Creepiest Halloween Movies
There's only a week left of the Halloween season, but if you are looking for a movie that may send some shivers up your spine for the weekend, here are some of my favorite. These aren't necessarily the scariest movies (I think the movie that scared me the most was Aliens, when I was sixteen, but it's not on this list.). And I'm not into gore-fests or pure "shock" horror. The operative word is "creepy" - movies that give you little ripple of disturbance in your mind, let you explore a fanciful questioning of the reality of the world around you, and maybe leave you a little more afraid of the dark. Spooky, creepy movies, preferably ghost stories.

In other words, perfect Halloween fodder!

The Ring
This is on nearly EVERYONE'S list for a really scary movie. The Ring is a Western make of a Japanese film (Ringu) that is a very modern ghost story --- sort of a haunted videotape. Well, a haunted video. Anyone who watches it dies horrifically several days later. The story surrounds a single mother who discovers the truth only after witnessing the video, and is desperately seeking a way to stop the curse.

The Changeling
This is an early 80's flick that is a classic ghost story. After the death of his wife and daughter in a tragic accident, a writer gets a "change of scenery" and moves to a house which is of course haunted. At first, he's convinced that it's his wife or daughter trying to communicate with him from beyond the grave, but then discovers that it is something far older, and more vengeful.

Ghost Story
This movie features Alice Krige (the Borg Queen in Star Trek - First Contact). Four older men have a little club where they meet regularly and try to frighten each other with ghost stories. The problem is that all of them actually share a very real haunted past, a secret which is coming back to take revenge on them and their families now.

The Others
Feels like a feature-length "Twilight Zone" episode. A young woman struggles to take care of her two ill children, who have a terrible allergic reaction to bright light. With her husband off fighting in World War II, and unable to leave her children unattended, she is forced to rely upon three strangers who appear one day volunteering to be servants. Unfortunately, the three new servants don't seem to be the only new additions to the household. An awesome, spooky ghost story!

The Sixth Sense
Who HASN'T seen this one yet. "I see dead people." A child psychiatrist struggles to help a child who has the power to see the dead... all the time.

The Fog
The original John Carpenter movie. I haven't seen the remake. A hundred years ago, a small village drew a ship to wreck by setting a false lighthouse light to draw the ship into the rocks. Scavenging the gold from the wreck, the community grew into a prosperous seaside fishing town. Now, on the hundredth anniversary of the wreck, a mysterious fog rolls in, carrying the vengeful spirits of the murdered crew...

The Thing
This is another John Carpenter horror flick, and a real classic. In a remote antarctic science base, an alien life form is discovered which can perfectly mimic any other living creature it encounters - and devours. Without hope of salvation from the outside, the base's crew must not only deal with a bloodthirsty monster, but their own paranoia and distrust of who is really human.

A Nightmare On Elm Street
Okay, here's a token slasher-style horror movie. But it was scary and supernatural, and Freddy Kruger has such an attitude! An evil child-murderer, put to death by vigilante justice many years ago, comes back to haunt the dreams of the children of his killers. But who he kills in their dreams also physically dies.

The Innocents
I just saw this one over the weekend. It's a 1962 (?) black-and-white film about ghosts, creepy children, and a governess who may or may not be going insane. It's based on the Henry James story, "Turn of the Screw."

The Bair Witch Project
Brilliant independent movie project. This movie got a lot of anti-hype backlash, much of which I suspect was instigated by the mainstream movie industry. But I really enjoyed it. Taking the conceit of being spliced-together footage of a documentary on a local ghost legend, the film uses the camcorder as a non-cheesey way to achieve a first-person perspective and put the audience in the eyes of three college students who go from being confident skeptics to terrified victims. The ending was particularly sharp and shocking. Warning: Do not watch if you are prone to motion sickness, or if you are greatly offended by an almost constant stream of the "F" word. As the kids become more terrified, this becomes about the only word in their vocabulary.

It
A television mini-series based on the Steven King novel. We watched it when it originally aired, and the ending of the first episode left my wife very freaked out. Fortunately, the ending provided great closure. While the point was (according to her) made much better in the book than in the movie, the idea is that the unknown is much more frightening than the known - once the protagonists actually confront the horror that has plagued them since childhood, its ability to scare them is drastically reduced. But Tim Curry as Pennywise the Clown is absolutely awesome and may give you a healthy suspicion of clowns for the rest of your life. I had no idea he could BE scary.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Hush
Okay, this is just a television episode. So we're stretching. But this episode, occuring early-to-mid-way through the fourth season (easily available on DVD) is perhaps the best Buffy episode ever, and has probably converted more people to watching the show than any other episode. It's experimental, in that most of the episode (about 25 minutes) is without spoken dialog. Several cadaverous visitors come to town, and steal the voice of everyone - so that nobody can scream when they proceed to harvest seven hearts.

I won't go too far into TV show / episode territory here, as several episodes of The Twilight Zone, or the new Supernatural series could probably work just fine, too.

Two non-supernatural movies that really creeped me out were Face / Off and Silence of the Lambs. But I wouldn't consider those Halloween fare, necessarily. Face / Off was supposed to be an action movie, but I was just freaked out by the premise. Strange? Maybe. And I guess just about everything with Pauly Shore in it gives me the creeps... thank goodness his decade of fame is over.

Anyway, if you've missed any of the above movies, they are worth viewing! Many of them are hard to find at the local video store, but they are all available through Netflix. (In fact, I joined Netflix mainly out of frustration at not being able to find some of these films when they were recommended to me). Enjoy!

Labels: Movies

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:07 AM (Permalink)