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The most frightened you've ever been by a film

Started by madhair60, March 13, 2013, 11:24:56 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Cerys

I don't think I've ever been frightened by a film, apart from the moments that are designed to make the viewer jump.  In which case I'd like to agree with everyone who mentioned Ben Gardner's head in Jaws.  A moment so jump-worthy that I can still end up leaping out of my seat even though I know it's coming.

Pissant

You kind of have to consent as an adult to get scared, whereas when you're young there's so much you don't know yet and you maybe even feel drawn to the sensation for answers.

The as yet unmentioned Clive Barker's 'The Candyman' was probably my favourite thrill from those sweet days of innocence.  Plays on all the great themes: legend, race, torture, obsession, blood, bees... and Tony Todd's deep deep deeper hypno-voice lulling you into the nightmare trap.  And a game you can play with a mirror at home, too.  Crossover horror!

Quote from: Johnny Townmouse on March 14, 2013, 12:13:35 AMAs a kid the other film that frightened me the most was A Nightmare on Elm Street because it is such an unpleasant and terrifying concept.
Exactly.  And it's only in dreams that I can really get scared anymore.  So he lives on.  And he's gonna get you. Tonight.

mobias

I grew up being a huge horror movie fan. For some reason the Blair Witch Project really got to me. I thought that was genuinely scary. I thought the last quarter of it and the whole end sequence was incredibly well done. What worked well was the fact that there was nothing on the screen happening for you to do your usual thing of looking away if you're scared. It was all done with dialogue, screams and making you imagine horrible things going on. I thought that was really powerful. 

The Exorcist never scared me. Amazing film but it relies on you being religious or vaguely religious to find it frightening I think. Evil Dead was the first film I remember watching at quite a young age and being totally terrified by.

Quote from: Stone Cold Jane Austen on March 14, 2013, 03:34:31 PM
I watched the original Hellraiser for the first time the other day and it just seemed quite quaint.


That film really hasn't aged well at all. The bit where Kirsty has the nightmare and gets chased by that monster down the narrow corridor is just so badly done its funny. You can blatantly see the wheels of the cart the puppet is mounted on. There's a bit in the end sequence with the Cenobites where you can see one of the stage lights in the background without even having to try and look.

Great story though, you can see why they want to remake it. 

Incandenza

#63
Few nice recommendations here, cheers.
I too found Inland Empire utterly terrifying, to the point where I'll probably avoid watching it again after even thinking about it now is scaring me.

The Japanese Pulse was the last film to really fill me with willies (that's how you say it, right?), particularly the scene with the funny-walking lady, and all the webcam stuff. Perfectly captured that odd on-the-internet-way-too-late-with-the-lights-off feeling, though without the masturbation.
Goes a bit mad and daft by the end of the film though.

The appallingly titled and badly-ended film Switchblade Romance has some very very tense scenes, which is why the original title was the much-better High Tension

And Ghostwatch. Always Ghostwatch. The 'origin' of Pipes is a horrendous story.

BlodwynPig

A big fan of Switchblade Romance - even with a hammy ending. Both that and the one set in Australia that I've forgotten the name of were decent modern horrors in the vein of Texas Chainsaw in terms of plot.

Incandenza

Wolf Creek mate. Some scariness going on in that one, for sure.

El Unicornio, mang

Audition - even knowing what the twist was,
Spoiler alert
that first shot of the woman sitting by the phone with the thing in a bag, and the bit where he comes crawling out of the bag, really shook me up
[close]
.

And, not really horror, but the opening 15 mins of Irreversible. I knew what was coming from having read spoilers so the stretched out
Spoiler alert
hunt for the rapist in that freaky night club with that bowel shaking music and the horrible climax
[close]
, made it quite frightening to me. One of those times when knowing a spoiler actually makes a scene have more impact.

madhair60


Marty McFly

Quote from: mobias on March 14, 2013, 07:42:24 PM
That film really hasn't aged well at all. The bit where Kirsty has the nightmare and gets chased by that monster down the narrow corridor is just so badly done its funny. You can blatantly see the wheels of the cart the puppet is mounted on. There's a bit in the end sequence with the Cenobites where you can see one of the stage lights in the background without even having to try and look.

Great story though, you can see why they want to remake it. 

It was never the same for me when I realised that one of the removal men at the beginning was played by the same actor who played Les the barman in Men Behaving Badly. With his voice overdubbed in AMERICAN.

El Unicornio, mang

I'm not too bothered about the special effects (doesn't affect my enjoyment of Hitchcock films, and I prefer dated models to dated CGI) and I think the makeup still looks good. Bit of a paltry attempt to make London look like New York by putting a Yankees cap on a passer-by though.

Incandenza

Anyone remember that fake smallpox doc the Beeb did in 2002/3? That was pretty scary stuff.

thomasina

The first time I watched the old Hammer version of The Ghoul as a teenager scared me shitless.  Still think it's brilliant.    I watched most of Event Horizon with my arms rigidly held across my body in the 90's, although the ending disappointed a bit.  And I found Ringu shittifying. 

thomasina

Quote from: Pissant on March 14, 2013, 06:49:37 PM
You kind of have to consent as an adult to get scared, whereas when you're young there's so much you don't know yet and you maybe even feel drawn to the sensation for answers.

The as yet unmentioned Clive Barker's 'The Candyman' was probably my favourite thrill from those sweet days of innocence.  Plays on all the great themes: legend, race, torture, obsession, blood, bees... and Tony Todd's deep deep deeper hypno-voice lulling you into the nightmare trap.  And a game you can play with a mirror at home, too.  Crossover horror!
Exactly.  And it's only in dreams that I can really get scared anymore.  So he lives on.  And he's gonna get you. Tonight.
I found the Candyman films kind of compulsively horrifying, yet strangely erotic.  I still have a crush on Tony Todd.

Big Jack McBastard

INLAND EMPIRE desperately needs a rewatch round these parts, but yeah the distorted face thing towards the end sent rivulets of squirm up and down my gizzard. The headfucks it throws at you throughout are so unnerving and disjointing anyway (especially the bit on the street with the junkies and what it reveals) but that last bit of madness really fucked my noodle.

Mullholland Drive had me in bits once or twice too, Club Silencio when the box is opened and then when Naomi Watts turns to
Spoiler alert
Rita/her own delusion in the kitchen "You've come back!" and then is faced with her bedraggled self looking back with disgust makes my skin tingle.
[close]

Noodle Lizard

While I don't get frightened very often, I think I can recognise a good fright when I see it.  There are some good scares in 'The Eye' (the Chinese version, not the Jessica Alba remake), especially the scene in the elevator.  And while I'm on the Asians, I've already mentioned that 'Shutter' is one of the few films that does jump scares really, really well.

I also second 'The Blair Witch Project' (one of the most unfairly-treated films in history).  If only yer 'Paranormal Activities' or any other number of its rape spawn took the good aspects of it rather than the "hey we can make more money off cheap things" angle.

billtheburger

High Tension was a very apt title. It's pretty relentless. I didn't even find the ending too preposterous due to heavy use of
Spoiler alert
mirror & butterfly
[close]
motifs throughout.

Mark Steels Stockbroker

The thing about BWP is that it was massively talked-up as a Big New Thing, and even NME put it on the cover (this was during its late 90s identity crisis, when bullshitters were spouting all kinds of bullshit about the furture of mass culture). So there was the inevitable "I thought it was shit, actually" backlash within a month or 2.

Like I say, BWP2 is worth finding.

The Last Broadcast, a similar concept from the same period, deserves a look, as it has a clever twist, although it does break its own rules in the last sequence.

checkoutgirl

The film Coma freaked me out as a 6 year old. I posted this in the paranormal thread

QuoteIf we're just talking about being scared witless by stuff then I would say that the thing that freaked me out most in my whole life was the film "Coma" starring Michael Douglas and someone else I can't remember who it is. Anyway there was a scene where they basically have a load of live (I think) bodies that are sort of suspended on wires. They are storing the bodies to be harvested later for organs if I remember correctly. The bodies are asleep and are lying horizontally with a few feet between each body. The whole room and the bodies are bathed in this weird purple glow. I was probably about five at the time and the image was just too much for my young mind to take. It freaked the ever living fuck out of me and I was traumatised by it and couldn't sleep for at least two or three days and it lived with me for weeks and weeks afterwards.

BlodwynPig

Quote from: Mark Steels Stockbroker on March 15, 2013, 08:45:09 AM
The thing about BWP is that it was massively talked-up as a Big New Thing, and even NME put it on the cover (this was during its late 90s identity crisis, when bullshitters were spouting all kinds of bullshit about the furture of mass culture). So there was the inevitable "I thought it was shit, actually" backlash within a month or 2.

Like I say, BWP2 is worth finding.

The Last Broadcast, a similar concept from the same period, deserves a look, as it has a clever twist, although it does break its own rules in the last sequence.

BWP2 could never repeat the quality and effect of BWP1. I wasn't taken in by the first wave of "found footage" shenanigans but have enough imagination to put myself into the characters shoes. The fucking stones and twig breaking noises at night when they are cowering in their tents is probably the most rigor mortis inducing scene in movie history. The actors themselves must have been shitting themselves as they were not really aware what was going on. Then you get the mad panic and "what the fuck was that" - a genuine belly yowl of fear.

Has no-one ever been in a deserted mansion, gone to the bathroom in the night and felt something, hairs pricking up on the neck and you scrabbling, scrabbling for the light.

NoSleep

Quote from: Cerys on March 14, 2013, 06:42:19 PM
I don't think I've ever been frightened by a film, apart from the moments that are designed to make the viewer jump.  In which case I'd like to agree with everyone who mentioned Ben Gardner's head in Jaws.  A moment so jump-worthy that I can still end up leaping out of my seat even though I know it's coming.

I'm the same about horror films. And then I saw The Grudge (the US version, firstly). Along with the original (Ju-on) and Ring these films seem to bypass my "it's just a film" sense during certain scenes. The scariest horror experience I can remember, though, was the game Project Zero 2, which I find relentlessly spine-chilling in a way that a film would never be; the constant adrenalin reaches sickening levels.

Subtle Mocking

Quote from: The Masked Unit on March 14, 2013, 01:03:18 PM
The Shining is one of my favourite films despite being responsible for 90% of my nightmares. It's not the visuals as such, although the little girls are haunting. It's the atmosphere that gets me - that sense of what could be going on in any of those rooms at any given time. Just imagine being in their living quarters and hearing sounds faintly coming from other parts of the hotel. I think just being in a big empty hotel by myself, even if it were in the city centre, would give me the willies. It's that primordial fear of what's lurking just around the corner in the dark - I have a recurring dream where I'm looking out through an open door into a pitch black hallway, sensing but not seeing something malevolent there.

Going a bit more into the technical side of things, I think Kubrick's films gave me something of an irrational fear of long hallways. Those one-point perspective shots he did were incredible, but there's a real feel of unease that seems to come from using them.



*shudder*

checkoutgirl

In my adult life there are very few examples I can think of where I was properly scared by a film but a few years ago I watched Martyrs (2008) which is one of those French Extreme Horror films. I first became aware of the film from watching one of those Mark Kermode Youtube clips where he talks directly to camera. The clips they showed of Martyrs as Kermode gave his synopsis of the film had me worried. A brief clip of an emaciated girl chained up, scooching along the floor and making a weird moaning noise totally freaked me out. I was hooked, I had to see this film. The only trouble was that I was too freaked out to watch the film on my own in my flat, I was actually too scared to just sit down and watch it from start to finish. I'd just click on random bits and watch them. Not a very nice film at all and the underlying premise is pure hokum. Still, I can't remember a film disconcerting me so much as an adult apart from maybe A Serbian Film, but that's another story.



I mean, what the fuck is going on there ? Brrrrrhh!!

olliebean

Quote from: Subtle Mocking on March 15, 2013, 12:35:56 PM

Geez, if you're going to illustrate one-point perspective with an image like that, at least put the vanishing point in the right place.

(Not aimed at you, Subtle Mocking, but at whoever originally produced that image.)

Subtle Mocking

Quote from: olliebean on March 15, 2013, 01:16:47 PM
Geez, if you're going to illustrate one-point perspective with an image like that, at least put the vanishing point in the right place.

(Not aimed at you, Subtle Mocking, but at whoever originally produced that image.)

It's from here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXq5rcY4_TU (might want to mute that song, though)

The Masked Unit

Christ, Kubrick gives me such a fucking hard-on.

babyshambler

I'll briefly skip past Basil the Great Mouse Detective as I was 3 and cinemas were still obviously scary places (there's a scene with a big scary cat).

I think it'd have to be Wolf Creek. The fact I watched alone and in the dark certainly helped, but it took 3 episodes of the Simpsons to calm my nerves afterwards.

Mark Steels Stockbroker

Wolf Creek, really? I got bored by about the point where they had the campfire, then I thought "Ok, the hitch hikers get assaulted, I don't really want to see that" and stopped the DVD.

babyshambler

You certainly saw the nicer half of the film.

The Βoston Crab

On that note, and to follow what was said above, I watched the first half of Martyrs and found it quite relentlessly miserable and joyless, a proper humanity vacuum. When the second half began (no spoilers, it's obvious from watching the film), I just had to turn it off because I knew it was going down to a place I didn't feel I would benefit from on any level. Sustained relentless misery.

The only film which made me come close to that was Snowtown, primarily the
Spoiler alert
bathroom
[close]
scene which just made me feel very ill and very mortal.

Noodle Lizard

'Martyrs' isn't very good, but I'm completely dumbfounded as to why everyone finds it so terrifying or bleak or whatever.  It's on par with 'The Human Centipede', really.