Top 10 Scary Movies
by Anna Kaufman
You’re
safe at home in your living room. You’ve
got popcorn, some soda. Maybe the lights are on, maybe you’re
brave and they’re not. But the blinds are drawn. Your
door is locked tight. You’re perfectly safe. After all:
ghosts, demons, zombies, monsters…they don’t exist.
As a rational adult, you know this. So what is it
about certain films that can make your muscles tense, make
an icy shiver race up your spine, make your heart quicken at
a sudden sound—a quiet creak, a soft breath, the scratch
of a nail or a claw on the windowpane? Probably just a
tree branch, you tell yourself. But you don’t turn
around. You don’t dare tear your eyes away from the screen.
These
ten films don’t just shock or frighten: they get under
your skin. Unlike the slashers of Elm Street or Camp Crystal
Lake—who are here today, gone to terrorize another group
of nubile young teenagers tomorrow—the fears evoked by
the films on our Top Ten list will linger. Once you’ve
seen them, we guarantee you’ll never look at a placid wave,
a roadside motel or a plate of fava beans the same way again.
|
Arguably
the best of the early Universal monster movies, “Bride
of Frankenstein” was one of the first films to
give the genre a realistic gloss, with its lavish laboratory
sets adding an air of authenticity to the actually rather
tragic story of a monster looking for love in all the
wrong places. While probably not bloodcurdling—or
bloody—enough to frighten today’s jaded audiences, “Bride” did help
propagate the horrifying trend of scary-movie sequels. |
| Even
if you know it’s coming—and who, 47 years after
the movie hit theaters, would not know it’s coming—the
pivotal shower scene still shocks. Brilliantly directed
by Alfred Hitchcock, who does more with a small trickle
of black-and-white blood than most directors can manage
with full-color buckets of it, the sudden, terrifying
death of Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) will stick you right
where you’re most vulnerable. After watching, who
can stand naked and alone, with shampoo dribbling into
your eyes, and not feel like Norman Bates might be lurking
on the other side of the curtain? It’s enough to
make Bernard Herrmann’s shrieking score haunt your
dreams. |
 |
 |
Linda
Blair projectile-vomiting pea soup has become something
of a cultural joke by now, but actually viewing “The Exorcist,” you’ll
find it surprisingly hard to maintain a detached, ironic
air. Instead, watching trapped, transformed Regan MacNeil
(Blair) spider-walk down the stairs or make highly-inappropriate
use of a crucifix while her terrified mother (Ellen
Burstyn) looks on, you won’t be laughing. You’ll be crossing
yourself. |
| The
tagline for the sequel was the only brilliant thing
about it: “Just
when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…” After
seeing Steven Spielberg’s original, you’ll
never feel comfortable dipping a toe in
again. Spielberg, like Hitchcock, frightens
more by showing less—the shark itself rarely
appears, in part because the mechanical models so frequently
malfunctioned. It works to the film’s advantage:
your heart beats faster at just
a hint of fin, at the racing pulse of John Williams’s
famous score, at Robert Shaw’s measured voice as
he details the terrible fate of the U.S.S. Indianapolis.
And when that gaping maw finally does appear,
well…prepare to throw yourself toward the back
of your seat and away from anything resembling water. |
|
|
Though
it spawned several action-packed sequels (those face-hugging
aliens really can breed),
what makes the original, Ridley Scott-directed film effective
is the atmosphere of claustrophobic horror. It’s
true that in space, no one can hear you scream; there’s
also nowhere to run. Suffocating blackness outside, a
huge, acidic-blooded monster inside…these are
not good odds. Watching Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley
best them, even as the rest of her crew is decimated,
never ceases to thrill, terrify, and make one eye
the starry sky just a little more warily. |
| The
elevator’s grand,
gold doors slide open and a river, a torrent,
of blood pours out. As a horror movie moment, it’s
tough to top. And Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation
of Stephen King’s The Shining is full
of such visually arresting moments: the eerie ghosts
of the murdered sisters standing at the end of the hall
as young Danny (Danny Lloyd) rounds the corner; what’s
waiting for Jack (Jack Nicholson) in the bathroom of
Room 237; and, of course, an axe-wielding Nicholson breaking
down the door that’s the only thing standing between
him and a wailing Shelley Duvall—and, it feels
like, the audience. Because that’s what’s
truly frightening about “The Shining”: the
idea that your father, your husband, your friend, anybody,
could be the one to turn on you. |
 |
 |
“Poltergeist” has
a way of polarizing people: which moment of this seminal
spook story (why, yes, that was a cemetery they
built that development on top of!) is truly the most
traumatizing? The coulrophobic will cite the clown doll
that the angry spirits bring to life, while those who feared
the monster in the closet when they were young will be
huddling behind the couch at a mere glimpse of what this
wardrobe holds. But in many ways, “Poltergeist” is
really a horror movie for parents. Your children are
not safe, not even in your own home. Bad things are coming.
In fact: “They’re here.” |
Look
at Hannibal Lecter. He’s so charming! So articulate! So dignified,
even strapped down with a bite guard over his face. He’s
just so…alluring, that you really would
be tempted to accept his invitation to dinner. Which
would be bad. ‘Cause he eats people. (And washes ‘em
down with fine wine.) Sure—Buffalo Bill’s flashy, hide-tanning
efforts form the bulk of “Silence of the Lambs’s” plot,
but it’s Sir Anthony Hopkins’s portrayal
of “Hannibal the Cannibal” that really gets
under your skin. Watching him, you’re both bewitched
and repulsed, and the real fear becomes the worry that
the repulsion will waver just long enough for him to
get close.
|
 |
|
Before “28
Days Later...” came out in 2002,
the mental picture of zombies was universally that of
a slow, shuffling, rotting corpse with an unquenchable
hunger for “braaaaaaiiins.” But the writer-director
team of Alex Garland and Danny Boyle changed all that.
These new rage-infected zombies terrorizing a quarantined
England’s few survivors are real speed demons:
charging down tunnels, smashing through glass, leaping
at you out of the dark. Once scary only en masse,
just a single specimen of this new breed of zombie is
deadly. Twenty-eight days later, you’ll still be
nervous walking down an empty street after dark. |
| And
suddenly you’re not so safe
in your living room anymore. This American adaptation
of the Japanese horror film “Ringu,” about
a cursed video tape, left thousands of wide-eyed cinephiles
terrified of their own televisions. And for good reason:
the flickering black-and-white images that kick off the
unlucky viewer’s last seven days alive are still
holding court behind the real life viewer’s
eyelids. The smooth black screen of a silent TV set suddenly
seems threatening—a dark portal through which angry
ghost girl Samara can slip to wreak her vengeance. And
we let her in, just by watching. |
 |
 Read
all Movie Reviews
| PNJ092507
|
(Updated 03/06/08 HC) |
|
