Sinister. Despite the supernatural nature and knowing it’s only a movie the coldness of the videos of the killings was extremely unsettling. Love that movie!
Solid question! Off top of my head i do remember Paranormal Activity 1 really tripping me out. Ghost/ Paranormal horrors usually don't do much for me, but this was just so damm effective and im a sucker for a film feeling very grounded and luring me away from the fact its fictional.
It's one of my favourite horrors. I'm claustrophobic so the end was especially terrifying, but it's probably terrifying without that factor. It's a found footage format but don't let that put you off.
as an adult, Hereditary. the visual cues in that film really captured my headspace.
when i was a kid, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare. both the grotesque aesthetic, and how Freddy took over the mundane life of the characters. not just their dreams.
As a kid, I stumbled upon the original Night of the Living Dead- on a black and white TV in the 80s at a neighbor’s house. Cue life long fear of zombies. Around that same time, my dad (???) took my brother and me to see a vampire movie. Cue life long fear of vampires! Yay! 😆
😆😆😆Just my dad though! My poor bro and I were just little kids! It was the Dracula movie with van Helsing’s daughter in the cave or something, calling “Papa,Papa, and it haunts me to this day!
Prince of Darkness (1987) comes to mind. I think the thing that has always stuck with me about it is less about the scares and more about how bleak and hopeless it is. Everything goes to shit in that movie. The guys who were supposed to stop the end of the world just fail and we're all doomed.
I totally get that - sometimes, bleak and hopeless is more terrifying than a slasher coming after you. At least with the slasher you can try to escape 😳
The exorcist but not any of the gross stuff or the head spinning around its the part were the priest ignores the homeless man who says 'spare some change for an old altar boy father' and he coldly walks away from him displaying a lack of compasion
and later he hears the demon repeat this exact phrase 'spare any change for an old altar boy father' in the homeless mans voice, it leaves you with an impression that evil deeds are always being witnessed by unseen forces who will hold you to account for them...it played on my mind a lot.
the first time i saw it that line from the homeless man was just burned in my head tbh haha but i've seen it like 10+ times since and that bit still gets me in the spine
When I was a kid I stayed at my grandparents’ house and one of my cousins was watching a vampire movie. Unfortunately I don’t know which one it was but I legit was worried about vampires getting me in my sleep that night
I'm sure this will come up when we do an episode on Sidney, but I saw Scream at a sleepover when I was in middle school, and I had never seen gore in a movie before. The boyfriend dying at the beginning of the movie with his guts falling out... I was traumatized for like a year.
For a little bit, THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE got under my skin...the bit where her boyfriend wakes up, looking for her, and she's all contorted, and frozen on the floor...and when the priest sees the apparition, are what got under my skin, the most!
Nothing as a kid. But two as an adult really got under my skin, mostly for the ending: Pearl (that dinner table speech and the smile) and the ending of Summer Of ‘84. I won’t spoil that one. If you’ve seen it, you know why, and if you haven’t, SEE IT ASAP.
Savageland (2015) really blurs the line between reality and fiction with how they used photography. Some of the imagery has an almost surreal feel about them. There's a particular one with a little girl that's forever seared into my brain.
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Yeah, that kept me up for *weeks.*
when i was a kid, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare. both the grotesque aesthetic, and how Freddy took over the mundane life of the characters. not just their dreams.
Now I LOVE Scream.
The original Texas Chainsaw because it was probably one of the most original thing my teenage brain had seen
Same with Henry, the portrait of a serial killer. Just brutal and stark.