What Frightens You In Film and Fiction?

[David Steele]

Case to point. I've just finished watching 'The Possession' (2012)
Oh dear. I didn't realise evil spirits turned up on MRI scans. Worse still, the doctors in the hospital, on discovering the most science-shattering phenomenon in the history in history (actual physical evidence of demonic possession) did nothing. Their reaction plainly wasn't factored into the script. They simply left the victim and her family in a room so they could get involved with a chase sequence, leading to a scene in which the main character enters the dark hospital mortuary with just his cell phone flashlight.

Sigh. Next.

 

[Stephen Drake]

Final Destination. It was pretty ingenious at first, I remember the first film was good. After that it just got ludicrous, but SAW was the same. The first film was so good and then it went to pieces as soon as they sequelised it.

I don't care how smart you are a killer, NOBODY could plan that shit that far in advance.

Very true...on both counts...

 

[Amber Zade]

I'm scared of lots of things in real life but scary movies like Nightmare on Elm Street just make me laugh. Movies like Carrie I just find interesting.

But... I won't watch disaster movies. They just don't do anything for me.

Also, I won't watch Gravity because there is nothing more terrifying to me drowning and floating out in space seems a lot like drowning to me.

So - I guess drowning would be what really scares me in movies and fiction.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Coooo-eeeee!

Or, of course, the inverse, a lunatic alone etc...[/QUOTE]


Hehe, it has to be pictured, multiplied by millions.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

[QUOTE Also, I won't watch Gravity because there is nothing more terrifying to me drowning and floating out in space seems a lot like drowning to me.

So - I guess drowning would be what really scares me in movies and fiction.[/QUOTE]

I hadn't heard of that one. On the drowning theme, 'What Lies Beneath' scared me.
1) Parental nightmare, a young girl murdered 2) Horror hidden in the Lake, so beautiful above 3) The haunting is both creepy in the extreme, and sad 4) A loved one (the husband, Harrison Ford) who having committed murder, will now murder you, his wife, to cover his tracks. He's a lake with a hidden horror.

 

[Mark Odell]

[QUOTE Also, I won't watch Gravity because there is nothing more terrifying to me drowning and floating out in space seems a lot like drowning to me.

So - I guess drowning would be what really scares me in movies and fiction.

I hadn't heard of that one. On the drowning theme, 'What Lies Beneath' scared me.
1) Parental nightmare, a young girl murdered 2) Horror hidden in the Lake, so beautiful above 3) The haunting is both creepy in the extreme, and sad 4) A loved one (the husband, Harrison Ford) who having committed murder, will now murder you, his wife, to cover his tracks. He's a lake with a hidden horror.[/QUOTE]

I really didn't much like that twist. The whole 'surprise, your husband was evil' has been done in movies so many times that when Rob Zemeckis did it it was just exasperating.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Or maybe the worst horror was that a person who isn't evil, may out of fear, do evil things, and if they do that, they might as well be out and out evil and raring to go. It could have been the wife who found out what he'd been up to, and killed the girl (instead of killing him) Might that have been made to work as a stronger twist?

 

[Mark Odell]

Or maybe the worst horror was that a person who isn't evil, may out of fear, do evil things, and if they do that, they might as well be out and out evil and raring to go. It could have been the wife who found out what he'd been up to, and killed the girl (instead of killing him) Might that have been made to work as a stronger twist?

THAT would have been interesting. I don't care if it's the man or woman it just has to be something a bit more fascinating than 'THEY WERE EVIL ALL THE TIME MWAHAHA'

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Yah. Love is blind, the saying goes, but if someone is baaaaaaaaaaaaaadddddddd there'd be some warning indication; some discordant note.

 

[Karen Gray]

So far I'm yet to find anything that has the ability to frighten me. Everything is WAAAAYY too predictable to be frightening.

So I say come on folks do your worst. I'll be your test bunny. If you can frighten me (in the words of our own @David Steele ) "I'll give you a biscuit. "

 

[Marc Joan]

So far I'm yet to find anything that has the ability to frighten me. Everything is WAAAAYY too predictable to be frightening.
So I say come on folks do your worst. I'll be your test bunny. If you can frighten me (in the words of our own @David Steele ) "I'll give you a biscuit. "

Boo!

 

[Karen Gray]

Boo!

I knew you were going to say that

 

[Marc Joan]

No jammy dodger for me then ......

 

[Mark Odell]

No jammy dodger for me then ......

How about an EVIL jammy dodger?

 

[James Marinero]

This thread takes the biscuit!

 

[David Steele]

That's interesting, @Karen Gray . Does something have to be surprising or not predictable to scare you? Sometimes I find knowing what's coming is far worse. I'm thinkng of Pet Sematery in particular.

 

[James Marinero]

That's interesting, @Karen Gray . Does something have to be surprising or not predictable to scare you? Sometimes I find knowing what's coming is far worse. I'm thinkng of Pet Sematery in particular.

Thinking aloud - you can be scared in anticipation, or scared in the event (cellar scene in Psycho when mother's chair swivels around, whole cinema jumped up and screamed). Or am I wrong - is 'scared in anticpation' just fear - i.e. am using the word 'scared' incorrectly. Does it have to be retrospective?

 

[Karen Gray]

That's interesting, @Karen Gray . Does something have to be surprising or not predictable to scare you? Sometimes I find knowing what's coming is far worse. I'm thinkng of Pet Sematery in particular.

Um... It depends. I do remember one time when I was working in a nursing home in Edinburgh. I was in doing the morning rounds with one of my favourite residents. She didn't talk much anymore so I would gab away for her or sometimes sing to her or whatever. I had just sorted her in fresh clothes and was turning round to get the hoist to get her into her chair and the matron was standing behind me. I swear they probably heard me screaming in Glasgow! Not only did I scream, I jumped about 4 feet in the air. Proper frightened cat response. and there's wee Elsie absolutely ending herself because I got a fright!

The only other time I've had a fright like that was at another nursing home on night shift and one of the gent's went wandering. Not normally a problem because he had squeaky slippers and a squeaky zimmer. Only this particular 3am he decided to go without both and I turned round from filing stuff in the cabinet to him right behind me. Proper jumped out my skin.

Gads I miss those two homes. Amazing people... Amazing memories. Many many surprising stories and some devastating losses.

On those occasions it was the absolute unexpected.

Sometimes it's expecting something and getting to the point you relax because you think it's not going to happen, only for it to happen when you let your guard down. So far only real life has done that for me.

 

[David Steele]

I'm fascinated by the sheer terror of being a 'normal' person in a world gone mad. The insanity of banal beaurocracy of the Final Solution, for example, or the cold indifference to suffering in Nineteen Eighty Four.

Here's a story that sums that fear up perfectly for me. (The Lottery. Shirley Jackson)

 

[Jennifer Stone]

This seems appropriate, somehow...

 

[Bernard Stacey]

That lower one is Ronald McDonald, right?

 

[Mark Odell]

That's interesting, @Karen Gray . Does something have to be surprising or not predictable to scare you? Sometimes I find knowing what's coming is far worse. I'm thinkng of Pet Sematery in particular.

Oh god, absolutely. The horrible inevitability.

 

[Stephen Drake]

That lower one is Ronald McDonald, right?

Yes, it is!

 

[Bernard Stacey]

Yes, it is!

It's only that he looks a bit chubbier than in the ads. Can't think why.

 

[Mark Odell]

It's only that he looks a bit chubbier than in the ads. Can't think why.

Because of the children he's been eating.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

'Neither The Sea Nor The Sand', by Gordon Honeycombe. Two deeply introverted people find each other and fall in love. He dies suddenly on a caravan holiday in Scotland. Her love won't let him go and he comes back....physically. Terrifying. He follows her around, silent and rotting. Where's this one going to go? Also made into a terrifying film.

 

[Meerkat]

I honestly didn't find Pet Sematary scary or even interesting.

I found 28 Days Later to be the best zombie movie ever because you have these people trying to escape monsters by joining up with other surviving humans (the military), only to discover that those other humans are monsters as well. The philosophy of that made me think . . . and the soundtrack was amazing.

The scariest movie I think I ever saw was the original Blair Witch Project. I watched it late one Friday night when I was alone in the house when I lived in New England. It terrified me because it was all psychological, with very little gore, if any. Psychological movies scare me the most.

For books, I did find Salem's Lot terrifying when I read it at 14. I slept with a nightlight for a long time after that. Seriously!

But as an adult, The Trial is the scariest book I've read, as it could so happen in real life.

 

[Jason Byrne]

Final Destination. It was pretty ingenious at first, I remember the first film was good. After that it just got ludicrous, but SAW was the same. The first film was so good and then it went to pieces as soon as they sequelised it.

I don't care how smart you are a killer, NOBODY could plan that shit that far in advance.

That's exactly why I never watched any of the Saw series, or Hostel, or Final Destination beyond the first movie. Killfest isn't scary. Just gruesome, and there's plenty of that already out with an actual story to accompany it.

One that I did watch was the 2013 film The Human Race. About seven dozen people on a single city block see a flash of light, and awaken to an anonymous urban setting. A voice in their head, irrespective of their spoken language or ability to hear whatsoever, tells them they must run or die; those that step off the path into the grass will die; those that are lapped twice will die, and there will be only one survivor. It follows all of their backstories as they all fall prey to the inexplicable rules, and the dwindling survivors become more and more desperate to win, the voice in their head counting down every time someone is killed. In this case as well, the survivors become the monsters, as much as the unseen game masters.

 

[Jason Byrne]

I honestly didn't find Pet Sematary scary or even interesting.

I found 28 Days Later to be the best zombie movie ever because you have these people trying to escape monsters by joining up with other surviving humans (the military), only to discover that those other humans are monsters as well. The philosophy of that made me think . . . and the soundtrack was amazing.

The scariest movie I think I ever saw was the original Blair Witch Project. I watched it late one Friday night when I was alone in the house when I lived in New England. It terrified me because it was all psychological, with very little gore, if any. Psychological movies scare me the most.

For books, I did find Salem's Lot terrifying when I read it at 14. I slept with a nightlight for a long time after that. Seriously!

But as an adult, The Trial is the scariest book I've read, as it could so happen in real life.

28 Days Later was definitely good. For the found footage style, I very much liked the Paranormal Activity movies, and Cloverfield, though I wouldn't call them frightening...
The part that really got to me was in the last few seconds of the sequel, 28 Weeks Later. When you see the rage zombies charging across a plaza toward the Eiffel Tower, just for the implications.
Whoa.

 

[Mark Odell]

I honestly didn't find Pet Sematary scary or even interesting.

Book or film?