No 1 – The Exorcist, directed with unbelievable intensity by a madman. Scares the crap out of me. And I’m an atheist!
No 2 – The film Martin Scorsese describes as the scariest film ever made. A ghost story with no visible ghosts.
No 3 – Alien. A horror/sci-fi hybrid with the best monster ever created on film and loads of psycho-sexual subtext.
Honorable mentions go to The Thing, The Fly and some recent films by James Wan who I think could become a great horror director, he’s a genius at misdirection for example, problem is he’s still terribly young. Give him time to mature and he’ll be up there with the greats.
#1: The Shining
#2: Aliens (If this doesn’t count: Tucker and Dale vs Evil)
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#3: Jesus Camp
Jesus Camp is certainly terrifying! Funny. I’ve never found The Shining scary. It’s a tremendous piece of film making and I admire it enormously. The only bit I find alarming is the sudden cut to Jack Nicholson frozen in the maze. There’s something ludicrous about it, yet it really unnerves me. But then I think a lot of scary things have a slight element of the ludicrous about them.
I don’t judge how good a horror movie is by how scared I get, the movie can be good and be in the category of horror.
When I first watched the Shining I found it more “creepy” than scary, but it kicks ass as a movie.
I agree totally about the atmosphere of The Shining. It’s not a traditional horror movie at all. It’s like Kubrick riffing on horror movie tropes.
dont watch the documentary Room 237. itll ruin the shining for you forever. and i agree. the exorcist is the scariest horror flick.
Too late! I have seen Room 237 and thought it was great. Didn’t ruin the movie for me at all and gave me a whole new perspective on it.
youre saying finding out that jack was reading a playGIRL magazine in the lobby, made the movie better for you in some way…
It was certainly interesting!