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Favourite Horror Film

Fwiw I liked Alien cubed though I haven't seen it for about 25 years. I liked the themes of redemption and self sacrifice and the desperate atmosphere. I thought the end of the second film went in the wrong direction and I thought the third film got back to the roots of the series. I appreciate the third film has it's problems, but they didn't bother me. I might change my mind if I saw it again now...

First and third films Ripley outwits the alien. In the second film she out punches it.
 
kittyP said:
Yes I forgot about Event Horizon.
I too have only seen it once I think, I went to see it at the cinema and it left me feeling unnerved after.
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It's a great film, forgot that one too. Remember when it came out and a friend raved about it. Hellraiser in space!

Sam Neill is brilliant in it, as are most of the cast to be fair.

In a similar vein, Danny Boyle's Sunshine is often overlooked, it's very creepy and odd and has a greater atmosphere.
 
Just signed up to Shudder and watched the online horror Host last night. I've put this here just to underscore how bold the Unfriended films were.

Host doesn't have multiple windows with typed messages or frantic googling, it is purely a Zoom session with continual jump cuts to reactions to various spooky occurrences, the characters keep picking up their laptops and wandering round their houses effectively turning the film into a found footage film with all the contrivances that involves. It's an attempt to convert the online horror format into a more familiar cinematic experience.

Having said that it's a really effectively boo-scary-face/jump scare/found footage horror. It's easily the best of film of that type that I've seen. It will scare the bejeezus out of you.
 
Rosemary Jest said:
It's a great film, forgot that one too. Remember when it came out and a friend raved about it. Hellraiser in space!
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That would be Hellraiser IV ;)
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kittyP said:
I liked it although I don't find John Cusack that convincing in that kind of role. I find him quite a comedic person to watch.

I liked the claustrophobic churning of it. At one point I thought to myself "oh god it's like lots of elements pf Apocalypse Now condensed into a small room :D

The ending was, he was rescued from the hotel room on fire, recovered and was back with his ex. He started listening to the Dictaphone and he heard his daughters voice. His (no longer) ex heard it to and dropped a box. They looked at each other and it ended.
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yeh I started watching this last night, I had to switch it off about half way through as it freaked me out too much, I assumed I couldn't be scared by anything with john cusack in and let my guard down. excvellent.
 
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Knotted said:
Fwiw I liked Alien cubed though I haven't seen it for about 25 years. I liked the themes of redemption and self sacrifice and the desperate atmosphere. I thought the end of the second film went in the wrong direction and I thought the third film got back to the roots of the series. I appreciate the third film has it's problems, but they didn't bother me. I might change my mind if I saw it again now...

First and third films Ripley outwits the alien. In the second film she out punches it.
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In Aliens the point is that Ripley survives because she is smarter than all the soldiers they send along with her and her smarts counts for more than all their firepower. She makes all the right decisions in that film, while the soldiers and the company man flounder and get picked off one after the other.

In Alien 3, once Ripley is impregnated, she has no card left to play but to sacrifice herself, so whether she's smart or not doesn't matter. I thought it let down what was the first big female franchise hero, she didn't deserve to be put in such a powerless position. Sure, the company doesn't get its hands on the alien this time round but the world it presents doesn't look worth saving. There is something admirably perverse about a Hollywood blockbuster daring to be so nihilistic, but I don't think it served Ripley well.
 
After talking about the film in question here in the last couple of days, I decided to watch Event Horizon again last night to see how it stood the test of time. I didn’t find it scary or disturbing this time around, but it still holds its ground perfectly well as a perfectly decent sci-fi horror flick.
 
Also, honorary mention to the first Paranormal Activity. I don’t believe in any kind of afterlife, demonic possession or ghosts, so more the credit for finding some scenes rather unsettling. Even more credit for said scenes not relying on gore or jump scares but slow burning stuff. Such as the woman being possessed during the night, getting out of bed and just stand by her husband’s side of the bed for hours. Good quality horror there.
 
T & P said:
Also, honorary mention to the first Paranormal Activity. I don’t believe in any kind of afterlife, demonic possession or ghosts, so more the credit for finding some scenes rather unsettling. Even more credit for said scenes not relying on gore or jump scares but slow burning stuff. Such as the woman being possessed during the night, getting out of bed and just stand by her husband’s side of the bed for hours. Good quality horror there.
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I actually prefer the first and second sequel to the original film, they capitalise better on the whole security camera set up and they actually move the plot on, rather than merely repeating the first film. On the whole its a fun series of horror films, only the so far last film was a total dud.
 
I remember being scared by horror movies as a youngster, then - for some reason - I stopped watching them. Now I live in a large old dark and draughty house and if I watched horror movies it would probably scare me just being here, so I am now quite happy not watching them at all.
 
Oh yes I really rate the Paranormal Activity films in that, they are not amazing examples of film making :D but they do exactly what I want them to do, make me jump and hide behind a cushion :cool:
 
My favourite Paranormal Activity style found footage haunting films are probably Borderlands and Die Präsenz [The Presence]. The first of these is a haunted church scenario and I thought it had some strong characters and a really unnerving ending. The second is a haunted castle scenario and even though it's an utterly derivative film, I thought it worked better than the Paranormal Activity films. Those two do the trick for me. I do find all these spooky found footage films to be very watchable if not necessarily scary though.
 
I too liked Borderlands and haven't seen Die Präsenz, as I've been burnt by too many terrible German horror films. If you rate it, I may check it out. The Irish The Devil's Doorway, which is about a haunted Magdalene laundry, in a similar vein to Borderlands is also quite good. I still like Paranormal Activity 3 better though, the best in the series and a prequel, it's basically Poltergeist as a found footage film. The scares really work.


Paranormal Activity 2 has one of the best and most tense scenes in the found footage genre, the one where they mount a camera on a fan which slowly moves back and forth, scanning the entire ground floor of a house.
 
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Don't expect too much from Die Präsenz, it's an absolutely standard Paranormal Activity rip off but I just thought it worked well. Will check out The Devil's Doorway.
 
I think the first horror films I saw were The Amityville Horror and The Wicker Man when I was about 12 (my mate’s parents had one of them newfangled VCRs and were out for the afternoon). The former film creeped me out for weeks and cemented my liking for films that use your imagination to conjure up things far worse than they could ever show on screen.
 
My mother strictly forbade me to watch horror films, even into my teens, so of course it was the forbidden fruit which became my obsession as a kid. I spent most of my pocket money on books and magazines about horror films which I wasn't able to watch. One night when my parents were out for the evening, I was able to watch Rosemary's Baby on TV which scared the shit out of me and so I loved it of course. I think I was 11 or 12. At the climax I couldn't watch, I was so scared of the baby and then the next day I bragged at school how scary it looked. Till someone pointed out that they don't actually show the baby. :oops:
 
Reno said:
My mother strictly forbade me to watch horror films, even into my teens, so of course it was the forbidden fruit which became my obsession as a kid. I spent most of my pocket money on books and magazines about horror films which I wasn't able to watch. One night when my parents were out for the evening, I was able to watch Rosemary's Baby on TV which scared the shit out of me and so I loved it of course. I think I was 11 or 12. At the climax I couldn't watch, I was so scared of the baby and then the next day I bragged at school how scary it looked. Till someone pointed out that they don't actually show the baby. :oops:
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My mum was pretty lax with the horrors as a kid, but she drew the line at Evil Dead for some reason, although probably the tree rape scene she had heard about

My uncle brought the tape round, and it was there on the kitchen table. I had a look at it and was gutted I wasn't allowed to watch it.

It had skulls on the spools for God's sale!

From that point my love of horror was born
 
D'wards said:
My mum was pretty lax with the horrors as a kid, but she drew the line at Evil Dead for some reason, although probably the tree rape scene she had heard about

My uncle brought the tape round, and it was there on the kitchen table. I had a look at it and was gutted I wasn't allowed to watch it.

It had skulls on the spools for God's sale!

From that point my love of horror was born
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The Evil Dead was in the crossfire of tabloid outrage because it was one of the more high profile films caught up in the video nasties debacle, so your mum probably read or heard about that. There was a court case, it ended up not getting prosecuted and got released on VHS but heavily censored, with the tree rape missing.
 
Another example of the denial only piquing your interest, is when a werewolf film came on one Friday night.
It was victorian and set on a ship in a storm at night. There was a box/coffin on deck and it split open and you could see a werewolf in it.
At that point I was sent to bed. For years I thought it was a Hammer but I think I asked for her film id on here and Reno identified it, but I've forgotten what it is.
Its something like Night of the Werewolf
 
D'wards said:
Another example of the denial only piquing your interest, is when a werewolf film came on one Friday night.
It was victorian and set on a ship in a storm at night. There was a box/coffin on deck and it split open and you could see a werewolf in it.
At that point I was sent to bed. For years I thought it was a Hammer but I think I asked for her film id on here and Reno identified it, but I've forgotten what it is.
Its something like Night of the Werewolf
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I'd happily take credit for that but I don't remember. I would have said, it's a Dracula adaptation because when Dracula travels in his coffin to Whitby on the Demeter, he takes the shape of a large dog. Most film versions skip the voyage of the Demeter but the 1979 movie includes it:

 
The two horror films that stand out from my youth were Psycho and, er, Zombie Flesheaters. The former scared me most and the latter I only saw the once. Do like Zombie films a lot, mind. Be they old b&w, Romero or the multitude of modern efforts.
 
I'm not a great horror fan as I get scared very, very easily. So I've not seen a lot of the classics but it is interesting that some of my favourite genre films, that I would put under Sci fi or maybe fantasy, have been mentioned.

Alien/Aliens
The Thing (love this film and was obsessed by it as a young teenager)
The Wicker Man
Night of the Demon

More recently Train to Busan was great and I did enjoy Cabin in the Woods.

As to my all time what I would consider horror then "An American Werewolf in London". Imagine living in the Yorkshire Dales and walking home after seeing that!!

Plus it was one of the first X rated movies I blagged my way into (I was 15 at the time) and Brian Glover is in it and he's fucking great!
 
The Fly (the 1987 remake with Jeff Goldblum) is part sci-fi part horror, but fully deserving of a mention in in any horror film lists IMO. Not scary but a great horror tale all the same. I've never felt so sad about the fate of the 'monster' in a horror film as in here :(
 
Oh I just remembered a film that I found generally freaky at times. 1408, a supernatural horror with John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson about a certain room in a hotel in which bad things are said to happen to anyone who stays in. The hotel doesn't hire out the room anymore due to said events but agrees to rent it out to Cusack, who is a journalist wanting to write a piece on it.

It's got a couple of proper jump-scare moments and a good, sustained tense atmosphere. Only seen it once but it was pretty satisfying as horror films go.

ETA: while I’m at it I might as well mention Devil. A group of (seemly unconnected) strangers riding a lift in a commercial/ office building get stuck inside due to some fault. And things start to happen whenever the light goes out for even a couple of seconds, with everyone suspecting their fellow stranded lift passengers. Very effective and gripping film, and well written as most of it takes place inside the lift, so not an easy script to write.
 
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