What I want: Recommendations for movies that are very scary or even terrifying. Alien is a good example, but I don’t mind going beyond a few steps beyond this. I thought The Village was lame. Ditto The Blair Witch. Psycho was quite good for the old school stuff, but I can handle more–provided that mommy holds my hand and I keep all the lights on.
What I DON’T like: I want to avoid movies along the lines of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I do NOT enjoy seeing people being tortured, dismembered or struck with blunt (or sharp) weapons. I do not enjoy gore, so that rules out the sophomoric Jason/Halloween/Chucky series.
Of course, someone has to make the standard recommendation of The Exorcist. But I’ll also add that Exorcist III is an outstanding movie also, but less scary (more menacing, though) and more interesting.
Ring/ Ringu aren’t really gorey and they are pretty fecking scary. Don’t remember a darn thing abotu Dark Water.
I don’t remember the Exorcist being “gory” per se.
Ashamed to say it, but the old Damien movies scared the crap out of me, but very dated.
Amityville Horror?
Poltergeist scared the hell out of me, and it’s got very little blood. There are a couple of scenes where you might have to look away for a few seconds, but all in all it’s a nice creepy and very scary film without buckets of gore.
I saw The Ring, and it wasn’t that gory. Has some very scary moments, though. You’d probably like that one.
Run far, far away from Hostel. I read a review of it on “Screen It” (where they give away all the spoilers so parents can decide if their kids can see a movie) and even the descriptions grossed me out. Apparently it’s got extremely graphic and gory stuff throughout.
Oh, something called "Session Nine"I think–not a lot of blood but spooky.
Lars von Trier’s miniseries The Kingdom (“Riget”)-- like Stephen King’s ripoff version but good.
Session Nine (starring everybody’s favorite redheaded overactor, David Caruso) is kind of creepy, but I wouldn’t put it in the same category as some of the other films mentioned here. What is cool about it, though, was it was filmed at Danvers State Hospital, an abandoned insane asylum (which has since been torn down to put up condos–a real shame, as it had some gorgeous buildings).
There’s some blood in it and some rather icky stuff toward the end, but nothing over the top.
I don’t know if Funny Games would be what you’re looking for. A family gets tormented and tortured, but there is little, if any, gore or blood. It’s more “You’re powerless to protect your family”-style torture than actual physical torture.