I've been looking around desperately, and want to find a few movies that could make me myself, or at the very least make me jump out of the seat once or twice. I'm talking truly atmospherically scary movies here.
I keep reading and reading, and looking up different lists, and other forums, but I wanted to start my own thread to really get to the bottom of it.
I'm not looking at all for movies that only have blood and gore. Or movies that are "torture porn", (movies with a lot of gore/nudity).
I recently saw "Martyrs", which I thought was pretty good, and also just now saw "Silent Hill". I'm talking about movies like that. Movies that you have no idea what's to come, and the suspense is the scary part.
Some of the posts I've been reading lately people suggested movies such as "Stir of Echoes", some mentioned the Saw movies. I didn't think Stir of Echoes was in any way scary. I mean it did have its moments of suspense, but that's all it was- suspense. I didn't find Saw to be scary either, more just curious of how brutal each death would be, and why they were going to die, the point is in Saw you knew they were going to die before they did. I'm talking movies where you don't know whether every character in the movie is going to die, main character or not.
Some also reported "Shawn of the Dead" to be scary. What the hell is that? Shawn of the Dead was clearly a comedy, and as I said with Stir of Echoes (which had more scary value than Shawn of the Dead), it was more suspenseful than anything, and not even really suspenseful because you were waiting to laugh instead of waiting for scary parts, which is different entirely.
Some people say Blair Witch was scary, and although it certainly has atmostphere to be scary, its just plain not. I watched that movie in theaters at midnight when I was 9 years old and it might have had an element or two of scary, but didn't even come close to going all the way. Mostly it bored me, and I kept thinking to myself "I would just run to civilization, anybody whos not a retard would have a good enough sense of direction would just run out of the woods".
Some (for some reason?) actually thought the Scary Movie parodies were scary. I don't even need to delve into that one, it speaks for itself.
A few times I've heard people say that "Premonition" was scary, which couldn't be further from the truth. Premonition offers its element of "scary-ness" at the beginning of the movie. Is he dead or isn't he? Who gives a , your going to sit through an hour and a half of boredom to know anything more, and you already know the "monster", or (bad guy, [death]) of the movie.
I've even heard that "Stay Alive" is supposed to be scary. I will admit there are one or two parts that certainly do well to make that movie scary, but C'mon, Shia Labouf in a scary movie? They should've known nobody would buy it. And though it seemed like a good plot, a video game "monster", (bad guy), get a grip.
So enough about bad horror films with crappy plots, blood and gore with no element of surprise, and movies that don't even classify in any category that would scare.
Here's the question folks. What is the SCARIEST movie of between 1990 and now??
I don't want anything before 1990, in fact I was going to make this a 2000's to now question, but the 90s had a lot of good ones too, and weren't too far back in the graphics and effects department. And of course, I can't have seen them all so I must ask.
I mean really scary, seriously terrifying, movies that made you praise the man who wrote the script for terrifying you that much. (I would say "Horrifying", but Stephen King once said "terror is scary because it could happen, horror is scary because its actually happening", or something directly to that affect.)
Thank you, and I look forward to any answers I may receive this question.
SIDENOTE: I'm looking for US titles, but will be more than happy to hear what other countries have to offer, as long as they're ACTUALLY scary as I have asked.
