If Silence of the Lambs makes the list, then I suppose Seven would too. But it seems like there’s an awfully narrow definition of “horror” in use here.
(In at least one of the movies mentioned, the protagonist is raped by Satan!)
Actually, the protagonist has a dream that she is raped by Satan. Roman Polanski never shows the baby, so you don’t know if the whole movie is real or a dream.
As Stephen King, who knows something about horror writing, states in his intro to an edition to the book, the whole dream sequence is only seven pages. It’s just a snippet of (dream?) horror in otherwise mundane, everyday happenings.
Yeah, Tideland is disturbing.
You know what else was unexpectedly creepy? *Really * unexpectedly? Jumanji. It’s different in tone than any other kids’ movie (besides the Secret of NIHM) I’ve ever seen. Anticipatory dread just isn’t common to films made with children in mind, and it accomplished it better than several horror movies I can think of off the top of my head.
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover…just disturbing how manipulative and controlling abusers can be. Plus…cannibalism.
Family movie night marathon fun for everyone!
Das Experiment
Gummo
Happiness
Irreversable
Jesus’ son
Room
…actually no, no, please don’t do that.
You stole my Gummo!
Buffalo 66 was pretty creepy in parts, for me. I think that’s more of a reflection on Vincent Gallo than the movie, though.
I’m going to nominate Char’s Counter-Attack.
It’s anime, but the disturbing in it just doesn’t stop. It can be described as a simple war film. And the key character relationship is between two long-term antagonists, and on that level works pretty well. I’m not going to spoiler a 20 year old film, it’s just too silly to my mind. The disturbing is the narcissism involved with the relationship between Char and Quess, where he is effectively using a teen girl’s crush on him to turn her into a monster, including looking the other way when she kills her father. Then the mirror of that plot with Hathaway Noah and Quess is even more disturbing - Char knew what he was doing and didn’t care. Quess was enjoying playing with Hathaway.
No votes for Bug?
Or the old classic Clockwork Orange?
For most of the movie, yeah. But the end kind of spells things out (I guess there’s no point in a spoiler box at this point):
Rosemary: What have you done to it? What have you done to its eyes?
Roman: He has his father’s eyes.
Rosemary: What are you talking about?! Guy’s eyes are normal! What have you done to him? You maniacs!
Roman: Satan is his father, not Guy. He came up from hell and begat a son of mortal woman.
Coven: Hail, Satan!
Roman: Satan is his father and his name is Adrian. He shall overthrow the mighty and lay waste their temples. He shall redeem the despised and wreak vengeance in the name of the burned and the tortured. Hail, Adrian! Hail, Satan! Hail, Satan!
Minnie: He chose you out of all the world - out of all the women in the whole world, he chose you. He arranged things, because he wanted you to be the mother of his only living son.
Roman: His power is stronger than stronger! His might shall last longer than longer.
Japanese man: Hail, Satan!
Rosemary: No! It can’t be! No!
Minnie: Go look at his hands.
Laura-Louise: And his feet.
Rosemary: Oh, God! [She drops her knife]
Roman: God is dead! Satan lives! The year is One, the year is One! God is dead! Why don’t you help us out, Rosemary? Be a real mother to Adrian. You don’t have to join if you don’t want to. Just be a mother to your baby. Minnie and Laura-Louise are too old. It’s not right. Think about it, Rosemary.
Rosemary: Oh, God!
Laura-Louise: Aw, shut up with your Oh, Gods or we’ll kill ya - milk or no milk!
You can try to rationalize it, but I think the balance clearly tips in favor of a supernatural explanation at this point.
(Although I think the baby would have an easier time taking over the world without weird eyes and hands, but Satan moves in mysterious ways.)
But I don’t see why the supernatural is a necessary element of horror, in any case. In fiction, Poe is generally considered a master of horror, but most of his tales don’t require supernatural explanations. Movies like Seven and Silence of the Lambs are definitely crafted to unsettle and scare audiences, just as much as Dracula and The Wolfman.
I don’t know the other film you mentioned, but I’d always thought of Clockwork Orange as a horror film. A psychological horror film, but still horror.
Requiem for a Dream is another kick in the ass. Ellen Burstyn plays perfectly one of the most heartbreaking roles I’ve seen.
Robin Williams is wonderfully creepy in One Hour Photo; as is Crispin Glover in his remake of Willard
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Damn, even just reading through this thread I feel the need to go have a Greatest stupid Comedies EVAR! mini-marathon of Cabin Boy, Cannibal: The Musical, Kung-Pow:EtF, and Mallrats just to counter act the memories of some of these movies recommended to the OP. Incidentally, these four seem to be the among most film critics’ choices for most scariest movies ever. Shpadoinkle!
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ETA: The Cell! Bah, how could I forget this one? A perfectly filmed nightmare.
Nobody’s suggested Eraserhead? It’s not horror. I don’t know WHAT it is, but it’s definitely creepy,
I’ve often said the perfect unwatchable movie night (for most people) would be:
**Freaks
Eraserhead
The Forbidden Zone**.
I’ve seen all these films, but my wife begged me to turn off “Forbidden Zone” during the opening credits. The rest of our guests insisted we leave it on a little longer, but five minutes later, they wanted it off, too. The only people I know of (besides me) who have watched it all the way through are on this Board.
Come to think of it, that applies to the other two movies here, as well.
This is what I came in to post.
A scene with a father and son (about 10 years old, I think) about what happened between the son’s friends and the father:
[spoiler]Son: What… did you do?
Father: I touched them.
Son: What do you mean, exactly, touched?
Father: I fondled them.
Son: What for?
Father: I couldn’t help myself.
Son: What else?
Father: I…I unzipped myself.
Son: You…you mean, masturbated?
Father: No.
Son: Then what?
Father: I…made love.
Son: What do you mean?
Father: I fucked them.
Son: What was it like?
Father: It was…it was great.
Son: Would you do it again?
Father: Yes.
Son: Would…would you ever…fuck me?
Father: No. I’d jerk off instead. ( begins sobbing )[/spoiler]
And that might not even be the most creepy scene.
Check out Polanski’s The Tenant.
Not “creepy” per say but emotional porn. There were several scenes in AI where I was really disturbed such as when the family abandoned the little android in the woods and he was begging his mother to come back and several other scenes.
It was so calculatingly manipulative I lost of lot of respect for Steven Spielberg after that.
It was the first to mind for me but, looking it up, Horror was the genre listed right after Fantasy and Drama.
Another suprisingly late to the show is Blue Velvet.
While we’re doing David Lynch: The Lost Highway. Call me!
One movie that utterly scared the shit out of me when I was a kid and ended up being even creepier when I watched again as an adult is Buffet Froid. No gore, no surprises, just an ever deepening sense that you’re being sucked into a nightmare.
That movie, and Sin City were some [insert expletive here]effed up stuff.[/insert expletive here]
As for Tideland and Pan’s Labyrinth, As a film study I’d recommend watching them back to back to see two very different treatments of almost identical themes: young, innocent girl living in a bad situation falls deeply into a fantasy world (in an Alice in Wonderland/Wizard of Oz way) to escape the real horror of their lives.
As for Pan’s Labyrinth, to me, besides the Pale Man the scariest part were the realistic parts, for instance the step-father’s way of dealing with the rabbit hunters. Ugh.
When did they start appending “Porn” onto genre descriptions?
I noticed it appearing when they started calling some horrors “Torture porn”… Hey, why all of a sudden sexualise a genre which has been (trying to, but failing in my case) scare us for years…
Oldboy is the second in a trilogy of movies, about revenge.
It seems ludicrous to me…
(Then again, journos have been appending Gate to every scandal for years. Baffles me that one too).