrooted and heavily, heavily seeded for longggg-game. There were a ton of early websites and other red herrings and deliberate misinformation planted all around.

I saw it on opening day lol that's how much I had bought in to the hype. Stood in line for 2 hours at an OLDE urban single-screen theater. I brought the newspaper (!) with me in line, it was the day after JFK Jr. died in his plane crash, so that was notable.