[Flaser]

Read Lovecraft's thesis on horror.

The supernatural, odd or inhuman must never be portrayed as part of the general storytelling, for it's the very inpossibility of depiction, understanding or connecting with the phenomenon that strikes the chords of our fear.

Film though are hunted by their own medium - you show, depict, visualize. That's anathema to fear.

Therefore the rest of the tale must stritcly adhere to a firm structure and hold an iron grip on being as realistic as possible in every imaginable aspect.
When showing the very matter of our fear, it must be so earth and soul shattering that even the storytelling will crack - loose cohesion - and our protagonist will be scared and incapable of ever retelling or relating to the incident.
It's impossible to get over 'it' as you never grasp what 'it' is....

[Flipside]

Oddly enough, walking into a Room and seeing a monster that is there isn't nearly as scary as walking into a room and realising a common household object that's always been there, isn't, and you think you know who's got it...

No matter how creepy a 'Horror' creature is when you see it, it will never live up to that tingling feeling you get when you don't know what it looks like, but you know it's there.

[Liquid Fire]

Wait until dark. It wasn't a horror movie and starred Audrey Hepburn of all people, but that's just to lure you into a false sense of security when you first watch it.

I think I could have called guinness and made a record for highest nonassisted altitude when I jumped out of the seat.

[TopAce]

I have never been scared of a movie... there is no emotion, there is peace.

[Rictor]

Originally posted by Kalfireth
Requiem For A Dream - Following on in similar themes, while 95% of the film was quite watchable for me, the final scenes where each character gets their respective "end" was one of the most disturbing scenes I've ever seen in a film.... to the extent that don't like watching it as I end up feeling a bit unhinged myself at the end of it all. Scary? No. But Utterly utterly un-nerving.
 

Have you seen Pi? If not, I recommend it.

The whole last half hour is really wierd/scary, even more so than the rest of the movie.

*bzzzzzzzt*

[Carl]

Originally posted by Flipside
Oddly enough, walking into a Room and seeing a monster that is there isn't nearly as scary as walking into a room and realising a common household object that's always been there, isn't, and you think you know who's got it...

No matter how creepy a 'Horror' creature is when you see it, it will never live up to that tingling feeling you get when you don't know what it looks like, but you know it's there.

that's true in the movies, yes, but if you saw a monster in real life, it would be much scarier.

[Ford Prefect]

I still prefer the mind rape tactic: Force the audience to see and hear things that are as disturbingly incongruous, horrific, brutal, and gruesome as the mind can possibly conceive. Cross every line of decency, show things that should never be seen, and burn sick, wrong things into the audience's visual and audial memory that will never wash away. Some dark humor is also good.

[BlackDove]

Any and all Richard Simmons work-out tapes.

[vyper]

[mikhael]

Originally posted by Ransom Arceihn
Jacob's Ladder - Honestly, if the town this film was set in was called Silent Hill, that's what it would be. A Silent Hill film. Because that's exactly what it feels like.

That just arrived in my box from Netflix. I'm looking forward to it.

I dont' find slasher/gore/overstep the bounds of decency flicks scary, disturbing or even remotely horrific. There's never a moment where I can forget that I'm watching a quote-unquote scary movie.

Give me something like "The Others" (suspense/twist) or "Dark Water" (psychological/suspense) and the like. Make the force fundamentally all too human with a twist (none of that stuff like in White Noise, where the antagonist was... what? why? a complete cop out).

[MicroPsycho]

I havn't really seen any movies I'd say were scary. Excorcist was just disturbing and twisted and the Ring was just stupid and boring.

When I was younger, Jaws was pretty scary and Relic had its moments.

Poltergeist was scary with the clown and the tv voices. Darkness Falls, although a pretty stupid action film had one scene where a boy(and his mother?) was in a lit bathroom and the tooth fairy was clinging to the ceiling in the dark hallway that was oddly unnerving.

[IPAndrews]

This is a cool thread. It's always interesting to get a feel for what scared people in a movie. The original "Ring" for example not only creeped me out (I got a chill every time the phone rang for weeks) but absolutely scared the hell out of me. My partner on the other hand just things it's "stupid and boring". I kid you not. Exactly what MicroPsycho said. Word for word. Conversely my partner thinks The Exorcist is the scariest thing ever and I think that's stupid and boring. So there you go.

Other films that have scared the hell out of me? Poltergeist I, Hellraiser I, The Thing, Grudge, and (prepare to laugh hysterically at me, I'm such a wuss) War of the Worlds. Oh and I never ever found Aliens scary. My theory is Aliens is far too cool to be scary.

[Col. Fishguts]

Somehow I found the Hollywood remake of "The ring" quite scary and the Japanese version mostly boring, althouggh that's one of the movies that's only good the first time you watch it. (Like "The others" or "Blair witch project")

The last movie that had a big impact on me was "Donnie Darko", which is not a horror movie at all.
I watched it alone in a dark room late at night and I had no idea what the movie was about (I just got it from a friend that told me that it was good and I should watch it)

So, there I was sitting..... and nothing could have prepared me for Frank, that 6-foot-tall bunny rabbit.

Sidenote: All good horror flicks have to be watched alone, in a dark room, preferably at night. All the scary-ness is lost, as soon as another person is there with you, which somehow reassures your subconciousness that it's just a movie you're watching.

[SadisticSid]

Haven't seen Ringu, but the Hollywood version wasn't scary at all. It was certainly creepy, and full marks go to it for that; atmosphere matters a lot more than the oh-so-predictable 'creepy music stops so something's about to burst out or appear in front of the protagonist' crap.

It might not be a movie, but try playing Thief III's abandoned orphanage/asylum levels late after midnight with no-one else around. Probably the most horrifying game experience I've ever had, and brilliantly so.

(I can't believe someone mentioned Cabin Fever seriously. It wasn't even slightly disturbing, it was a joke movie that was exemplified by the ending.)

[TrashMan]

Yes...alone in a dark room on a stormy/cloudy night..

any movie with any horror elements comes to to life in those conditions. If it can't scare you then it never will.

Try playing undying, thief, Doom3 or FEAR in those conditions.
and I agree that the greatest fear is from things you don't see or can't explain but know that they are there...waiting and watching...

RANT:
I recall as a kid watching a movie about large mech fighting in an arena (mechs had no head and were MASSIVE - controlled from a pilot cabn somewhere on the chest and the mech mimiced the pilots movements)
There was this red-white meach that fought with the a big black one. the red one lost and the black one stomped all over it, chrushing the pilot. I watched that at night, alone and that scene disturbed me enough to stop watching...

I never got the films name touhg...too bad.

[Ace]

Trashman: It was probably the utterly craptastic movie called RobotJox.

[WeatherOp]

I really could care less for horror movies, but one of the movies that unerve me is not a horror film at all, The Stand, I guess what makes it so bad, is knowing that it could happen.

[Nix]

Event Horizion still scares me to this day.  The airlock scene is plain creepy.  For people who scare easily, Seven (se7en) is a great movie as well.    

A recent film I saw that gave me the chills was a japanese film called Audition.  Gotta give credit to my sister for this one.  It wasnt scary like sleep under the covers scary, but deeply, incredibly disturbing in my opinion.

I was freaked out at points watching Memento.  I have NO IDEA Why, but I constantly broke out in goosebumps and had to look away.

[TrashMan]

Originally posted by Ace
Trashman: It was probably the utterly craptastic movie called RobotJox.

don't know - I do know the effect were good and that later than black mecha fights another red-white one..
I was told the black onetransforms into a scorpion or something and hte w/r one into some tanks thingy..

[Ford Prefect]

(I can't believe someone mentioned Cabin Fever seriously. It wasn't even slightly disturbing, it was a joke movie that was exemplified by the ending.)

I found it highly disturbing, despite the humor.