After seeing many requests here for “a really scary movie”, I gotta ask- What scares you, or what do you respond to in those films? My dad, a third generation coal miner, was struck with horror when he woke up with the same cough his killed his father. Black lung cast its shadow on him, was palpable and haunted him. It’s no surprise that he liked Cronenberg so much, even though he couldn’t care less about scary movies. I got severe burns in Iraq. When I was released from the hospital, I swore that I could smell my burned flesh beneath the bandages, and that anyone who told me otherwise was trying to be kind or just get me back on the lines. Subsequently films where the protagonist doubts their own mind get under my skin. If we receive a “wrong number” phone call late at night, my wife won’t be able to get back to sleep- it’s not the interrupted slumber so much as the weight in her mind of what horrible news she COULD have received in a call. For her, movies with heavy dread are far more effective than a thousand CGI dismemberments. Just curious what gets to you.
I grew up Christian so religious stuff tends to get me sometimes. Especially apocalyptic shit.
I love this question because "scary" is relative. I read though tons of comments on this sub about scary movies which don't scare or disturb me, and I think, is something wrong with me? But that's when I remember it's all relative.
For me, it's well-done possession movies and the occasional "killer with no MO." Much of that fear stems from watching the Exorcist too young and the faith-based religion in which I was raised. Anything else will interest me for sure, but it won't scare me.
Home invasions have been high on my list recently. Idk why
Mine too!
And they never really were before. I wonder if it's societal disintegration/political destabilization and the feeling of others posing more of a threat?
Or maybe it's more obvious & simple, at least for my situation: I'm a single mom, and--since my 19-year-old moved out, the only adult-ish human in the house now
Yeah it’s a new thing for me. I usually never think about it cuz I live in a somewhat safe neighborhood but lately I’ve been closing my blinds and making sure all my doors and windows are locked before I goto sleep. I’m like heighten for some reason. Maybe it is the current state of the world that’s triggering this lol
Home invasions are super horrifying. The thought of being tortured and murdered in my own home surrounded by my things freaks me out.
I feel scared when I feel like the movie has almost broken the fourth wall, and I feel involved in the chaos. When I’m afraid to go down into the dark basement or get up to pee in the middle of the night alone lol. But I’m big into found footage type stuff! I definitely find dread and terror more frightening than an in your face jump scare. I like things that will sit with me after the movie too and make me think, thus scaring myself further.
In general, as a very anxious gal, I also get distressed and anxious and nervous in the same way when an unknown number calls me or there’s an unexpected knock at the door, at any time of day lol
I remember that Sinister in particular gave me the “I don’t wanna go through the dark and I gotta cover my toes with my blanket” feeling
Funny Games was the absolute worst for the fourth wall stuff for me
Being trapped or stuck someplace. Just knowing I'm there and I can't get out is enough to drive me into a panic. Especially if the landscape or something else is preventing you from leaving.
Blair Witch for example where they're just wandering through the forest and not getting absolutely anywhere.
Omg yes!! I'd also like to include ' The descent ' and ' As above so below '
The Descent is top tier and a great example of a truly scary movie. I enjoyed AASB too.
Green Room and Vacancy are my contributions to this category.
Absolutely!!! I gotta watch Green room and Vacancy too !! 😍
I’ve had a ton of dreams that feature these kinds of scenarios.
Buried enters the chat
I’m a little claustrophobic and just the idea of being stuck somewhere freaks me out, could be a room or something small. When someone gets buried alive it is absolutely terrifying.
Body horror, I love it but it terrifies me on a primal level. Watching the body change and twist into unnatural shapes against the characters will. It is a good metaphor for aging and disease. The first body horror I remember seeing at a young age was cronenbergs the fly. The slow transformation that ultimately leads to a non human entity terrified but fascinated me. Body horror is probably my all time favorite horror genre.
The betrayal of the body used to play a big part in my nightmares, usually of my teeth falling out. My dad’s realization that he had black lung put his fascination with Cronenberg into focus for me, and I can’t watch one of those movies without thinking of dad.
I have had many dreams of teeth falling out, body parts decaying. It is very visceral. But I have incorporated body horror into my tattoo sleeve, I have twisted skulls in homage to the THING, being one of my favorite movies it has always stuck with me the horror of something inside you changing and twisting you until it is too late
Hope you've checked out The Ugly Stepsister
Cults and supernatural stuff usually scares me.
Asian horror, curses and rituals.
The scariest thing to me is when a character has all their power taken away by someone else. Hostel and Saw really got to me as a kid because the idea of someone using me for their own pleasure is horrifying
Cults
Stuff that feels grounded in reality and is similar to my own experiences, I'd say about sums it up.
Green Room was the first movie to scare me since I was a kid, because I've been in that "shit I'm not getting out of this in one piece" type of panic situation where you suddenly find yourself surrounded in a bad spot (gang of people surrounded me and my friends at night, the only reason we got out was cause my friend recognized one of them as someone he had a mutual friend with and was able to be like "yo you're Jessie's boy right?")
Femme, while more of a thriller, had me feeling a lot of dread throughout because I'm queer and it really captured the fear that comes with walking in public, at night, being visibly different and vulnerable. Also with random, sometimes risky hookups with strangers.
Calibre also had me on edge the entire time, for a sort of similar reason as Green Room.
Suspense in standard slashers or any other kind of horror often doesn't actually put me on edge, but when it does it's because the suspense is built around a scenario that feels all too real. And you know what? I appreciate it. I'm far too desensitized to (fake) gore and violence, I can watch the most brutal shit and be fine but if something touches on a nerve of mine then I'm fuckin bouncing my leg and feel my heart racing.
I like this take.
Fr me, it has to be 'Psychological horrors'. It feels personal to me, like it can actually happen cuz it happened to people. Or I can relate to some . Ex - Irreversible, Hereditary, compliance etc. It can also include disaster movies too, ex - Don't look up. Basically, the end of us.... These affests me the most!! It shows my biggest fears!!
Secondly, it may sound pretty Childish, But Zombies !! 🥲 I mean, I find their faces pretty scary. Sudden jumpscares and that unnerving environment and feeling of being surrounded by nothing but human looking flesh feasting creatures. Both quiet and chaotic. And the most scary part is the apocalypse and loosing own family to some grotesque virus and men with no laws. Ex- 28 days later ( My fav) Eeggh!
And also slow built, hidden faces, soundless moving bodies without immediate jumpscares. Ex - Hereditary last scenes, lights out, lake mungo etc.
Supernatural / religious stuff (Ring, Ju-On, A Tale of Two Sisters etc.). And apparently also The Fourth Kind, as I couldn't finish it last night.
Body horror does nothing for me.
We're all so different you should get a ton of great responses to this. I'd say what gets me on a macro scale is anything Lovecraftian/Cosmic. I can get my head around most of the other antagonists you get in horror films, even demons, ghosts, etc. Know your enemy so to speak. I don't know what the fuck to do with a Lovecraftian elder or whatever's going on in Annihilation LOL. Those are the films that stay with me as they aren't tied to any spook conceived before the 1920's and presented to the masses. Beyond comprehension as they say, unless your name is Howard Philips something. On a micro level it's always been something that's still that you know is ambulatory when it wants to be. Corpses, dolls, mannequins in film. Even paintings that change. Tourist Trap, Black Sabbath, Puppetmaster, Caveat, In The Mouth of Madness (painting) etc are examples of what I'm talking about there. These things get me more than slashers, torture porn, the insufferable trauma trend at the moment, ghosts, demons, rampaging animals etc.
Folk horror. Just watched The Damned, highly recommend!
I started this one last night but the resolution wasn't great (watching off my Plex, on my Steam deck) so I decided to save it for once I can get a proper copy. I think I stopped right after Eva watches the person who'd been sliced in their face start sinking into the water. The dark colors just weren't displaying well, a lot of blurring of shadows and I could tell I'd end up frustrated not being able to make out as much detail. But it definitely seemed promising and even made me want to start seeking out horrors that feel like scary campfire stories on steroids (because of the story Greta tells at the start).
ETA: I just recently rewatched Kill List, you might enjoy that one if you like folk horror :)
I’m interested in the action/horror genres intertwining on the kill list. I will give it a watch!
While it's my favorite subgenre, I find home invasions to be the scariest.
Any good suggestions?
Disfigurement and illness are my "only if I absolutely HAVE TO see this" themes. Something like The Rule of Jenny Pen scares me far more than any supernatural creature or killer could.
People
Supernatural/scifi powers taking over the government/society. Also, amorphous blobs that are essentially invulnerable, and grow each time they eat.
The phone calls in the original Black Christmas freak me out. I remember getting an obscene call when I was pretty young & it rattled me. I don’t know that I’d have kept that freak on the line as long as they did. Those calls are f-ed up
The Descent scared the hell out of me because I'm claustrophobic. It was a relief to get to the part with the monsters because the blocking required everyone to be in a relatively open space.
Humans being eaten. I’m not sure why. Not so much by zombies, but in creature features.
the most effective terror moments for me are when either the film is visually designed to make you uncomfortable, both subtly and overtly, or when it manages to do that suspension of disbelief thing that doesn't happen much lately.
Two recent examples are, for me
Pearl (specifically the last act)
and
Longlegs. There are very few jumpscares in that movie but the whole thing is shot and framed in such a claustrophobic, anxiety inducing way that you fall into the protagonist's perspective: something bad is out there, waiting and unseen in the darkness
It Follows does this intentionally, and really well. Changing seasons from scene to scene, the way the house is furnished and the clothing makes it look like it’s set in the 70’s, but then somebody pops up with a cool ass seashell shaped e-reader. The synth score. All of it crafted so well, it subconsciously confuses the audience because we can’t get a grip on where or when the actual crazy stuff is happening! Love that movie.
It Follows has been on a maybe list for me for a bit. It's a cool concept but I don't have people to watch horror with these days. Or much of anything else
Oh, man. You need to watch this movie. Probably one of my top 10 of the decade. I’d come watch it with you if you weren’t an internet stranger chatting on a horror sub. Lol. I’m kidding. But seriously, watch this film and thank me later.
word! I am sure both of us are perfectly well adjusted and not actual supernatural monsters and or cannibals, but never take those chances hahahaa
If it's alright, I will dm my thoughts when I do see it!
Found footage. The premise is always interesting!
The thought of real life missing persons or murders, being recorded either by camera or phone, but remaining unfound while being an unsolved case is EXTREMELY horrifying to me.
I wonder how many real life murders/abductions have actually been recorded but unseen by law enforcement, it’s very eerie to think about!
Found footage. The premise is always interesting!
Found footage gives me the biggest scares. I mean it gives you the POV of the person and can also feel very real depending on how well it is done and the premise. Recently, some of the scenes in The Blackwell Ghost were freaky, also the tent scenes in Willow Creek.
Any “fear” I have left seems to be for disturbing movies. If I’m dwelling on it days later I know it got me. “When Evil Lurks”, “Oddity”. Not frightening, necessarily. Back in the day “In the Mouth of Madness”.
“In The Mouth..” along with “Possession” and “Jacob’s Ladder” were movies that really hit the pressure points for me.
For me, it completely depends on what you meant by “find scary”. I don’t think I’ve ever genuinely been terrified by a film in my adult life to the point where it keeps me up at night, but I can understand why the characters are feeling the way they do. love horror movies so much because I can relate to the fear they’re feeling, I just don’t feel it while watching.
That doesn’t mean I don’t think horror movies are scary, I just feel like the fear for me works the same way a novel does: I’m imaging the scenario in which I would feel genuine fear within the safe confines of fiction.
All this to say, I enjoy everything from high-production horror to shlocky grindhouse shit and think anyone that criticizes horror movies by how “scary” they are is missing the point of the genre entirely.
Ever since I saw the poster for The Strangers as a kid, pale/white faces in darkness have always freaked me out. Basically anyone/anything watching you but you can’t see them. I was already pretty scared of the dark when I was younger so my imagination would put shapes and things inside it that weren’t really there.
Now I’m always scanning the backgrounds in horror movies hoping to see a barely visible figure or face in the darkness. I wish more movies did stuff like that.
Some movies that really really got to me because of this are Hereditary (specifically the last section), Lake Mungo and Skinamarink
Heights and leg/knee injuries give a good heebie to my jeeebies
I love all genres of horror but the stuff that generally really scares me are home invasion stuff, post apocalyptic worlds where the surviving people are a bigger problem, vacation horror (being abroad and something crazy happening), cult related stuff. Pretty much anything I could easily imagine actually happening to me.
The fact that my mom is someday going to leave this earth. And my brother too. Terrifies me and I'm 56 years old. Silly right? I know...but recently lost my man of 19 years and soon after my precious dad passed too.
I also get scared of alien movies when they are here to actually eat humans.
Oh and being buried alive. I just couldn't take that, and I hate it in movies.
I completely get it. Sorry you lost so much recently.
I'm sorry for your lost 🙏🏼 all love 💕
Home invasion movies for sure. And cults.
Walking alone in the dark, especially in the woods. I have to do it a lot and I've never moved faster.
Anything in the woods scares me. I'm an urban person, and to me forests are haunted landscapes where anything might happen.
Honestly, I'd feel safer walking in a dark alley since I know what to expect there lol
It's especially bad since you can't see what's behind you, and that's when my imagination gets more active.
Ancient evil. Like movies where they find some sort of entity that’s been terrorizing mankind through the ages and they find archaeological evidence of it. A good example would be alien versus predator the first one only and predator two. As above so below.
I love so many horror genres, but what makes me feel the emotion “scared” (not tense, not uncomfortable, not dread) is alien abduction movies for some reason. Because like… COULD that happen??? It’s walking a line between home invasion and creature features that I am not ok with (but still watch, obviously)
Love home invasion movies, paranormal stuff, creature features, cults, horror-thrillers, but the emotion I feel with those is not scared
Not being able to trust what I see, hear, or experience. Hence, Smile scared the everloving shit out of me.
In movies, psychological stuff and everything unknown. Usually for me the best horror movies or moments in movies are when you haven’t seen the evil/bad/whatever it is, only the buildup. Once you see the evil for the first time, the magic is kind of lost.
From the more psychological side, one movie that’s remained in my (or at least in my wife’s) memory quite vividly is The Autopsy of Jane Doe.
Real life. Dread. Movies that pull that off well leave a lasting impression. The Strangers (2008) was the first movie that genuinely scared me as an adult. Hereditary sits in your throat and forces you to deal with the worst part of a tragedy - telling people what happened (or avoiding it altogether). That is something I truly fear.
Creature features/demonic possessions etc are fun and all but it is too detached from my life experience to actually strike fear in me.
I also love body horror and cosmic horror but those genres don’t even really try to “scare” you. They want you to experience something new and intense.
Bonus: Paranormal Activity fucked me sideways but I was a kid and I was high out of my mind
It's difficult for me to find connecting features with the things that scare me - it either scares me or it doesn't. I was surprised to be scared by The Bay earlier tonight. Something in it made me incredibly uneasy, and I found it difficult to drink water and shower after. I had to convince myself that it's just a movie. What scares me is arbitrary, but I rarely have this strong of a reaction. The fact that I've slept for an hour in the last 36+h might be a contributing factor, though.
Hope you get some sleep. If, after that, you conclude that there ARE movies with motifs that resonate with specific fears you have, c’mon back and let us know.
Ooooh. Good question. Home invasions and kidnapping with keeping are the worst for me. I used to really struggle with true crime stuff but am starting to come around to it a little. Real people are just so scary.
This is mad specific but when a movie unlocks that childhood fear of the dark like when you wake up from a nightmare as a kid and you’re lowkey still terrified for a hot minute it really gets me. I think it’s a matter of how the movie taps into the different senses (especially sound or lack thereof). It’s a divisive movie but one semi-recent one that really got me in this way is Skinamarink—totally atmospheric and made me feel just like I did when I was a kid and had a nightmare. Definitely helped that I watched it by myself in the dark with headphones on!
When something that should be inanimate moves subtly.
Psychological horror scares me, especially when it starts to feel too weirdly intimate with the audience, like in "Men".
That prickly feeling like the movie's watching you too
Haunted-house movies, forever and always. Especially if haunted by something created by/related to grief
My house is 115 years old and "clearly haunted" though, so 🤣.
(My husband died (not in the house) 10 years ago under tragic & violent circumstances, leaving me with this very new experience of being terrified/horrified at the magnitude of one's own grief.
(Also, in my house there are at this point literally no lights and no doorknobs/locks that work correctly, and not a single night that goes by without inexplicable-by-science noises on the stairs and upstairs)
Ghost or apparitions shown in a subtle way and you can't possibly tell if they're friendly or hostile.
I’m the opposite of most people. I only get actually scared of things that are supernatural or sci-fi. X-files, The Ring, The Grudge (assuming this means most Japanese horror will scare the shit out of me).
When a nice, decent person snaps and commits familicide, scares the shit out of me! The thought of someone you love, and ultimately trust to the point where you don’t even question your trust, can literally loose their mind and kill you is horrific to me. - When I was about 5, I used to hang around with a kid on the same street. I’d go out and play football with him and his dad and everything seemed ok. Then one morning, his dad got up, went in to town and jumped off the viaduct. Obviously, in that case, no one else was hurt, but I think that’s what led me to fear people’s mind breaking and how oblivious you can be to it until it’s too late
For me, it's the real life scenarios. Especially like Calibre, a single mistake turns into something you have to hide and try to cover-up. Then having to live with it and worry about it for the rest of your life.
Another is being lost in the wilderness with no idea which direction to go.
Tornadoes in the darkness where you can't tell where it is going.
Being tracked by a large bear or lion.
Camping in a tent and hearing something moving around close by outside the tent.
Having a serial killer on the loose in your city.
Psychopathy or severe mental illness. My wife worked with a lady that had a schizophrenic teenage son and she had to sleep with her door locked because she was scared of what he might do.
Looking outside in the middle of the night to see someone in your backyard looking in the window.
Finding footprints in the snow that lead up to your back door that were not there when you went to bed.
I work in a hospital so I see a lot of super demented old people who can’t even form real words anymore. So The Taking of Deborah Logan really got to me because the possession is written off as dementia.
Also I see a lot of children die or have permanent brain damage because of the thoughtlessness of the adults around them. And many of them are kinda “freak” accidents no one would expect. So The Coffee Table really fucked me up too because I’m absolutely certain something like that could and has happened.
personally things that scare me are being randomly attacked, or having an accident that you have no control over (I fell in a river 2 years ago randomly as I tripped and its affected my life ever since)
Movies where I can't tell what's real and what's happening in the narrator's head.
Not much to be honest. As a kid the paranormal stuff freaked me out more than slashers or monsters. Stuff like Omen, Exorcist, Entity and Poltergeist.
recently watched paranormal activities -> scared the shit out of me. The movie is VERY underrated and I wasnt expecting anything that scary or interesting from the movie but man was I wrong.
The thing that scared me most is how it can happen to REALISTICALLY ANYBODY. It demonizes random noises you hear around the house, which stayed with me even after the movie.
It shows a different type of "demon" where you never see the demon at all but this is scary to think about.
Stuff that could actually happen irl, like haunted houses, getting lost in the woods, being chased by a psycho, or dealing with mental illness, that kind of thing.
Scrolling Facebook/reddit while laying on the couch and the hottest chick you have ever seen in a commercial is currently on my screen when my wife walks up behind the couch asking "what ya looking at?".
Gore doesn’t scare me per se, but it does make my skin crawl if it’s done well. In general I don’t get scared though. Kind of wish I did! Closest I’ve gotten is Skinamarink because it gave me nightmares.
I don’t believe in ghosts or anything like that, but for some reason films with supernatural phenomena scare the bajeezus out of me. Demons and demonic possession can go either way (sometimes scary, sometimes super hokey). Found footage also scares me quite a bit sometimes (which is why I LOVE it).
Phobias aside, it is hard for a horror movie to scare me.
I think the three very niche things would be:
A situation where a character holds a belief that other characters/the film itself talk about or treat as a delusion or a symptom of mental illness, but it’s revealed to be true (in the world of the film). For example, the way the grandmother’s beliefs are talked about in Hereditary.
Movies that involve malicious medicine and intentional surgical disfigurement. Tusk, Human Centipede etc.
And movies where someone gets out of a situation and is returned to it, like when Rosemary tries to get help from a different doctor in Rosemary’s Baby and he inadvertently returns her to the cult, or when the mom escapes the house in Funny Games and flags down a vehicle for help, but it’s being driven by the killers.
Non-Christian non-generic white cultural/folk(?) horror, especially re African Americans. Candyman is—by far—the movie that’s scared me the most. The original. Didn’t sleep for weeks. Incantation was a close second. Anything mockumentary or found footage just isn’t scary to me
That was well thought out and articulated. Nice work. Mine is weird, because evil stuff is what gets me. Demons, dread, possession… evil. Capital E. But I don’t believe in that kind of stuff, which is puzzling to me. I think it’s because if it were real there couldn’t be anything more terrifying.
Kicking it around in my head, there’s something interesting and terrifying in a cinematic cult doing profound evil in service to an entity or goal that (in the narrative) doesn’t exist.
Oh yeah that would be a good idea for a movie, actually. Just the most depraved horrific stuff being done by this cult and the end they all find out that the entity isn’t real somehow and a shot of all of them with the slow realization that they did all of this shit for no reason other than they’re terrible human beings.
Seeing another post about wHat sCaReS yOu
For me it’s the stuff that could actually happen irl. Ghosts and monsters don’t really scare me but I still find them entertaining. Stuff like Midsommar freaks me out cause shit like that is quite possible to happen for real.
Exact opposite for me. The paranormal scares the bejeezus out of me, but real world stuff I'm good with.
Any other movie than Midsommar u would recommend?
Not so much scary cause it’s realistic but I enjoyed The Substance, Stopmotion (2023), Nosferatu (2024), Hereditary, and The Witch.
If you’re scared by realistic stuff, Wolf Creek is a good one. It’s actually a true story.
See it’s the opposite for me simply because, I atleast have a fighting chance against another person- hell even persons. BUT A FUCKING GHOST?? The hell am I gonna do to it, the concept of something I can’t hurt back that’s around 24/7 is horrible to me. I don’t even really believe in the paranormal but I don’t think that matters much when it’s the middle of the night and you hear a noise ya know?
The exact thing I came here to say. It’s the realistic stuff that fucks me up
Agree. Real people are scarier than any monster or ghost. Like the horror happening in the USA right now scares the shit out of me. This is why I like horror movies. They really don't scare and I think they have more fun with story lines and characters