My Top Ten Scary Movies

If you ever wondered how you could scare the crap out of me, then I have news for you. The following is a list of the top ten scariest movies I have ever seen. These are movies that caused an actual fear response, cause me to scream, cry out, run out of the house to find safety, or just stay up trembling. What you won't find on this list are some movies that seem to always top these lists. No SHINING, OMEN, or EXORCIST here. (I agree with Beetlejuice about the Exorcist. It does get funnier every time I see it!) So here it is, my top ten:

10. 1408 - I spend a lot of time letting my mind wonder/fixate on things, so watching John Cusack slowly lose his mind while being terrified by a malevolent force realy got to me. I remember walking out of the theatre and feeling like I'd been awake during a really messed up dream I had. The rest of that day was spent trying to shake the feeling that I was still living in some kind of weird nightmare.

9. POLTERGEIST - One scene. The guy who goes into th bathroom to peel a bit of something off his face, if you've seen it, you know what happens next. You ever try to have a screaming match with your brain? I did, and my brain won. *shudders*

8. SE7EN - I hate David Fincher. Apart from a brief stint in my late teens when I though Fight Club was awesome, I can safely say I've loathed every single thing he has made. Mostly because I don't understand people heaping praise on boring, stupid movies, but Se7en I hate for a different reason. It's the kind of movie that is so dark, and still has a sense of reality about it, that by the end, I have lost all faith in humanity. This movie makes me not want to live in a world that bleak. It's a horror equivalent of watching Requiem for a Dream: After it's over, I just want to hold my loved ones and cry, and then put on Super Troopers to chase the sadness away.

7. PSYCHO - This is a movie I thought I knew all there was to know about. I've watched Bravo count down the 100 scariest movie moments about a dozen times, and they always talk about the shower scene, Norman sinking the car, and the guy falling down the stairs. What they leave out is the ending. Oh God, the ending. When you finally see the face of the killer, it's so unsettling and bizare, your brain can't quite process it. Anthony Perkins gives the best serial killer performance I have ever seen. He is so captivating, balancing pitiful and creepy perfectly. And the final shot of the film is creepier than anything in Silence of the Lambs, which is also based on the life of Ed Gein.

6. JAWS - I have an almost crippling fear of being in a deep body of water, and I blame Jaws. Even swimming in the lakes back home, If the water goes over my head, I know, I KNOW, I am about to die. I've gotten better about suppressing that feeling, but it's always, always there. Stupid shark movie.

5. SAW III - Sometimes the context you see a movie in changes everything. I'm actually a fan of the Saw franchise, which is surprising because the first time I saw the original, I thought it was the worst movie I'd ever seen. But the makeup and prop designer inside of me grew to love the inventive traps as the series went on. But I watched Saw III for the first time in a hotel room with a bunch of my theatre friends in college, and I was the only one in the room who liked scary movies. When you have that many people around you losing their minds, you get infected by it, and you start to feel very unsafe. The movie has turned on you and you may not make it. Also, this one has the two most upsetting traps in the whole series: the pig trap, and the torture rack. I still can't keep my eyes open in those scenes.

4. DRAG ME TO HELL - Of all the movies on this list, this is the only one with happy memories. I saw this at the Rivoli Theatre in La Crosse, WI. A group of us from the theatre I was working at drove over there and ordered pizza, beer, & hot wings and sat in the front row and had an absolute blast. This movie balanced the scares about 2 seconds after you have started laughing at the punchline of a joke, causing you to shift from laugh to scream on a dime, followed by another laugh of apreciation. If you love the thrills and scares of the best rollercoasters, this movie is for you.

3. THE DESCENT - I love visiting caves, but I always have that moment where I think of just how many tons of rock I'm standing under, and how dead I'd be if there was a cave in. This movie answers that question, then makes it worse, by adding monsters down there as well. It also features a cast of strong female characters who mostly try to do exactly what I'd do in the same situation. And they're still screwed. If you watch this movie, stick with the unrated ending. It's way better.

2. TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE - This movie makes me just want to shower. It's just so relentlessly horrifying. It was also the first slasher movie I saw that starred average looking, sympathetic victims. The movie starts creepy, quickly moves to F'ed up when they pick up a hitch-hiker, and it only goes downhill from there. The final sequence with the whole family around the dinner table is the most disturbing thing I've seen in a movie. This is not a movie to watch alone.

1. THE INNKEEPERS - Ti West is my new favorite horror director, and this movie caught me totally off guard. I'd already seen his first movie, HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, which is a pretty great throwback horror movie. I liked it, but I wasn't too scared by it. His second film though, caused me to flee my house in terror. To say anything about the INNKEEPERS is to spoil the surprise, so I'll just give my inner monologue as I watched it: "la la la, lovable losers, closing hotel, blah blah blah.......ha, that was cute.....blah blah blah, oooh, that's kind a creepy, la la la, oh good, it's almost over, what a disapointme- wait...what? no, oh no, ohnonononononono, Get out of there! OH SH*T! OH! OH MY GOD!!!! AAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!.............. I'm going to hide somewhere bright and happy, like the mall." By lulling you into a near stupor, your brain isn't prepared when the movie gets scary, and you feel like you do when a dream you're having takes a wrong turn: you're helpless and terrified and you just want to make it stop. This movie is the reason for this post, mainly because I had a dream last night where my wife and I were in the final scary scene. Not cool, subconscious, not cool at all.


HONORABLE MENTIONS:

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK: as a small child I walked into the room at my grandparents house right when Toht's face was melting off. Nightmares for weeks. Also, I hate spiders.

JURASSIC PARK: Went to see this movie for a friend's birthday party in 3rd Grade. I hid under the candy counter from the moment the guy gets pulled into the raptor cage in the opening until the T-rex fought the raptors at the end. Basically, Steven Spielberg was the root of all my childhood trauma.

SPY KIDS: I have two words for you: Thumb Thumbs. ugh! I was so creeped out by this movie, I made my dad take us back to the movie theater to see Josie and the Pussycats just so I could sleep that night.

My one and only statement about MN amendments.

This is my one and only statement in regards to this election. If you're sick of hearing about politics, just stop reading now. really. It's fine. I wrote this to get it off my chest more than I wrote it to convince anyone that I'm right. Now that you've been warned, it's about to get all kinds of preachy up in here. Still reading? Ok. Don't say I didn't warn you. Everyone, my one and only political statement: Vote for the representives you believe in. That is your right and duty as an American citizen. If you can see my facebook profile, it means I have friended you and I think you are a good and decent person. I also believe your vote is sacred and private, you don't need to explain yourself to anyone. I only ask that those of you voting in MN think long and hard about the marriage and voter ID amendments. Voting yes on either is a vote to restrict the rights of those around you. The marriage amendment needlessly restricts the rights of people who are very dear to me, people who have shown me great kindness and generosity over the years, people I would do anything for. A vote no does not affect your beliefs, it does not legalize gay marriage, it only prevents us from using the state constitution to officially sanction bigotry. Even if gay marriage were to be legalized (as it should be), the government cannot force religious institutions to perform gay weddings. Churches have and will continue to have the right to refuse to marry any one they wish. For example, Catholic churches refuse to marry people all the time for various reasons, and they will certainly be able to add gay people to that list when gay marriage becomes legal. That is their right, and a right given to all religious institutions that I would fight for them to keep. Gay marriage is about giving legal protections and responsibility to those who disire it. It's about letting people retain joint property and assets after a death, it's about visiting loved ones in the hospital, and it's about the right to divorce and recieve fair treatment by the law when dissolving such a partnership. There are countless other legal and logistical advantages to being married that my gay friends are being denied everyday for archaic and ridiculous reasons. Marriage has evolved and been redefined countless times or the centuries. Multiple wives, dowries, concubines, arranged marriages.... these are all repelent ideas to us now, and they were all once allowed under "traditional" views of marriage. we changed definitions again over the years when we allowed interracial marriages. The world continued to spin. It will continue to spin after we let all loving, caring adults marry the ones they love. Please vote No, it hurts no one, and will mean a lot to people I love very much. As for the voter ID amendment, the amendment cost millions of dollars, with cause a need for increased government oversight, disenfranchise millions of voters, and do almost nothing to stop voter fraud. Why? People who currently don't have driver's license will need to find a way to get and pay for a photo ID. The incresed demand will create a need to hire more government workers, and, being the goverment, we'll need to pay someone else to watch over them. There are also many people who cannot travel, cannot afford the fee, or both. So either Taxpayers will have to pick up the tab, or these American citizens will be dinied the right to vote. All this is allegedly to prevent voter fraud. Studies show that voter fraud among the general public is rare. $500 in fines and potential jail time is a lot to risk for one extra vote. Likewise for politicians themselves. The fallout from being caught stealing votes would be devastating. Besides, logic suggests that the political parties would not be spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year raising money to win votes if they could just cheat. It's a wasteful, stupid amendment that expects us to vote to restrict the voting process out of fear and ignorance. I for one, will not vote to restrict my or any one else's rights. I urge you to do the same. If you've made it this far, thanks for reading. That's pretty much all I have to say on the subject. If you disagree, thanks for hearing me out. You are of course welcome to attempt to change my mind. Fair warning, it won't work. We will both be happier agreeing to disagree.