What are the scariest movies you’ve ever seen?  It’s a question that many a horror fan gets asked in casual conversation.  The problem with such a quandary is that horror is a subjective genre.  Another problem is that fears change.  What was terrifying to one generation is laughable to another or just plain confusing.  Finally, if we are including world cinema, there are cultural barriers.

What makes a film scary?  It is one that most effectively taps into the primal fears of the largest number of people.  The best horror films cross cultural divides and speak on a universal level, tapping into the collective fears of humanity.  They can be gory, spooky, repulsive, or terrifying but they have no obligation to be any of those things.  They simply have to scare.  They have to take the viewers on a harrowing journey, dancing as close to the brink of mental breakdown as possible, then leave them shuddering afterward.

Below is a list of what we feel are the 10 scariest movies ever made, ever.  We judged each film carefully on three criterion.  First, the film of course had to be scary.  We then consider the effect that the film had on moviegoers at the time of its release, and how effective it is today.  Finally, we take into consideration the merits of the film itself.

[REC] #10

One of my personal favorite Zombie films, this nasty little thriller chomps down and never lets up until the final frames exit the screen. Angela Vidal, Host of Barcelona’s Reality TV show “While You’re Asleep”, along with her cameraman, are covering a sleepy night at a fire station when an emergency call comes in.  Upon arrival the fireman discover a crazed tenant wandering aimlessly inside her apartment, screaming and muttering. The shit hits the fan, the firemen are scrambling, Angela, her cameraman and the remaining tenants are running for their lives, and the government has quarantined the entire building trapping everyone inside. Talk about a potboiler.

Long after the found footage craze reached its peak, this film came along breathing new life into the tired genre. Directors Jaume Balagueró, Paco Plaza deliver a visceral terror that shoves you front and center, right into the action. The tight script by  Jaume Balagueró, Paco Plaza, and Luiso Berdejo is almost too lean in that there are barely any moments to catch your breath before things barrel back into crazy town.  Let’s not forget the gore.  Not that a movie needs to have blood to be scary.  But this one delivers stomach churning moments tinged with real, pulse-pounding scares.  When you have that it’s practically nirvana.

Available for download on the following sites

AMAZON, iTunes,

The Haunting (1963) #9

Based on Shirley Jackson’s “Haunting of Hill House” this brilliant traditional horror movie is a slow burn of psychological suspense.  Directed  by Robert Wise two years after West Side Story and two years before The Sound of Music the movie tells the story of Eleanor Lance, a nervous, nebbish woman, who is invited to be part of a paranormal study weekend at Hill House.  Headed by Dr. John Markway, the small group of test subjects includes skeptic Luke Sanderson, and clairvoyant lesbian Theodora.  As Dr. Markway leads the group through studies, the house begins to slowly tick away at the mental stability of its visitors.

What sets this film apart from other haunted house movies, including the truly awful remake from 1999, is that it leaves so much to the imagination yet is still truly terrifying.  The camera swoops and dives around menacing doors and hallways inferring a spectral presence.  The black and white cinematography shows just what is needed and hides other things in nebulous shadows, leaving viewers wondering what is hiding in the dark.  We also have characters here that we can actually believe; The edgy fashionista psychic whose cool exterior is slowly broken, the everyman that has no room in his logical brain for spooks, and the frazzled woman at the end of her mental rope.  You believe why these people are here, hence you believe it when they begin to see the unbelievable.

Rated G, this film still contains some of the most suspenseful moments in movie history, “Whose hand was I holding?” (shudder)

Available for download on the following sites

AMAZON, YouTube,

Alien (1979) #8

Just two years after his feature film debut with The Duelists, Ridley Scott delivered Alien in 1979.  Introducing a young Sigourney Weaver, Alien told the story of the commercial vessel Nostromo who’s crew is  awakened from hyper sleep to answer a distress call on a nearby planet.  After a botched exploration of the planet a member of the crew returns with, let’s just say, an implant.  Once the life form is running lose on the clunky spacecraft, the crew must kill the evil lurking on the ship before it kills them.

Described as a haunted house movie in space, it delivers a dystopian, capitalistic view of the future, far from the gleaming spires and altruistic optimism delivered by most sci-fi up to that point.  Claustrophobic corridors and steaming passageways conceal the hidden danger of the titular Alien until it is ready to pounce on its prey.

Nobody saw this movie coming when it was released on June 22nd 1979.  Just two small years after Star Wars had first hit screens, one year before Empire Strikes Back, many had a far more fantastical view of space.  This nasty little movie delivered an alien, designed by H.R. Geiger, evil motives from greedy corporations, and the most shocking scene in any movie up to that point.  Tums® anyone?

Available for download on the following sites.

AMAZON

Night of the Living Dead (1968) #7

Nearly every modern zombie movie owes a debt to George Romero’s groundbreaking monster movie. Released in October of 1968, the movie opens on Johnny and Barbara, brother and sister who are visiting their father’s grave.  Attacked, graveside Johnny is killed and Barbara flees to the safety of an abandoned farm house.  She soon discovers that she is not the only person in the house. Barbara and the fellow survivors must survive a night trapped in the home fending off the bloodthirsty monsters outside.

Why is this film scary? The zombies are terrifying, but what is truly unnerving is the infighting amongst those in the house.  Tinged with social commentary, the survival drama plays out to the backdrop of graphic blood, gore, and dismemberment.  If a movie can make you think while it scares you it has achieved a rare thing.

Up to this point the only zombies seen on the big screen were those of Victor Halperin’s White Zombie or Val Lewton’s I walked with a Zombie.  Slow moving somnambulistic trudgers that weren’t so interested in eating as they were in doing the bidding of their master.  Here we got animalistic close-ups of teeth gnashing and bone and sinew. We were treated to scenes of victims being torn apart. Last but not least, there’s the touching scene when a reanimated young girl kills her mom in a basement.  This was something new, savage, and unfriendly.  It still holds up today.

Watch the whole movie here!

Rosemary’s Baby #6

Before post-partem depression was even a thing we had Rosemary’s Baby.  Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse move into an apartment in an old, storied building and soon after, things begin to get weird.  It begins with the odd smells here and there.  Next up we have the quirky neighbors lead by Minnie Castevet (Ruth Gordon in an Oscar-winning role for supporting actress), then to complicate matters Rosemary suddenly becomes preggers.

Slow-creeping paranoia is the power that this film has and it dials the heat up on viewers until you are suddenly in the thick of it all, worked up into a frenzy with the poor mother.  Mia Farrow’s vulnerable performance as Rosemary, a young, naive mother, is the stuff of movie legend.  You feel her annoyances, you believe her paranoia, whats more you begin to care about this unborn child.

What makes this film work is the aforementioned rising tension, but more importantly the fantastic situation Rosemary finds herself in all within the grounded setting of everyday apartment life.  As Rosemary continues her apparent descent into madness, more and more people brush her off and you begin to wonder if you should abandon your own sympathy for this troubled woman.  Few films capture that true fever-dream paranoia like this one.

While not a film that will make you jump or even scream, the staying power of this movie is what keeps it on the list.  It will stick with you for days, years even.

The Descent #5

The Descent is a 2005 British horror film written and directed by Neil Marshall that received both critical and marginal theatrical success upon release. One year after losing her daughter and husband in a car accident, Juno (Natalie Mendoza), joins her 5 friends in the Appalachian mountains for rest and relaxation. Having entered an unmapped cave system, the women become trapped and are hunted by troglofaunal flesh-eating humanoids.

What makes this film work is its ability to tap into several layers of horror at once.  The enveloping claustrophobia of the tight passageways in an unmapped cavern is so palpable that you can practically taste the gritty earth that crumbles around the characters.  Next you have the mental breakdown of our heroine, who is not only battling her inner demons of loss, but those of betrayal at the hands of a close friend as well.  Finally, you have the aberrantly gory, flesh-eating monsters that are hunting the women as they attempt to paw their way through the dark passages in search of a way out.

The flick plays out, not only as a straight up horror movie but also as a metaphor of a descent into madness. The anger, the sadness, the desperation, they are all there and black as pitch. If you watch this movie please, for god’s sake watch the original European cut of the film.  A U.S. version of the movie omits a final moment that is a brave, poignant way to end this savage experience. Deeply effective, The Descent remains a remarkable piece of horror.

Jaws #4

It is rumored that Spielberg said that he didn’t want people on the edge of their seats, but under them. His intent is clear as Jaws starts right off the bat with a midnight shark attack. The movie then gets us to care about the characters facing this imminent danger.  The townsfolk elect our hero, Chief Brody (Roy Scheider), to fight the threat with the help of a Marine Biologist (Richard Dreyfus) and a salty sea captain (Robert Shaw).  The stage is then set for a suspenseful chase film on the open seas while tensions build between the three men.

What makes this film work is the very thing that almost did it in.  The mechanical shark built for the film was a disaster, only working a fraction of the time, at one point even sinking to the bottom of the sea.  This forced Spielberg to be creative, giving us the shark’s point of view, hiding there actual monster until 45 minutes into the film, creating an unbearable sense of anticipation.

Attendance at beaches around the world dropped as a result of this tense thriller about a great white shark that terrorizes and island town in New England.  Based on Peter Benchley’s novel of the same name, with a screenplay by Benchley and Carl Gottlieb the film was an instant smash, making back nearly all of its $8million budget and becoming the first ever summer blockbuster.

If you haven’t seen this film you were either busy swimming in the ocean or under a rock, or under the ocean under a rock.  It’s a classic that still holds up today.

The Shining #3

Dismissed upon arrival by most as Kubrick’s sell out film, The Shining is a lovely marriage of the clinical and the romantic sensibilities of the master film maker.  Everyman writer Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) accepts a winter caretaker position at a sprawling mountain retreat where evil forces soon begin to invade his mind and threaten those around him.  Along for the lovely family vacation are his wife Wendy (Shelly Duvall), and clairvoyant son Danny (Danny Lloyd).  Once the staff has left, the hotel begins to tinker with the minds of it’s visitors.  Jack is tormented by invasive thoughts of rage, Wendy is increasingly worried, and little Danny is chased by malevolent playmates.

The stars of this film, even the source material by horror maestro Stephen King, play second fiddle to Kubrick’s perfectionist film making.  The symmetrical imagery, the sterile pacing, the mounting paranoia and isolation, all build to a climax that is almost unbearable if you are along for the ride. Removed and clinical, Kubrick reflects the chilly atmosphere with a remove that traps you in the hotel, giving you time to soak in the surroundings and notice every single unsettling detail.  Are the specters of the hotel real or are the products of a tormented mind?  Is little Danny being chased by evil ghosts or is it his wild imagination?

Truly a wonderful, gothic, haunted house movie of the highest order, The Shining endures because of the overwhelming sense of dread and the endless speculation that it fires in the minds of the viewer.  As an adaptation it is a failure, as a stand alone piece of modern horror, it is an unsettling marvel.

Halloween #2

A tight, vicious little slasher movie that delivers relentless suspense, Halloween is nearly one of the best horror films ever made.  Slapped together during the summer of 1978 with a budget of $300,000, Halloween tells the story of a faceless killer that suddenly begins to torment a small town on Halloween night.  The film opens by giving the audience the killer’s point of view during a murder then revealing that the killer is just an 8 year-old child.  Fast forward to Halloween night, 1978 the same demented individual escapes a mental hospital to return to his hometown 15 years later.

The killer, known only as “The Shape” in the screenplay, begins to toy with his prey, darting in and out of visibility always lingering.  Jamie Lee Curtis plays Laurie Strode, a babysitter caught in the cross hairs of the unstoppable slasher.  The only hope that any of the townsfolk have, comes in the form of Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance) as the doc attempts to track down the boy he has tried to keep locked up.

This is a mean little movie that put John Carpenter on the map, setting the template for slasher movies throughout the 80’s. For years it was the most successful independent film of all time, raking in $47 million dollars on its initial release in ’78.  The unfortunate result of its success is that nearly every other slasher film after it, including the sequels, tried to top Halloween by upping the ante of blood and body counts with nearly the same storyline.  Nobody remembered what made the film work to begin with; Mounting suspense, an unstoppable evil, and the sense that the killer could be anywhere, anytime.

Halloween is required viewing for any fan of the horror genre for the simple reason that it makes no other promises but to scare, then fully delivers.  It is an efficient, merciless thriller that wastes little time with set up or exposition, jumping right into the danger and fear.

The Exorcist #1

Director William Friedkin emphatically has maintained that The Exorcist was not intended to be a horror film but rather a movie about faith. Well, then faith is scary. The Exorcist certainly features faith.  The story revolves around an actress (Ellen Burstyn) who’s daughter becomes the victim of demonic possession, a young priest (Jason Miller) grappling with his mother’s terminal illness and his own questions of faith, and an older priest (Max Von Sydow) that the only solution for either is an unshakable faith in God.

Nominated for 10 Academy Awards®, including Best Picture, The Exorcist legitimized horror, raising it to the level of art.  When the film was released, December 26th, 1973, it was an assault of  the senses.  It overwhelmed moviegoers with a barrage of vile, terrifying imagery, satanic possession, revolting acts, and unbearable tension.  The impact on the moviegoing is still legendary and has yet to be matched.

Over the years, of course there were imitators, sequels, and the endless parade of inferior duplications.  What sets this film apart is that after over 40 years, the movie still packs a punch.  This is because Friedkin never intended to make a “horror” film.  The horror was secondary to the real situation and drama of the characters.  Once audience members bought into the story and situation, the supernatural elements were woven into the real-life settings, making them all the more believable and grounded. Humanize the horror and you will bring the audience to their knees.

There you have it folks. The HorrorBuzz Top 10 scariest films ever made. There are more, lots more movies that are terrifyingly good that didn’t break the top 10. What are your top ten? What do you think should be on this list?