What is the scariest horror film you've ever seen?

I have 3...

1. The Exorcist
2. The Shining
3. Rosemary's Baby

All are a few decades old but still so classic and spooks me out (whether day or night) compared to the cheesy screamfest flicks they pass off as horror films these days (Scream is a worthy note though)...

Hellraiser is not a film... it is a religion.

When I was younger: The Witches (1990)

the grudge

One of the most frightening was an asian film that was translated to The Audition when I saw it.
I guess now its listed by its orginal name, Odishon.

The exorcist. Just one of those movies that shouldn't be scary but that gets me every time!

1. Night of the living dead.
2. Dawn of the dead.

When i was younger i used to be really into collecting edged military weapons, bayonets, knives..etc. After watching dawn of the dead, i slept with bayonets in the bed and machetes under the matress for months just in case zombies attacked.

Scariest....i still go for the old Zombie movies....i stil ldream about them these days. The slow ramblers scare me more than the modern fast runners. Dawn of the Dead 1979. Everyime I go to a shopping mall I think about it.... :-( Especially getting into a lift.

The Exorcist because I could hear that voice everywhere - on the bus - in a coffee shop - for a long time -

The Asian horror movies whether Korean or Taiwan or whatever - they have a way of making horror really shocking. Maybe because I am focused on reading the sub-titles and so the ghost stuff sneaks up on me. Unfortunately most of the stuff I watch on cable and I don't know the names.

The last one I saw this guy is a real good looking young 20 something but his ex-girlfriend has died and is haunting him - at the end he is like an old man all hunched over in a mental hospital.

Then it shows the reason he is hunched over - the ghost is on his back piggy back style. So it was horrible up until the last minute - and in an all too realistic way.

That is the crux of the matter for me - I am not frightened by robots or claymation - it is psychological or realistic things that are the scariest to me.

Personally, I don't consider Nightmare On Elm Street, Friday The 13th, or Halloween
even close to being considered classics. I think it's an age thing.
(Just as an aside. What's the difference between Jason and Michael Myers?)

Anyway, the scariest movies...

The Exorcist. Head and shoulders above anything else.
The Mouth Of Madness was pretty effective.
The Changeling had some very good moments.
Event Horizon
Jacobs Ladder
The Ring

(Another side note: Did you know that when the original Frankenstein premiered it scared the daylights out of viewers? Women feinted, people left the theatres in fear.)

Little Miss Sunshine

Nightmare on Elm street - Horror
Saw - Gory

When I was kid the Mummy Fils scared me. I imagined I could smell those moldy wrappings when I was in bed, in my room, alone.

I don't remember the name of the movie, only that it was a John Wayne picture...

One scene scared the sh-- out of me (I was way young), when the "robbers" overtook and turned over a stagecoach, and force fed some lady her necklace. That really made me squirm.

Not a movie, but the episode of CSI where one of them was buried in a lucite coffin, the claustrophobic feeling just made me have to get up and walk around. Yes, I came back and watched the rest of it... shudder

Be Well!
ECS Dave

The most scary Western horror films I have seen was Hell Raiser II and the Evil Dead. The Exorcist never really scared me.

But I have to agree that the Asian films are far more scarier than Western ones. For one, they really believe in that stuff. Unlike Western films, there seems to be no inhibition in making films that may cause heart attacks or psychological problems that, in severe case had lead viewers to commit suicide.

IN the Mouth of Madness.. not for gore or anything.. but the ideas it touches on in society are terrifying.. at least to me..

"The Amityville Horror" gave me nightmares. Horror films hardly ever have any effect on me. It wasn't even a particularly well made movie, but boathouses at nighttime creep me out.

The Ring, hands down. Not even a question.
The original Exorcist is pretty high on the list, though, especially when it first came out. People had never seen movie-making like that.

I think a lot of it depends on the mood you are in. The first time I saw the grudge it scared the crap out of me (I usually don't get scared at movies). I watched it again, and not sure why I was scared the first time.

As I kid, I used to watch a show called "Burnt Offerings". Every few months it would come on TV. Everytime it scared the living c--p out of me. I would like to rent it and watch it again now that I am older to see if it is really any good or not.

I don't get the hype with the blair witch project. I was in the mood to be scared one night. It was stormy and I was living in an old house with big trees blowing all around me. I turned off all the lights and watched it alone. Nothing, except maybe the struggle to stay awake.

Maybe its just because I hate all of those "I am holding a handycam, so you better be really scared" movies. Blair Witch, Cloverfield, Quarantine, Paranormal Activity. All dumb, none even remotely scary.

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) is scary. The scene if that girl swelling up into a giant ball has always spooked me. Her punishment way exceeded her crime.

As a child of 10 I snuck out into the living room and watched the exorcist as my parents slept. The reason I wanted to watch it was the fact my parents were dead set against us kids watching it. I can seriously say I was traumatized over the experience. I had nightmares of waking up and having Linda Blair's character standing next to my bed. The movie truly made me afraid of the devil. After growing up and becoming a Christian we allowed our children to watch the movie and our kids thought it was a total joke. Their opinion of the movie was simple. If the devil is real then so is God. They actually felt a boost in their faith from watching it. Strange but true.

1408 is the scariest film i have seen recently. I jumped almost every minute. I strongly recommend this movie

When I was 10 years old I went to see the movie "The Thing from another world" James Arness was the thing. I was so scared that I ducked under the seat when scary parts came on. That was back in 1951.

Now I just laughed at how I could have been so scared of a movie. I have the DVD.

Exorcist ranked 2nd but I was a little older then and I watched part of the filming in Georgetown.

SAW and The Ring (Japanese Version)

The Ring.. I watched both the American and Japanese versions.. The latter was scarier.. Still sends shivers down my spine once I think about it..

The very first Poltergeist kept me sleepless for weeks I can still recall when I was young... lol

I thought the exorcist was funny but when I was really young the movie "IT" about the killer clown gave me nightmares

I think Blair Witch Project because it looked like a documentary and also seemed to be something real, not a movie.

yeah suprisingly that was pretty scary...i think it was the way it was filmed....you'd be watching the room and out of the corner of your eye something would move etc... Very well done. I wonder how 2 will be? Then3,4,5,6...and so on..:-)

I watched The terminator when I was like 9 or 10 and that scared the hell out of me!
The Grude and Pet cemetery are good horrors.

The Grudge and The Ring. Very atmospheric. After reading this thread though I just found the trailer for 1408, will have to watch that.

The Descent 1, scared the **** out of me lol

The Scariest horror film I've seen is Exorcist overall. The ring and the shining are also pretty scary.

Those old zombie flicks used to freak me out. Watching dawn of the dead @ 13years - zombies were scary. Not so much now though lol

The scariest movie I've ever seen is Return of the Living Dead, but I haven't seen too many scary movies in my life. I avoid those movies!

Rec and Rec2 are pretty creepy. Spnish version. Reminded me of the old zombie movies.

Zombies! but i was around 12 years old when i watched it

Scary images, and jumpy movies don't get me all that much.

I need a movie that reaches a sure climax.

My favorite one? Wait Until Dark

It has Audrey Hepburn in it, i'm sure a lot of other guys have seen it here, it's the one where she's blind and a crack addict is out to kill her.

There's one scene (anyone who has seen it knows what it is) where people always jump, i've watched it with all sorts of people, and a few (most) always jump.

My dad saw it in theaters when it came out, he said people were screaming and popcorn was flying through the air.

It's not a slasher movie, not gory, and I think like 3 or 4 people die in the whole thing, plus it's kind of aged, but oh man, I'd suggest to sit down and watch it

Bambi


Horrifying.

"Zombieland" the deadliest movie ever. Full of violence and horror.

Exorcist and The Omen

The Exorcist.... still gives me the creeps

SAW, I can't watch this film alone

Devil is the scariest movie of this year.

Silent Hill

I don't remember the name, zombies coming out of a river and terrorising a town

For me scariest horror is The Omen - Still creepy after all these years.
Ohh yes, and another old movie - Candy man.

Any of the SAW movies

Ju-on, it is the Japanese version of the grudge. Way better than the American versions.. I like Japanese and Korean horrors a lot more than the traditional American slashers.

The exorcist is scary among the films i've watched but The shining...i don't know, i haven't watch this yet.

I find The Ring, Evil Dead and few others really good horror movies.

Normally i wont see scare movies... as to me evil dead is the scariest movie

Apart from Saw movies I find The Ring movie quite horrific ones.

Exorcist and Amityville horror... Scary....

OMG, I love horror movies. My favourite movie genre.

Being an adult with a good tolerance for horror, I don't really find many of them truly scary, though, unfortunately.

I can say quite definitively, however, that the 2 horror movies that left the biggest impression on me in my life (as a young child in particular... which is when I first saw them) are:

1) The Fog (the original 1980 version, not the crappy 2005 remake). There was one scene in it after they'd rescued a young kid through a window, from a house engulfed in the fog. Just as they're trying to escape in their truck, but having problems with the wheels slipping in the mud, the silhouettes of the approaching leper-pirate-monster-thingies appear in the fog, right near the car, illuminated by their headlights.

2) A low-budget (perhaps even a "made for TV") horror about a murdered Warlock who becomes a living scarecrow and kills off a town's residents in disgustingly gruesome ways. There was one scene in particular, in which a girl who'd just finished canoodling with her boyfriend is force-fed some "seed" into her mouth by the scarecrow, and shortly afterwards vines burst out of her stomach, pulling her violently out of the house and into a small hole in the ground, all whilst remains alive and screaming. That really really scared the hell out of me when I was younger I think it might've been called "Night of the Scarecrow" or something.

God, I could spend a whole month doing nothing but watching horror movies.

I watched a so-called horror last night called zombies. it was about these kids who were used as slaves in a mine and they died. years later they come back as zombies and seek revenge on the relatives of the people that enslaved them.. it was crapppppppp

Night of the living dead is most scary movie i ever seen.
i like horror movies..

I don't do horror. Heck, I had a nightmare about an Underdog cartoon when I was a kid....

The Omen - trilogy
Alien 1
Alien 2

Paranormal activity 3 is the best

Has anyone ever watched the "Faces of Death" series of movies? Those are disturbing as well.

Just watch any of Claude's home movies. You'll never sleep again.

I would agree with others with The Exorcist Pt 1 (absolutely disturbing), Omen Pt.1, Event Horizon, Nightmare on Elm Street and Hellraiser Pt. 1, In the Mouth of Madness All of these are the cream of the crop. They stay with you long after you've seen the film.

Other unforgettable horror movies you should check out:. Suspiria (very creepy - the music and eerie lighting are awesome), Prince of Darkness (the ending freaked me out), Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things (awesome low budget zombie film), and City of The Living Dead (another freakout ending).

If anyone wants more recommendations, feel free to hit me up! I absolutely love horror movies!!

Alien (1979)
The Descent