# Scariest movie you've ever seen? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 23, 2018, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scariest-movie-youve-ever-seen/820095 "2018-08-23T04:27:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2018, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scariest-movie-youve-ever-seen/820095/21 "2018-08-23T14:53:48Z")
Frankenstein never scared me! Marsupials do… 😉 Scariest movie I’ve ever seen? [The Thing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(1982_film)). ---
**Author:** ![Edward\_The\_Head](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ce73a5/32.png) [@Edward\_The\_Head](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Edward_The_Head)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2018, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scariest-movie-youve-ever-seen/820095/22 "2018-08-23T15:30:06Z")
> [@ZonexandScout](#): > > _ **The Thing** _ (1982) and _ **An American Werewolf in London** _ (1981). The Thing scared me as a kid, but as an adult I enjoy it. Werewolf I saw as an adult so it didn’t scare me, but good god did his transformation look painful as hell. I watch a lot of Horror movies so nothing really gets to me any more. Sometimes the way someone gets hurt makes me cringe, but the killing and jump scares don’t. That said, Friday the 13th Part 2 scared me as a kid. I just rewatched it a could of months ago, and for some reason it creeped me the hell out. I don’t know if it was from when I was a kid or what, but it did get to me. ---
**Author:** ![Shoeless](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shoeless/32/7099_2.png) [@Shoeless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shoeless)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2018, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scariest-movie-youve-ever-seen/820095/23 "2018-08-23T15:37:34Z")
**Alien.** I was in high school when it came out. A friend and I went to see it at one of those wide screen 70mm theaters. We got there late and the only seats left were right up front under the screen. I just about lost it when the face hugger jumped out of the egg. **The Exorcist.** I was in college, both roommates were gone for the weekend. I had just gotten off of work and decided to head up to campus for the midnight movie. OK you know how early on before all the possession stuff happens, when they hear what sounds like rats scratching around in the ceiling? I get home from the movie, already sufficiently freaked out and am trying to get to sleep, when my roommate’s cat starts scratching at my bedroom door. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2018, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scariest-movie-youve-ever-seen/820095/24 "2018-08-23T15:55:42Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > **The Exorcist** , back in the day. This. Scared the poop out of me. No other movie since has affected so. ---
**Author:** ![Sunny\_Daze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunny_daze/32/438_2.png) [@Sunny\_Daze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunny_Daze)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2018, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scariest-movie-youve-ever-seen/820095/25 "2018-08-23T16:12:01Z")
_Halloween_. I used to babysit for John Carpenter and he had a theater room in his house. I watched the movie there and it scared me so much that I didn’t try another horror movie for years. I didn’t realize for a long, long time that the version he had was different than the one that was released. ---
**Author:** ![Zeldar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/b77776/32.png) [@Zeldar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeldar)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2018, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scariest-movie-youve-ever-seen/820095/26 "2018-08-23T16:15:37Z")
After giving this a reasonable amount of thought, and realizing that there are more recent examples that test the limits of my “being scared” by a movie, I’m going to have to say it was Horror of Dracula that first impressed me as being a truly scary movie experience. Of course, I was in my teens when I saw it for the first time, so that has to be accounted for in a “for all time” sense. Still, it WAS a damned scary movie! ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2018, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scariest-movie-youve-ever-seen/820095/27 "2018-08-23T16:54:07Z")
> [@Sunny\_Daze](#): > > _Halloween_. I used to babysit for John Carpenter and he had a theater room in his house. Whoa! you can’t just drop that little nugget in there and pretend nothing happened. At least tell us that he kept a model severed head in the fridge or something. On the subject of John Carpenter i’ll agree that “The Thing” is another great but I saw it after Alien so it didn’t quite reach those peaks. Top quality though. ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2018, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scariest-movie-youve-ever-seen/820095/28 "2018-08-23T16:54:43Z")
If you are a bachelor older than thirty, _Remains of the Day_ is terrifying. As for actual horror movies, probably _Jaws_. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2018, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scariest-movie-youve-ever-seen/820095/29 "2018-08-23T16:56:23Z")
> [@enipla](#): > > Also Schindlers List. Met a friend at the theater, we both drove alone. > > Now imagine an hour drive home at night on lonely roads in a rag top jeep in the winter. Home is isolated, and I lived alone. I was just basically very weirded out. It didn’t scare me but it profoundly affected me. Glad I’ve seen it, shan’t be watching it again. Personally I think I probably could have done with a breezy drive home afterwards. A cold slap in the face to blow the bad shit away. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2018, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scariest-movie-youve-ever-seen/820095/30 "2018-08-23T17:12:30Z")
I was twelve when _This House Possessed_ came on TV. The exploding mirror had me trying to avoid mirrors for a while. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2018, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scariest-movie-youve-ever-seen/820095/31 "2018-08-23T17:36:04Z")
> [@Paranoid\_Randroid](#): > > Recently Hereditary left me feeling pretty unsettled, if that counts. I was both miserable and hypnotized by the movie. Ugh, it was so unsettling. > [@ZonexandScout](#): > > They seem pretty quaint now, and I watch them frequently with great enjoyment, but they were scary as hell at the time if you saw them late at night in a basically empty theater. The Thing is a great movie to watch knowing nothing. I saw it not knowing what was coming and yeah, it’s still really freaky. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2018, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scariest-movie-youve-ever-seen/820095/32 "2018-08-23T18:21:24Z")
Oh hell, how could I forget **Night of the Living Dead**? I was standing lonely one-man on-call duty in the military one night in an empty building and was flipping through the few pre-cable channels available, and came across a movie already in progress. Two people walking through a cemetery. Hmmm, what’s this about? An hour later I was ready to start stacking furniture in front of the duty room door, and did NOT sleep at all that night. ---
**Author:** ![WOOKINPANUB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wookinpanub/32/132_2.png) [@WOOKINPANUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WOOKINPANUB)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2018, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scariest-movie-youve-ever-seen/820095/33 "2018-08-23T18:59:34Z")
I talked about [Death Smiles on a Murderer](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068972/?ref_=nv_sr_2) in another thread about media that scared us as kids. When I think of nightmare inducing images I can’t get out of my head, and that had the most profound physical affect on me, that one wins hands down. A lot of that is due to my age at the time and over the years I remembered that feeling and kept building on it to the point where it took me 40 years to watch it again. And now I can see it’s more delightfully cheesy than scary but the lady with the rotting face still scares the shit out of me. The movie that is scariest to me on its own merit, is either [The Ring[/] or \* It Follows[/]. I love both these films’ use of sound, and atmosphere. Neither one is particularly gory but each has one brief, _really disturbing_ image the dead girl on the beach and the girl in the closet, respectively. ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2018, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scariest-movie-youve-ever-seen/820095/34 "2018-08-23T19:14:16Z")
I watched the Thing on HBO when I was about 15, late at night with the sound turned way down so I didn’t wake my parents up, sitting really close to the screen. When the guy got his arms bitten off trying to defibrillate the infected dude I about shit myself. ---
**Author:** ![blondebear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blondebear/32/1022_2.png) [@blondebear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blondebear)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2018, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scariest-movie-youve-ever-seen/820095/35 "2018-08-23T19:56:21Z")
[[REC]](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1038988/?ref_=tttr_tr_tt) is right up there for me. Not for people who hate POV/shaky cam, but if you “liked” Blair Witch you should check it out. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_R.Mortiss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim_r.mortiss/32/142_2.png) [@Tim\_R.Mortiss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_R.Mortiss)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2018, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scariest-movie-youve-ever-seen/820095/36 "2018-08-23T20:08:08Z")
I love horror movies, but they never scare me. I can’t seem to suspend enough disbelief to think of them as plausible. But a good psychological thriller can scare the pants off me. I think the scaredest I’ve ever been by a movie was **Play Misty For Me** , closely followed by the original **Saw**. ---
**Author:** ![harmonicamoon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/65b543/32.png) [@harmonicamoon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/harmonicamoon)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2018, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scariest-movie-youve-ever-seen/820095/37 "2018-08-23T20:59:15Z")
> [@Tim\_R.Mortiss](#): > > I love horror movies, but they never scare me. I can’t seem to suspend enough disbelief to think of them as plausible. But a good psychological thriller can scare the pants off me. I think the scaredest I’ve ever been by a movie was **Play Misty For Me** , closely followed by the original **Saw**. Exactly. Not a horror movie, but intense. The shinning. And as already mentioned, the last scene of Carrie. ---
**Author:** ![burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/burpo_the_wonder_mutt/32/365_2.png) [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2018, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scariest-movie-youve-ever-seen/820095/38 "2018-08-23T21:17:36Z")
> [@harmonicamoon](#): > > \ The shinning. \ You mean, “The Shining.” 😉 ---
**Author:** ![snfaulkner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snfaulkner/32/433_2.png) [@snfaulkner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snfaulkner)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2018, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scariest-movie-youve-ever-seen/820095/39 "2018-08-23T21:17:46Z")
Another vote for The Thing. It scarred me for life. Granted I was only like 8 or 9 when I saw it. But it is still my favorite movie ever. It \*still \*gives me goosebumps when they are debating what to do to MacReady when he’s trapped outside and the doorknob starts turning. Also another vote for The Shining. Those girls still creeps me the fuck out. Aliens scared me for a long time too, but not anymore. There are others, but mostly all from when I was a kid. I haven’t seen much that comes anywhere close to scaring me anymore, though probably because I’ve grown up and become desensitized to the world and pretty much just a hollow shell of a human. ---
**Author:** ![Prof.Pepperwinkle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/prof.pepperwinkle/32/13627_2.png) [@Prof.Pepperwinkle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Prof.Pepperwinkle)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2018, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scariest-movie-youve-ever-seen/820095/40 "2018-08-23T21:27:35Z")
As a young teen, Vincent Price in _Diary of a Madman_ was the scariest thing. It kept me awake for a month. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scariest-movie-youve-ever-seen/820095.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scariest-movie-youve-ever-seen/820095.md?page=3)