Movies That Still Scared You Weeks After Viewing

[Flâneuse]

No other movie has scared me half as much as the original Carrie did when I was eleven. Carrie's cold, rage-filled psycho-eyes and the last scene with Carrie and her mom were particularly disturbing to me. I remember sleeping fitfully and having nightmares after I watched it.

 

[Firebird 8118]

No other movie has scared me half as much as the original Carrie did when I was eleven. Carrie's cold, rage-filled psycho-eyes and the last scene with Carrie and her mom were particularly disturbing to me. I remember sleeping fitfully and having nightmares after I watched it.

Same here - plus, that cross of Jesus in the movie always freaked me out.

 

[Stephano]

Insidious - I was 15 but I couldn't sleept for 2 days after seeing this at the cinema.

 

[Arctic Hysteria]

You know who "the kid" was, don't you?
Johnny Depp. <-- that's what REALLY makes that scene a classic.

Anyway, I agree. That movie is a classic, and one of the worst parts is that it blurs reality and dream together so well that you can't be sure what's real. You're always wondering whether what you think is real is actually a dream. So even when you're safe, you feel in danger.

Yup, I do know that that was little Johnny. And yes, I've seen a good amount of horror movies in my life and this one haunts me to this day.

 

[Totenkindly]

I love horror movies -- not gore, but stuff that scares and unnerves me. The Exorcist actually never did much for me, that way, unfortunately. However, stuff that involves "scares in the dark" can get to me.

- Cloverfield
- Quarantine
- The Conjuring
- Paranormal Activity
- Sinister
- Insidious
- The Grudge
- Mama

I mean, basically you don't know what's there. Sometimes i can deal just fine with the dark; other times I just want to curl up and not move lest something find me. It's the stuff my brain makes up when I CAN'T see that gets to me. Which kind of leads to this next bit:

... the only movie that's ever put that much fear into me was Jaws. For weeks after watching Jaws I hated to be in any bodies of water the size of a public swimming pool or larger. It's not that I didn't go swimming, but when I did go swimming or wading it was accompanied by this really spooky feeling like something dangerous was lurking in the water. No other movie has had that much effect on me after age 12.

I still don't like swimming in water so deep or murky I can't see what's in there. If it's a swimming pool or quarry, fine (because the water is usually clear); but I hate the ocean if the water is not very very clear. It's not quite my phobia of spiders, but it's definitely one of my top few "freak out" feelings. Jaws wasn't necessarily the direct cause of that, but it sure did not help.

 

[Mal12345]

The "Ball-cutter" fish.

 

[johnnyyukon]

I love horror movies -- not gore, but stuff that scares and unnerves me. The Exorcist actually never did much for me, that way, unfortunately. However, stuff that involves "scares in the dark" can get to me.

- Cloverfield
- Quarantine
- The Conjuring
- Paranormal Activity
- Sinister
- Insidious
- The Grudge
- Mama

Wow, damn good list. Sinister, Insidious, Mama, fairly obscure IMO. That opening scene in Sinister sent chills up my spine. I'm creeped out just thinking about it now.

But the only movie that's ever put that much fear into me was Jaws. For weeks after watching Jaws I hated to be in any bodies of water the size of a public swimming pool or larger. It's not that I didn't go swimming, but when I did go swimming or wading it was accompanied by this really spooky feeling like something dangerous was lurking in the water. No other movie has had that much effect on me after age 12.

I can't remember if it was Jaws I or II that had the scene where the head or torso floats up to the glass. I know there's a scene similar in Jaws I where the head floats while he's scuba diving, but I wanna say this behind some looking glass.

One of my teachers said that when Jaws came out, it was actually a serious problem for tourism. People really did not go in the water. He said him and his friend were a little freaked but did anyway somewhere in California. And within 5 minutes, a dorsel fin brushed up against his friend. They freaked the living fuck out and went ashore. He says he didn't know if it was a shark or dolphin, but still.

From when I was a kid, it wasn't whole movies as much as it was certain scenes. Like the floating head in Jaws, or pretty much any rotting face that was well done.

I had this weird fear of skulls. I specifically remember having a nightmare as a kid from, haha, The Burbs. When the trunk pops open and all those bloody skulls were there.

Recent movies, Insidious and Sinister were unique, The Woman (You've been warned) and.......shit I actually hesitate to even mention it.....Martyrs. Don't see it, it's well done but absolutely wretched. The bastards tricked me cuz it starts off like a super fucked up revenge horror movie, and then kind of turns into torture porn. Ugh, and I hate that shit, but I had to finish it.

 

[Eluded_One]

movies that scared the bejesus out of me when they came out:

1 Event Horizon
2 Blair Witch Project
3 Re-Animator
4 Night of the Demons

If you're wondering what the heck is "Event Horizon", here is an article from a horror movie fansite: The Unseen: 'Event Horizon' | News Article | FEARNET

 

[johnnyyukon]

movies that scared the bejesus out of me when they came out:

1 Event Horizon


If you're wondering what the heck is "Event Horizon", here is an article from a horror movie fansite: The Unseen: 'Event Horizon' | News Article | FEARNET

Strangely enough, whenever I mention that movie, most people have never even heard of it.

I agree though, first time I saw it, I was pretty high, and probably shouldn't have been.

Just the whole story itself is awesome. A ship powered by a man-made blackhole that bends time-space, ends up in a dimension of pure evil. "Hell is only a word."

 

[Eluded_One]

Strangely enough, whenever I mention that movie, most people have never even heard of it.

I agree though, first time I saw it, I was pretty high, and probably shouldn't have been.

Just the whole story itself is awesome. A ship powered by a man-made blackhole that bends time-space, ends up in a dimension of pure evil. "Hell is only a word."

I rarely find movies that are disturbing on every level. The imagery of hell as a dimension where the residents are gutting each other and pulling their eyes out with their bare hands and enjoying it, well, that's what I call horror.

 

[Mal12345]

I rarely find movies that are disturbing on every level. The imagery of hell as a dimension where the residents are gutting each other and pulling their eyes out with their bare hands and enjoying it, well, that's what I call horror.

I was raised on 1970s television. If you watched cable channels throughout your childhood then you'll be immune to most horror movies.

 

[Totenkindly]

I have Event Horizon on Bluray, but if I had seen it before I watched it, I wouldn't have bought it.
For some reason, I found it predictable and laughable rather than scary, which was disappointing.

I guess "different strokes" and all that.


... getting back to Jaws for a second, I actually didn't find the shark believable-looking in most of the scenes. You know the scene that scared the hell out of me? The first one -- where the girl goes swimming alone, and suddenly she's screaming and something under the surface is just jerking her all around the bay. We never see it. We just see what it's doing to her, and her reaction. That's one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen in a movie and the thing that keeps me out of the water.

There are few monster movies where the monster is believable-looking (another reason why I didn't find Event Horizon credible, it all looked so fake to me). Maybe if I have time, I'll try to think of some where the monster is seen and does look real. But that's how Alien worked for me too. Any of the cut footage that shows a full-length alien isn't that scary. It's only scary when you just see bits and pieces and your mind fills in the rest, or you think the alien might there but can't quite be sure where it is.

 

[Bullet]

That opening scene in Sinister sent chills up my spine. I'm creeped out just thinking about it now.

Same here. Creepiest intro to any movie I've ever seen.

 

[Totenkindly]

Sinister has one of the best uses of the "found footage" device that I have seen in a movie. It integrated organically into the picture and was just creepy as hell. The "Yardwork" clip haunts me, I can barely watch it... but STILL FEEL COMPELLED TO, EACH TIME. ARRRG.


... Meanwhile, I just tried watching "The Possession" on Netflix and turned it off after ten minutes because it was so silly.


EDIT:

Oh, this scares me:

 

[Eluded_One]

I have Event Horizon on Bluray, but if I had seen it before I watched it, I wouldn't have bought it. For some reason, I found it predictable and laughable rather than scary, which was disappointing.

I've noticed that you also weren't moved by the Exorcist. The idea of a living hell scares me much more than anything else. It really is different strokes... I almost fell asleep to Cloverfield in the theatre. Did you like Quarantine over [Rec]? I seen the original, never got around to watching the remake.

 

[ginniebean]

"The Day After" Post Nuclear apocalypse. I saw this when I was quite young and it frightened me so badly I was haunted by it for weeks.

 

[Totenkindly]

I've noticed that you also weren't moved by the Exorcist. The idea of a living hell scares me much more than anything else. It really is different strokes... I almost fell asleep to Cloverfield in the theatre. Did you like Quarantine over [Rec]? I seen the original, never got around to watching the remake.

I don't think I've seen Rec, and it's been awhile since I have seen Quarantine.

Yeah, The Exorcist was a big let-down for me. I read the book as a teenager (and a few other Blatty titles) and have collected various books about exorcisms... but when i watched that movie around 2000 or so, I was ... bored. It just seemed so fake to me. Neither of those movies leave much to the imagination, and what I see on screen isn't that provocative to me. (Ironically, the one clip that unsettled me from The Exorcist was the one that wasn't in the movie release -- the scene of her scuttling down the steps like a spider.)

Cloverfield is really more of a relationship story that happens to have a giant monster as a backdrop; that's the heart of the movie, it's really about Rob & Beth finding each other again after their relationship fell apart -- the movie begins and ends with them, it's all very bittersweet. But the scene in the subway tunnels where those things are chasing them but they can't really see them, that's the part that was creepy to me -- although I liked how you can never quite get a good sight of the monster until close to the end of the movie.

I think movies that try to be explicit are the ones that bore me, I'm not much for Friday the 13th or all the other explicit gore movies out there; the more suggestive they are, as I noted before, or have blank spots with which my mind is trying to fill in the gaps, those are the ones that end up freaking me out. (Like in Paranormal Activity, where someone is dragged into the darkness down the hall and disappears, screaming, and you have no idea what's going on and they're just gone.)

Just watched The Descent again last night, and the first entire half of the movie doesn't even have the nasties in it, they only show up for the second half... but half the fear comes from knowing there are things in the dark that they're trapped with, yet you don't know where they are or what they are. And since people can't see in the dark, you can only see the things when someone lights a torch or uses the UV camera viewscreen. They just pop up out of nowhere. Would freak me out now to go up camping in the woods at night, after seeing that.

 

[Arctic Hysteria]

I wrote about A Nightmare on Elm Street the other night right before re-watching The Conjuring. Couldn't go to the bathroom alone. Smart!

Not a horror movie but Labyrinth in 1986 with David Bowie in so many ways was the main inspiration of so many of my nightmares. The dancing leprechauns, the weird party, the stairs, the maze, I can go on and on gosh.

Shutter in 2004 - the original Thai version was by far the scariest Asian horror film out there. I've watched a good number of Asian horrors, but Shutter is the most satisfying one up until now. The remake version? Urgh!

I can name a few more:

- Rosemary's Baby
- The Ring (US) part 1 (I was convinced that someone would crawl out of my TV, every night)
- Dumplings (segment 3, "Three Extremes". It took me a while before I ever felt the same way again about dumplings )
- Saw 1 (the rest of the franchise was just a joke)
- Paranormal Activity 1
- Insidious 1
- Films to Keep You Awake: The Baby's Room ("Películas para no dormir: La habitación del niño". So good! So disturbing.)
- The X-Files, episode "Squeeze" (that mutant serial killer Eugene Tooms that was capable of squeezing his body through narrow gaps and slipping into hibernation periods lasting thirty years at a time)

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

\
Just watched The Descent again last night, and the first entire half of the movie doesn't even have the nasties in it, they only show up for the second half... but half the fear comes from knowing there are things in the dark that they're trapped with, yet you don't know where they are or what they are. And since people can't see in the dark, you can only see the things when someone lights a torch or uses the UV camera viewscreen. They just pop up out of nowhere. Would freak me out now to go up camping in the woods at night, after seeing that.

This is a good one. One of the few I've seen that worked for me.

Paranormal Activity can suck eggs.

 

[johnnyyukon]

Just watched The Descent again last night, and the first entire half of the movie doesn't even have the nasties in it, they only show up for the second half... but half the fear comes from knowing there are things in the dark that they're trapped with, yet you don't know where they are or what they are. And since people can't see in the dark, you can only see the things when someone lights a torch or uses the UV camera viewscreen. They just pop up out of nowhere. Would freak me out now to go up camping in the woods at night, after seeing that.

That's one of the reasons it was so fantastic. I was crappin my pants before I even knew there were subterranean, cannibal mutants.