I love scary movies and creepy books, etc. I haven’t been actually scared by scary media since I was about 17 and saw the original A Nightmare on Elm Street. The idea of being stalked in my sleep was disturbing, even to someone who had grown up on Monster movies. I have a friend who would put her copy of The Shining in the freezer at night to keep from thinking about it. Now that I’m older, I still love scary media, and the feeling of being creeped out, even if I don’t get scared anymore.
What was the last movie (book, play, music, TV, story, etc.) to actually scare you?
The last full on movie? Probably Ju On: The Grudge or A Tale of Two Sisters. But that first trailer for It Chapter Two with the old lady in the apartment fucked me up to a surprising degree. No, the rest of the movie is not that scary.
I actually had a nightmare after watching Hereditary, so that was the last thing to scare me. The last thing to scar me, however, was The Nightingale. That was a rough, rough watch.
Hmm… I bounced off of Hereditary due to the slow burn, and I wasn’t really in the mood for a slow burn. May need to spin back to this if it’s still streaming.
Hereditary was the first thing to spring to my mind as well. I love how the film shifts forms from the emotional crush from the accident (viewed from a neutral position, of course), to the shift in the final act where it goes from emotionally hard to watch to straight up terrifying.
I’m glad you brought up Paranormal Activity because now I remember the last film that legit scared me, at least one very specific moment made my entire body prickle and put me on edge for the rest of the film, and that was Leaving DC.
Hereditary was occasionally creepy but it’s a bit like Don’t Look Now for me where I just do not get all the fuss about it. At times I even found both films unintentionally funny so, eh. Different strokes. God, they’re both films centered on grieving parents. That makes me sound terrible.
I think that what got to me about Paranormal Activity was how the tension just builds and builds through the entire movie without giving you a break at all, so by the end you’re super tense, which makes the jump scares way more impactful.
I don’t watch much horror but the last I remember to have good scares was the first Conjuring.
I never understood the Paranormal movies or the entire “found footage” thing. Tried watching one and it was just so boring with annoying people who just argued with each other and complained about why the camera was rolling.
That was the first film that came to mind for this thread but I’ve been scared a few times since then! Lake Mungo is a seriously good slow burn. That and The House of the Devil. There’s no tension breaks in the latter, it’s all build-up.
Ok you know what actually scared the shit out of me, to the point where I shut it off, is Bobcat Goldthwait’s Bigfoot movie, Willow Creek. It’s on Amazon Prime.
It’s a terrible movie. Most of it is just Bigfoot people talking into a camera. They aren’t actors, they’re real Bigfoot people espousing their Bigfoot dogma. Then the characters go into the woods, and the Bigfoots start fucking with them in their tent. You can’t see the Bigfoots, they are just outside the tent making noises. That triggered something inside of me and I had to stop.
Depends what scares you. I don’t really get scared by jump scares or gore and that sort of thing. Mounting dread is what gets me, and Lake Mungo has that in spades.That said, I wasn’t really nominating it for the thread, just responding to Jason’s comment.
Yes, Lake Mungo is one of the best “horror” movies I’ve seen in recent years. I find its mixture of dread, sorrow and loss to be very authentic feeling, such that it lends that authenticity to the less esoteric, more “supernatural” bits for lack of a better word. When the scares come, they have more punch than they would have in a less well made movie.
Did it scare me? No, not really. But I don’t scare like I used to, and what I find more valuable is how long a movie sits in the back of my skull, just won’t let go of me, and Lake Mungo absolutely grabbed me hard. And I don’t even like ghost stories all that much.
