Our monthly staff features of past have usually been reserved for top ten lists regarding a certain subject, genre or even anticipation lists pertaining to film festivals. With this monthly feature we went through a few ideas before settling on something a little different. The idea was to always have it be horror themed since October is synonymous with Halloween. But instead of having a top ten list of a certain type of horror film or even ranking our favorites, we’ve decided that each of us will share with the reader what actually scares us in horror movies. Whether it’d be actual subject matter or aesthetics applied by the filmmakers, we discuss the various ingredients in horror movies that make us put that pillow over our eyes or make us reach for a loved one’s grasp.

What Scares Us The Most In Movies

Someone Else Is In Control

I thought a lot about what scares me in Horror films and the one thing that I kept coming back to is not being in control. I know it sounds weird, but when I’m watching a movie and if I can’t get a grip on what’s real or not or if I’m watching a living, breathing nightmare where I have no control, I freak. I think that’s why Suspiria is so attractive to me. The film is a master class of sensory overload where viewers are toyed with for 90 minutes. We are paralyzed to cheer for Susie Bannion, because we are so entrenched in this world where colors and sounds could never exist in our reality. Every time I watch the film, I can’t move. I’m transfixed and it scares me that I can’t move while I watch it. David Lynch is the master at creating films where the viewer is essentially his pawn and he attacks their stability with striking images. His final film (so far), Inland Empire, is quite possibly the greatest nightmare that I’ve seen in film. I was too scared to move while watching it. Laura Dern running in slow motion towards the camera that is suddenly sped up to a roaring orchestral cue haunts me to this day. Simply put, when David Lynch is in control, you are not.

I can also bring up that not being in control can also be applied literally as well. When a person in the film is shooting what you’re seeing (think Blair Witch), you experience what they are seeing from their point of view. I think the POV handheld genre has gone overboard, but there are some films that execute this to great extent. [Rec] and Grave Encounters are by no means great horror movies, but both feature great moments where someone else is in control of the camera and I want them to turn away or zoom out. By then it’s too late. [Blake Ginithan]

Trapped With No Way Out

Nothing gets my heart racing more than the idea of being trapped with no way out knowing that impending doom is inevitable. For me the fear is that feeling of being helpless in a situation that is inescapable. This is a rather simple concept that has been used and modified several times over. I suppose the most rudimentary example of this is when characters are trapped inside a room where the walls on both sides begin to close in to the middle of the room. This sort of “Walls Closing In” stunt has been around forever and I likely picked it up as a child while watching cartoons, Star Wars: A New Hope, or even Indiana Jones & The Temple Of Doom. As I mentioned, that is just the most elementary of an example and it would be easy to confuse my fear of being helplessly trapped with straight-up claustrophobia, so let me explain further.

You probably remember that famous scene in The Shining when Jack Nicholson busts down the door and screams, “Here’s Jonny!” through a hole in the door. That scene is a great example of what terrifies me the most in horror films. In case you haven’t seen it (watch it here), Nicholson slowly walks with a deranged look on his face and an axe in his hands towards his wife who has locked herself in the bathroom from him. She seemingly has nowhere else to go and she knows that she will soon be killed if she cannot escape. Add in Stanley Kubrick’s methodically slow-pacing and ear-piercing score and it is the perfect setup the scare the living hell out of me. The combination of having no control over the situation and knowing that death is soon approaching is what scares me the most. [Dustin Jansick]

Ambiguity

I’m going to be a bit broad with my pick, but what scares me the most is simple: ambiguity. A lot of horror films tend to go in the opposite direction, showing too much or explaining every little thing to the audience, but there’s still plenty of power in deciding not to show or tell. When I watched Ju-On years ago what terrified me wasn’t the jittery ghosts, it was how the curse in the film wasn’t defined in any way whatsoever. It could be weeks, months, or even years before these ghosts would get you, but they will kill you at some point.. Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Kairo has one of the most terrifying first acts I’ve seen, as a rash of suicides and hauntings occur without explanation. Films like Insidious and Paranormal Activity also drew on elements of the unknown to scare audiences (to the point where people are now throwing money at them) but their inferior sequels built a mythology explaining every single thing that occurred in the originals. It’s an approach that shows how, the more you know, the less scared you’ll be. [CJ Prince]

Jack Nicholson As Joker

As I get older, I find myself almost impervious to fright at the movie theater, which is more of a curse than a blessing. It’s a sad thing that most scary movies fail to make my skin crawl like they did to my 7-year-old, candy-corn-gobbling self. The upside to my time-hardened nerves is that when a film does manage to creep me out, it’s a delicious rarity that I devour like a starving dog. I relish horror flicks like Eyes Without a Face, Nosferatu, Last House on the Left, and The Descent for employing finely tuned filmmaking techniques–not hackneyed “jump scares” or “false-alarm scares” (as Roger Ebert brilliantly called them)–to create deathly atmosphere and a sense of inescapable dread.

But still, nothing–NOTHING–can compare to the terror I experienced back in the candy-corn-gobbling days when I got my first glimpse at the face of pure evil–Jack Nicholson’s Joker. I remember being so scared of that pale, perpetually grinning motherfucker that I couldn’t even look at my family’s VHS copy of Tim Burton’s Batman. It didn’t even have Nicholson on it, but I knew some form of his lipstick-wearing devil spirit MUST have been lurking inside the cheap card stock packaging and black plastic shell. It had to be that smile–the only way to make any movie monster scarier is to have them bear their grisly grills like a demented clown (fuck clowns). There’s something repulsive, twisted, and deeply unsettling about someone who smiles as they’re about to do something truly sinister. I wonder if my folks ever got rid of that tape…[Bernard Boo]

Everything About Horror Films

So I will admit, I’ve never really been a huge fan of horror films. I’m pretty sure it all stems from watching Signs when I was in my early teens—man that film terrified me—the knife under the door, the creepy Alien sneaking out the hedges at that kids party. I had to keep the volume on 1 the entire time.

Then came my mid-teens when it was the cool thing to watch scary movies on a Friday night sleepover (Gothika, Amityville Horror, The Others – I mean what was up with that kid’s face?!) I think it’s the intense suspense build ups and the loud heavy Dolby Digital bass in the cinema that thumps through chest making you really feel like it’s all happening to you. I also find that the actual “knowing what’s around the corner” scares me more than whatever is there because your mind goes into a frenzy trying to prepare your body for it. [Amy Priest]

Suspense and Psychological Manipulation

I’ve never been one to actively search out horror films primarily for two reasons, the first being a belief (built from years of poor film choices by friends and family) that they all contained the same components, with slight variations on which “spooky” location and in which particular manner the unexplained deaths or disappearances happened. But in the interests of being truthful, the more honest—and embarrassing—reason is simply that I’m easily scared. Nevertheless, the films that really get to me are those that center more around suspense and psychological manipulation. Throw as much blood on the screen as you like, and it won’t bother me half as much as a mere second of something mentally disturbing. A perfect example of this is in 127 Hours (even though it’s not a horror film) when Scooby-Doo appears just for one shot; this one scene affected me far more than watching young Franco saw his arm off.

While finding suspense in films scary is a fairly universal concept, there is a defining line between the type of suspense we find dotted throughout films such as the Saw franchise and The Blair Witch Project, and the type we find in films such as Psycho and more recently, 28 Days Later. This difference stems from the basic intention of these films—are they attempting to provide us with a narrative that is scary in its essence, or are they attempting to thrill us with snippets of suspense loosely held together by some form of plot? I’ll jump (and perhaps even scream a little) at films that do the latter, but Joss Whedon has hit the nail on the head—at some point the majority of horror films devolved “into torture porn and into a long series of sadistic comeuppances.” Perhaps this is why my favourite horror film has to be, in all its meta construction, Whedon and Goddard’s The Cabin in the Woods; as much as it scares us, it simultaneously enters new territory, subverting our expectations of the genre. [Pavi Ramani]

Believability And Doubt-Producing Ending

My film genre of choice is horror, but because of that I’m actually quite a fastidious viewer and it takes a lot to impress me. The most obvious element of a scary film is actually the easiest to pull off: surprise. It’s not hard to startle an audience, jump out at them, or spray some blood in their direction, eliciting a few screams. The hard part, and what marks the best horror films from all the others in my opinion, is getting into our heads and keeping the fear alive once we leave the theater. The most memorable horror films have two elements that will get me every time.

First, is an essence of believability. I don’t care if it’s ghosts, aliens, murderers, or demons, if the film can show me that the scenario I’m witnessing could happen to me, than I’m much more likely to feel a sense of anxiety that heightens the fright. A virus that turns a majority of the world into zombies? Seems plausible. Found footage of the family-next-door being haunted? That looks like a house I’ve seen. Those look like people I know. I’m creeped out. Second, is a well-played, doubt-producing ending. At the end of The Silence of the Lambs, Clarice may have caught her serial killer, but Hannibal Lecter’s final phone call reminds her, and us, that evil is never truly contained, just redirected. A hand popping out of a grave, a-la Carrie, just makes me laugh; zooming in on Jack Torrance in an old picture on the wall of the Overlook Hotel at the end of The Shining, reminds me that the evil within that hotel lives on. Because they have these two elements, I can watch my favorite horror films over and over again and still squirm. Because really, I never stopped being scared of them. [Ananda Dillon]

Yesterday we presented part one of this two part feature on horror films that have been neglected by the average viewer. Today we bring to you our second and final installment that will include 10 films that we feel are horror films that have been overlooked, skipped over or just plain forgotten about Even though these would be our “10 through 1” we list alphabetically below Way Too Indie’s 10 Great Horror Films You Haven’t Seen (Part 2).

Angel Heart

Alan Parker’s horror film about a sleazy 1950’s New York private detective caught up in a missing persons case is gloriously depraved at times, but never boring. Mickey Rourke plays the said private detective, a man who the more and more he searches for this missing person, the more he slowly begins to lose his mind. And his soul. Robert DeNiro plays a supporting role as a mysterious man who initially hires Rourke for the case. The final 20 minutes of the film are spellbinding. [Blake]

Ghostwatch

While people in North America may not be familiar with Ghostwatch, the film has quite the reputation in the UK. Broadcast on Halloween in 1992, Ghostwatch was presented as a TV special that would investigate a haunted house in greater London. The goal was to record physical evidence of a poltergeist on live television, except viewers didn’t know that the entire program was fake and taped weeks in advance. The program was so believable in its presentation (mostly due to using real-life reporters from the network) that when ghostly apparitions did start appearing some people were legitimately fooled. There was an uproar afterwards, with thousands of phone calls from terrified viewers flooding the network and accusations of the show leading a man to commit suicide. Even if you know it’s all fake, Ghostwatch is still a fun ride with plenty of eerie moments supported by the show’s realistic presentation. Watch this and it’s easy to understand why people were tricked twenty years ago. [C.J.]

Hotel

Jessica Hausner’s criminally underseen Hotel is probably unlike any horror film in existence. Despite its brief 80 minute runtime, Hotel will feel much longer with its snail-like pace. Hotel follows Irene, a new worker at a resort in the Austrian Alps. Even though the girl she’s replacing vanished without a trace, none of the other workers seem to care and treat Irene with hostility. At the same time weird things begin to happen around the area, and the local legend of a witch seems to constantly linger in the background. What makes Hotel so unique and terrifying is that Hausner examines what causes fear along with the irrational nature behind what gives people the creeps. Everything that happens in Hotel can be rationally explained or brushed off, but Hausner infuses each moment with so much dread and atmosphere that a closed door or a broken speaker can create chills. The slow pacing and refusal to conform to any of the horror genre’s standards made Hotel get thrown into obscurity (it hasn’t been released in North America, and a DVD recently put out in the UK was done to capitalize on the success of Hausner’s most recent film) but in a just world Hotel would be recognized as one of the strongest horror films to come out of this century. [C.J.]

The House of the Devil

Ti West’s nostalgic trip to the 1980s is so accurate in its visuals that it wouldn’t be surprising if some people were fooled into thinking it really came out 3 decades ago. Following a poor college student who desperately needs to afford rent for her new apartment, her prayers are answered when she’s offered hundreds of dollars to babysit overnight at a house in the countryside outside of town. While every single thing about the homeowners (Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov, both brilliantly cast) would send anyone running in the opposite direction, the money is too tempting to pass up the offer. West quietly takes his time, slowly building up an uneasy atmosphere while throwing in a few jolts along the way to make sure people know that he knows what he’s doing. Once West pulls back the curtain he pulls no punches with an insane, bloody finale that shows why he’s one of the best horror filmmakers working today. [C.J.]

Inland Empire

David Lynch has made a career out of making surreal imagery aimed at shocking you. Inland Empire, his final film, is his best. A 3 hour mammoth nightmare about a woman trying to navigate a despairing Los Angeles is one shocking image after another. This film also has a slow beginning, but is very rewarding if you stick with it. Shot on low grade DV cameras giving it a very grungy look, but this choice makes Inland Empire frightening in some parts. If you’ve ever seen a David Lynch film you’ll somewhat know what to expect, if you haven’t, please don’t expect a logical film, Lynch doesn’t work that way. He simply means to unsettle you and he succeeds with flying colors. [Blake]

Kairo (Pulse)

Many films have been made that comment on our growing attachment to technology, but the most effective and relevant movie to tackle the subject came out back when dial-up was still the most common way to get online. Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Kairo is the first horror masterpiece of the 21st century, a downright terrifying ghost story whose message about the death of real social interaction has become more relevant today than it was 11 years ago. The universe where souls go in the afterlife has reached its capacity, and with nowhere else to go the spirits start spilling out through the seemingly infinite world of the internet. The problem is that these ghosts are filled with so much despair and pain that anyone who comes into contact with one is driven to suicide or simply ceases to exist. Kurosawa’s plot is as murky as the film’s visuals, but the themes of loneliness and loss of real-life connections resonate throughout. And there’s no way anyone can mention Kairo without bringing up how frightening it can be. Kurosawa shoots death scenes with a simplicity that makes them all the more horrific, and the hauntings are some of the scariest things ever put on film. But over a decade later, the scariest thing about Kairo is how well it predicted the future. [C.J.]

Santa Sangre

Alejandro Jodorowsky is a name most will probably not recognize unless you were to be a big follower of underground filmmaking. But thanks to films getting the DVD treatment, his films have found a wider audience. Sangre is another film in the horror genre that is a complete original. Santa Sangre is about a man who has been recently released from a mental institution after many years. We find out through flashbacks that he lived with his mother and father, who ran a circus. His father, in a fit of rage after discovering she was cheating on him with a fellow act, cuts off her arms. After being released, the young man decides to become his mother’s ‘arms’ in her quest for bloody vengeance. Santa Sangre has a very intoxicating vibe throughout its 2 hour runtime and will leave you breathless. I guarantee that you have never seen anything like this. And probably never will. This is a must see. [Blake]

Session 9

Someone once dared me to watch Session 9 with the lights off. I made it only about 45 minutes, when I had to pause the film and ran to turn them on. Brad Anderson’s film about an asbestos cleaning crew tasked with cleaning out an old mental institution takes its time, but once it hits its hour mark its one fantastic scare after another. The crew has a huge task with this massive dilapidated hospital and with the pressure mounting to get the job done early members of the crew slowly start to lose their minds. The final 30 minutes is heart pounding. [Blake]

Suicide Club

Riding on the wave of J-horror that swept across America in the early 2000s, Sion Sono made one hell of an entrance with Suicide Club. The film’s opening shows 54 high school girls cheerily holding each other’s hands before leaping in front of an oncoming subway train. Through the limbs and blood (there is a LOT of blood) police find a bag that contains a piece of skin from each of the 54 girls stitched together, and soon one police officer is discovering a secret cult that encourages its members to kill themselves. While Suicide Club lacks in scares, it makes up for it with plenty of laughs. The film is a pitch black comedy/satire that takes the cult of celebrity to a whole new extreme. Sono switches between genres without breaking a sweat, throwing in musical numbers and brooding suspense without losing control of what he wants to say. While Sion Sono has gone on to establish himself as one of the more prominent Japanese filmmakers working today, Suicide Club showed that Sono was definitely someone who couldn’t be lumped in with the pile of J-horror imports coming out around the same time. [C.J.]

Suspiria

The second Dario Argento film on my list. Suspiria is not only the best film Argento has done but also one of the best horror films ever made. Argento relies heavily on atmosphere and its score to create a dreamlike state. Suspiria is about an American ballet dancer transplanted to a dance school in rural Germany that is run by a coven of witches. But forget the film’s flimsy story; it’s just an excuse to showcase the brilliant filmmaking on hand. The cinematography and lighting combined with rock band Goblin’s score create one of the most surreal and hauntingly original pieces the genre has ever seen. Unfortunately when people talk about great horror films, no one seems to have seen this Italian masterpiece. [Blake]