Terror rears its macabre head and assumes a plethora of menacing manifestations. While scary is open to interpretation, the endorphins release from a good fright is an intoxicating allure. From silent-era Nosferatu and classic Universal Studios monster movies through decades of chainsaws, zombies, ghouls, psychopaths, and demonic possessions, movies are where we go to receive our fright fix.
Since folks out there in the readerverse (Like that? I just made it up.) don’t know my personal scary favorites, I thought Halloween an appropriate day to conjure my Top 5 Scary Movie List. I am focusing my picks on paranormal titles and saving alien and larger-than-life apocalyptic spectacles for future lists. Stay tuned. Without further ado, here we go.
- Poltergeist – 1982 – The original film stars Craig T. Nelson and JoBeth Williams, and has the famous line, “They’re here.” It’s your classic ‘family buys a new house built on a cursed Indian cemetery’ plot. The final scene is a hilarious bit of dark humor.
- Event Horizon – 1997 – Outer space science fiction meets horror thriller in this underappreciated film starring Sam Neill and Laurence Fishburne. It’s a blood and gore fest set in the vast reaches of space on a haunted ship that was lost and then inexplicably reappears years later. Where did it go? Ah, that is really scary.
- The Conjuring – 2013 – A quintessential modern-day ghost story based on a real-life couple, Ed and Lorraine Warren, investigating paranormal happenings. Starring Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga–pitch-perfect as the married couple–the scares are disturbingly plausible throughout. The sequels are also quite good.
- The Excorcist – 1973 – Linda Blair, Ellen Burstyn, Max Von Sydow. Written by William Peter Blatty, a writer I admire and an influence I will have more to say about in a later post.
- Jacob’s Ladder – 1990 – Tim Robbins is a Vietnam vet whose unit was subjected to top-secret government drug experiments to enhance their bloodlust and morph them into killers. The film follows Robbins downward spiral upon returning to the States, losing grip on reality to a final poignant scene.
5 Honorable Mentions: The Shining, Silence of the Lambs, The Omen, Rosemary’s Baby, and The Sixth Sense.
I know I am omitting films I will think of later, but there’s always next time.
Happy Halloween 👻
