Horror movie thread (it’s that time of year)

Icky Mettle

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Now that we’ve hit mid-September, we need an ongoing horror movie thread. I would love to hear about any horror movie recommendations, but if anyone specifically has recommendations for horror movies that I could watch with my almost 11-year-old son, that would be great (rated R movies are fine as long as the themes wouldn’t be way over his head or as long as they’re not too disturbing).
 
Now that we’ve hit mid-September, we need an ongoing horror movie thread. I would love to hear about any horror movie recommendations, but if anyone specifically has recommendations for horror movies that I could watch with my almost 11-year-old son, that would be great (rated R movies are fine as long as the themes wouldn’t be way over his head or as long as they’re not too disturbing).

Rosemary's Baby?
 
Depends on how sensitive your kid is but Poltergeist is one to consider. Still scary but the dated FX take some of the edge off.

A few others

ParaNorman
The Sixth Sense
Arachnophobia
The Others
The Woman in Black
Presence (may be too subtle)
The Babadook
Lake Mungo
The Devils Backbone (Spanish)
The Orphanage
The Boy
 
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Depends on how sensitive your kid is but Poltergeist is one to consider. Still scary but the dated FX take some of the edge off.

A few others

ParaNorman
The Sixth Sense
Arachnophobia
The Others
The Woman in Black
Presence (may be too subtle)
The Babadook
Lake Mungo
The Devils Backbone (Spanish)
The Orphanage
The Boy
I first watched Poltergeist when I was 7. The scene that freaked me out more than anything was the scene where the paranormal investigator was raiding the fridge and the meat started crawling on the counter and then bursts open, and he drops the chicken leg he was eating from his mouth and it’s crawling with maggots. I didn’t even get to the point where the dude starts peeling his face off.
 
Now that we’ve hit mid-September, we need an ongoing horror movie thread. I would love to hear about any horror movie recommendations, but if anyone specifically has recommendations for horror movies that I could watch with my almost 11-year-old son, that would be great (rated R movies are fine as long as the themes wouldn’t be way over his head or as long as they’re not too disturbing).
I'll come back to this thread in the future, as I'm deeply fascinated with why human beings love things like horror films and rollercoasters--it's partly about ancient genetic responses regarding controlling fears, but it's also wrapped in various streams of human culture.

To your specific question, the variance on how kids handle these things is huge and beyond prediction. When I was about six I snuck in the back door of a theater and saw the film Tales from the Crypt (1972), and actually had trouble sleeping for weeks after that. Some kids your son's age could possibly do fine with a given film while others, maybe even reporting they were fine with it, might have some real lasting problems. It's interesting that there has been a push against violence in media for kids in recent decades, but go back to 1815 and Grimm's Fairly tales, and tiny kids were continually told stories of intense, violent horror. Worse still: Bible stories! You need to just know your son well, as I am sure you do, and I'd advise seeing the films first by yourself.

To talk my recommendations, personally, the excessive gore of many contemporary horror films does not scare me. Likewise, I am not scared by supernatural stuff, especially related to things like exorcism. Instead, it's the really good horror films where someone is losing their mind, or thinks they might be, that can really scare me. It's not a panic, but feeling really profoundly uncomfortable and disturbed. So the horror films that get to me are usually more subtle things like Session 9 (now much acknowledged as a masterpiece of this kind of horror) and Pontypool, and other films where the character is worried they have lost contact with reality, or they are in danger of doing so.

Other horror films can get to me too (I always choose to watch them in a dark house late at night, to give them the best chance to work their magic). I really find very few horror films that are any good--that's the main problem. Also recommend the film The Babadook -- it really had me laughing at myself later on at how scared I got a few times. It's a modern classic at this point.

Of recent films, I liked The Heretic, from last year, and wrote about it and some others in the movies thread.
 
Finally watched Longlegs. First half or 2/3 had a creepy X-Files/Millennium vibe.

Second half was like the script or the final reels fell into a blender and they spliced together whatever was recoverable just to finish it.
 
1982 The Thing
1986 The Fly
2005 The Descent
2014 The Babadook
2015 The Witch
2023 The NFL Draft
Seriously, though, I endorse this list of excellent horror films. Except the draft.
 
In The Mouth of Madness
Smile is interesting but really dark.
I’m a sucker for Halloween (all of them good and bad), the first 2 or 3 Final Destination movies. And the last one wasn’t terrible.

This is my favorite time of year. I hate summer and the heat so much and when we start talking about Halloween I know that he’ll on earth (summer in the south) is over.
 
It's not necessarily scary as most horror movies, but the 'Penny Dreadful' series is a wonderfully acted and written amalgam of a lot of the famous Gothic horror stories of the 19th century - Dracula, Frankenstein and The Picture of Dorian Gray, with witches and a werewolf, and probably some other 19th gothic horror story influences.
 
I'll do my annual viewing of the original Halloween and Halloween 2 in October. Might watch the 2018 Halloween, too.
 
I'll do my annual viewing of the original Halloween and Halloween 2 in October. Might watch the 2018 Halloween, too.
Zombies films aren’t the best by any means but there is something really evil and vicious about his Michael that makes him really scary to me. I think probably my biggest problems with the film is the trashiness of some of the characters. You lose some of the relatability of the victims like that. Well not necessarily. If you are a drunk and beat your stripper wife and so on…
 
I decided to watch the original Nightmare On Elm Street this past weekend. I know I've seen bits and pieces, but not sure I've ever watched it straight through. It was pretty bad. Bad 80s acting, non-sensical writing, fairly anti-climactic ending (though the little "twist" at the very end was kinda fun).
 
Some of my pre-2000 "from when I was a kid" picks - deliberately omitting space-based sci-fi horror:

George Romero's Dead Trilogy (Night '68, Dawn '78, Day '85)
The Exorcist 1973
Halloween 1 & 2 (1978, 1981)
Halloween 3 1982 (a departure from the first two, but I liked it)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers 1978
Phantasm 1 & 2 (1979, 1988)
Friday the 13th 1 & 2 (1980, 1981)
Raimi's Evil Dead Trilogy (ED '81, ED2 '87, AoD '92)
The Thing 1982 (sooooooo good still)
Christine 1983
Prince of Darkness 1987 (under-appreciated gem from Carpenter)
The Blob 1988
The Frighteners 1996
Scream 1 & 2 (1996, 1997)
The Blair Witch Project 1999
 
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