Jason Zinoman
One of the great things about childhood is how easy it is to access the distinct delight of being scared out of your mind. Adults just have more trouble getting goosebumps. That?s because experience is the enemy of true terror. You may shriek the first time you see A Nightmare on Elm Street, but the second or third time you might only shudder. That?s why dedicated horror fans sometimes have a hard time finding a really nerve-rattling movie. They?ve already seen it all.
Those who make horror movies may face the greatest challenge. They know what goes into the engineering of a scary sequence, and they have a good idea what?s coming around that corner. And since they presumably went into this line of work in part because of the pleasures of trembling in the dark, they have seen more than their share of horror movies.
The end of summer has lately been a bonanza for chillers: this month has already seen Fright Night and Final Destination 5. Still to come are Shark Night 3D and Don?t Be Afraid of the Dark , a remake of a 1973 haunted-house tale that Guillermo del Toro, a writer and producer of the new film, has called the scariest movie he ever saw. But what about all-time most terrifying? When I polled a diverse collection of filmmakers about the scariest movie they?d ever seen, their passionate answers made it clear that their standards were very high. Here are excerpts from their e-mails.
TI West, director of The House of the Devil and The Innkeepers: The image of those two oddball little girls from The Shining in their matching powder-blue dresses standing in a bleak, floral-wallpapered hallway has been burnt into my retina ever since the first moment I laid eyes on them. The Shining was the first film to actually make me uncomfortable with the idea of ever watching it again.
John Waters, director of Mondo Trasho and Serial Mom: No film can come near The Texas Chainsaw Massacre?s snuff-like power to horrify. Just saying that great title out loud should give even real serial killers the creeps.
Herschell Gordon Lewis, director of Blood Feast: Way, way back in prehistoric times I saw the original Dracula, Bela Lugosi?s watermark on the pages of cinematic history. I recall only a few scenes, plus my insistence that the lights in my bedroom be left on all night long. Some years later I saw this film again and laughed at the characterisation. That?s how sophistication spoils pseudoreality.
James Gunn, director of Slither: I saw Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer in a theatre when it first came out, and it was so gritty and dark I felt sick to my stomach for a couple of days afterwards? like the evil of it stuck to my soul. Part of what was so frightening was Michael Rooker?s incredible performance. We normally distance ourselves from villains, but I almost felt for him as Henry. The last thing you want to do is identify with a serial killer.
John Landis, director of American Werewolf in London: It?s a toss-up between The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Exorcist. I am not a Catholic and do not believe that the Devil exists, but William Friedkin created a complete suspension of disbelief in The Exorcist. I was really scared, but then went home and slept like a baby. Tobe Hooper?s Texas Chainsaw is a rough ride for the audience, although parts of it are very funny. And for a film with no real on-screen violence it generates an ambience of true terror.
Marti Noxon, screenwriter of the remake of Fright Night and writer and a producer of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Many, many films kept me up at night as a child, not the least of which was Soylent Green. But I recall only two movies that have kept me awake as an adult: The Exorcist and The Blair Witch Project. Both stay really grounded in characters we like and relate to while delving into a supernatural world. Their helplessness and human failings in the face of something truly malevolent gets under my skin every time.
Joe Cornish, director of Attack the Block: Picnic at Hanging Rock had a big effect on me as a kid. I thought it was going to be an idyllic movie about some pretty girls in nice dresses having a picnic. But it was genuinely unsettling and disturbing. It was a great example of outdoor horror and daylight horror, using the light to terrify. It makes nature frightening.
Larry Fesenden, president of Glass Eye Pix, director of Habit and Wendigo: The scariest movie I ever saw was the Night of the Living Dead. A relentless and escalating sense of dread prevails, as the horror keeps closing in. One character after another meets a gruesome fate regardless of their heroism or function. With its hopeless ending, it was a fulcrum between the morally ordered scary movies of my youth and the horror films to come.