"Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age."
Jonathan Swift
With this week’s arrival of Halloween, I started thinking of some of the scariest movies and/or stories in my experience. Being anba avid movie watcher, these tend to be movies. I looked up a listing from the Internet Movie Database (AKA IMDB) 50 Scariest MOvies Ever Made 2012 Edition. My personal selections from this list:
Silence of the Lambs – Anthony Hopkins’ character Hannibal is one of the creepiest and most effectively unnerving character I have encountered in the movies. This, along with the great foreboding soundtrack, and the grisly murders kept me thoroughly involved and on edge.
Jaws – This is the movie that for how exhausted I was after leaving the theater. I was 16, and the movie had plenty of what pushed my “scare” and “creep-out” buttons, along with another of those great , foreboding soundtracks that became classic re-use for all things scary. The arm “leftovers” found on the beach being eaten by crabs, the head floating by the porthole, and the kid being pulled under in a torrent of blood, all those kind of tucked themselves into my psyche for a long time to come.
The Sixth Sense – Great story about ghosts (aka “dead people”) . I was not even in a theater for this one, but on a relatively small hotel room TV screen, and this still had great effect. I can only imagine what it was like for big screen, Dolby Sound viewers.
The Excorcist I was in college, and watched this on HBO with a group of about a dozen friends. Again, nothing but a 26″ TV and no sound system, but a story that got me dreading the ascent up the stairs to “Reagan’s room” where abuse awaited (and various other assorted gross-outs) . I was feeling rather drained after this one.
Blair Witch Project This one was intentionally not of high production value, but it achieved its goal. I was feeling afraid to go outside after this one (and I was a middle-aged adult).
I’m sure there are others, being the avid movie watcher that I am, and one who likes the suspenseful movie genre.
What about you? What would you put on your list of all time scariest movies (or books, if you’re a reader of scary stories)?
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