Movies that actually scare you?

[Jerry2345]

David Lynch’s movies can sometimes by very scary. Thinking e.g. of the diner scene in Mulholland Drive.

Honourable mention: The Innocents by Jack Clayton.

[Sage00]

Pet Semetary (original)
The Ring
Killer Party (especially the last act)
The Hills Have Eyes (original)

[halloween5309]

evil dead

[Aclea]

Dead of Night - the mirror story
The Haunting (1963)
Prince of Darkness - "This is not a dream"
Quatermass and the Pit

More recently the clapping scene in The Conjuring

[Synchg]

so many weak choices, but anything primarily from asia in the supernatural horror can get me
sinister was eerie at time, although i didnt finish watching it, that christopher young score so good though (from what i remember).

but from something can actually happen? dunno. saving private ryan? living through that would be rather scary, was definitely on edge while watching it.
tis a tricky question.

exorcist shouldnt count cause god/debil doesnt exist.
spirits on the other hand thoough...

the descent still gets me cause dem creatures could happen...maybe.

jaws is dumb, the ocean is gross anyways, u have to be messed up in head to tip ur toes in that gunk anyways. maybe u deserve to get eaten by shark.

i saw someone say redacted, been meaning to watch that.
man is the greatest monster-something something.

where did we all go wrong in our definition of scary

[Bobbyjoe766]

ALIEN and An American Werewolf in London are the only two films that really did anything for me.

Seen both far too many times now for either to have any impact on me now, sadly.

[Steedeel]

Excision

[Show spoiler]The final mental breakdown was harrowing and just as shocking as any jump scare

Or the final scene in Relic, sad, disturbing and scary.

Scares doesn’t just have to be demons or masked maniacs. Nothing scarier than losing control of one’s self or slowly losing a loved one.

More traditional scares? The Conjuring

[Show spoiler]The witch on the wardrobe

[thewerepuppygrr]

Glad to see others mentioning Sinister here. Not a lot truly freaks me out these days but that one came out of nowhere and gave me goosebumps.

The score for the

[Show spoiler]snuff films, especially Family Barbecue,

was one of the most unsettling things I've ever heard.

It's a real nasty little flick and even if didn't have such a disappointing third act I'd easily rate it as a masterpiece of the genre.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre was one I was scared to death of as a kid and could barely watch, but once I'd seen it it wasn't as scary as I'd made it out to be in my head.

The hospital scene in Jacob's Ladder stays with me...

[GoneJoel]

To this day, I’m still afraid of 3:00 AM because of The Exorcism of Emily Rose.

[Martoto]

Originally Posted by Lee A Stewart

After seeing this, Quatermass & The Pit and Them! at a young age, I became terrified of the idea that there were underground networks everywhere and that they were filled with aliens and/or creatures and/or bad people.

I hated walking over or near to manholes, drain covers etc. And being on a noisy street in the city would make me nervous that if there were bad 'uns beavering away down there, we'd never hear them!

[CreasyBear]

Originally Posted by thewerepuppygrr

The hospital scene in Jacob's Ladder stays with me...

Great pick. That film definitely gets under the skin.

Also...

[thewerepuppygrr]

Originally Posted by CreasyBear

Great pick. That film definitely gets under the skin.

Also...

COMPLETELY with you on that choice! Great movie.

[s2mikey]

Originally Posted by GoneJoel

To this day, I’m still afraid of 3:00 AM because of The Exorcism of Emily Rose.

Yes. That movie gets under your skin, slowly but surely. The performances are riveting and it feels so real. It’s tragic and scary. Others for me:

Hereditary - just has a vibe. The music and feeling of doom get to me too.
First Conjuring - good stuff
The Exorcist - like Emily Rose, the film is tragic and the performances are amazing.
The Descent - you’ll never get me near a cave system ever. Like EVER.
Twin Peaks TV show - anything with Bob and Ronettes dream sequence. Yikes!

[trevanian]

Originally Posted by Jay H.

I truly wish The Exorcist had an effect on me like it has on so many other people. I've watched it during many stages of my life (first time I was a teenager; most recent time I was in my mid-40s) and no part of it has ever bothered me in the least. Oh well.

You get off easy in this regard. I had one friend who quite simply couldn't watch five minutes without bursting out laughing ... there was absolutely no suspension of disbelief at all for him, and he tried watching it at least a couple of times. (then again, this was a guy who really dug TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, and gave me notes on how bodies should jerk when I was trying to make a zero-budget horror movie about 40 years back.)

The only part that didn't work for me in EXORCIST was the head-spinning, which was largely owing to a bad sound effect that ruined things for me. I saw it first as a teen in a packed theater as a double bill with REINCARNATION OF PETER PROUD and really liked it, but didn't actually get scared by it till a second viewing, of a bad print at a science fiction convention a few years later. Somehow the crowd helped fuel the feeling, one I don't think I've had with any other movie except FIRE WALK WITH ME (which I saw in a theater that was empty, so it did that to me all on its own without audience help.)

Oh, and the first 20 minutes or so of EXORCIST III. That absolutely pushed all my buttons, including ones I didn't know I had. Kind of a losing-my-soul metaphysical horror, a blend of gut-level and intellectual impacts.

[trevanian]

Originally Posted by Aclea

Dead of Night - the mirror story
The Haunting (1963)
Prince of Darkness - "This is not a dream"
Quatermass and the Pit

More recently the clapping scene in The Conjuring

I'd like to think that if I saw QUATERMASS as a little kid that it would have really gotten me. As it was, I didn't see it till I was 16 and jaded (third part of a triple bill with Siegel BODY SNATCHERS and FORBIDDEN PLANET at a Vitaphone theater that went porno shortly thereafter), so while I always loved the intellectual aspect of Kneale's story, it didn't hit me that way. Plus the visions of Martians bopping around on-screen actually set the whole theater off in waves of laughter. I think I actually committed a form of heresy and did a bit of editing on the film when I had a widescreen laserdisc of it, pausing out some of the less-credible shots when duping it to VHS, but I did rewatch it more as a result. (A friend of mine did the same with STAR TREK THE MOTION PICTURE, but much more drastically, cutting it in half so it was the same length as the original unedited THE CAGE series pilot.)

[thedaydreamer]

As a child, Men in Black, Beetlejuice and War of the Worlds scared me.
As an adult, the only movie to scare me is The Conjuring.

[Winslow Leach]

Vampire movies from the 1970s sometimes creep me out. COUNT YORGA VAMPIRE, THE RETURN OF COUNT YORGA, HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS, BLACULA (with its slow-motion running vampires), SCREAM BLACULA SCREAM, John Badham's DRACULA, SALEM'S LOT, etc. All spooky.

[lesco]

On TV, as a kid: The Fly (original). Heeeellp meeeee - completely. freaked. me. out.

In a cinema: Dawn of the Dead, when first released. Was NOT expecting what it delivered. It was like the audience got its head hit with a shovel.

[plissken99]

Originally Posted by Jay H.

I truly wish The Exorcist had an effect on me like it has on so many other people. I've watched it during many stages of my life (first time I was a teenager; most recent time I was in my mid-40s) and no part of it has ever bothered me in the least. Oh well.

Same here, I actually thought it was boring when I first saw it at 11. Later I came to appreciate how unsettling and well made it is, but not scary. Im sure it would be scarier if I’d been raised with some religion.

[KManX89]

Dead Silence. Not many horror movies really scare me, anymore, but that movie legit gave me sleep troubles for a couple nights afterwards. Mary Shaw is complete nightmare fuel. It's too bad that movie didn't have a better story to accommodate its freaky AF horror. Seriously, it has more holes than Swiss cheese.

Also the original Poltergeist traumatized me as a kid, being that I was one of the many who was duped into seeing it due to its infamous PG rating.

Also The Conjuring and Insidious films have their "moments".