October 31st, 2005

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Movies
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What Scares You in the Movies?

The Movie Blog asks an interesting question: what scares you most in the movies? Their list, plus what their commenters say:

Creepy kids
Not seeing what should be seen - hidden faces, action off camera
Seeing something the character can’t
…and similar to that one, seeing something before it happens
Thick forests at night
Noises off camera
Corn fields and children
And harrassing phone calls from within the home as I’m trying to babysit.
Calm people in violent situations
Gigli and Battlefield Earth

Amen on that last one. Let’s see–what scares me? Yeah, creepy forest scenes always scare me. As Japanese cinema has demonstrated, dirty water is pretty freaky. Things inside people (a la Alien) creep me right out. This reminds me of an old post called Childhood Terrors, in which we discuss what scared us as kids. That stuff probably still scares us.

What have you got?

Comments: 7 Responses so far

drew
October 31st, 2005
2:22 pm

What frightens me the most is whenever Nic Cage, Bruce Willis, or Kevin Spacey wear any sort of rug.

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Sean Hagen
October 31st, 2005
2:40 pm

Horror movies that are more cerebral are the ones that scare me. I get a kick out of the slashy-bloody ones, but the ones that scare you after you’ve had time to think about them are the ones that I really enjoy.

And of course there’s the just plain creepy Japanese ones, like The Ring and The Grudge. Those Japanese fellows sure know how to make you afraid of the dark again.

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Myles
October 31st, 2005
9:59 pm

the clown under the bed in Poltergeist. You remember the one…in the set up shots it’s as harmless as any child’s toy could be, way up there on a shelf. But when all hell is breaking loose one night in the house (after it’s been declared clean), the little boy looks up and sees the toy has moved from its perch. He slowly looks over the edge of his bed and sees nothing. then he looks behind him and sees this toy clown with the most maniacal-looking eyes and razor sharp teeth. He is then dragged under his bed. The theatre I was in 20 years ago was screaming.

I’m getting goosebumps just from describing this…

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Derek K. Miller
November 1st, 2005
11:04 am

Those old ’70s bigfoot/Loch Ness Monster grainy-footage “In Search Of”-style documentaries. Yikes.

It’s interesting that the stuff we find genuinely scary isn’t anything that’s genuinely likely to harm us. Who’s creeped out (not worried, but creeped out) by the thought of car accidents, slipping on icy stairs, or heart disease?

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James
November 2nd, 2005
9:23 am

Clowns are the scariest thing in movies or in real life. Second are dolls. The only other things that really creeps me out is a straight razor, you know the ones, those folding blades barbers use for wet shaves. When one of those appears on screen I get the tumbles in my tummy. But it used to be worse. Recently I’ve confronted my fear of straight razors and had a few wet shaves from barbers, which I’ve now grown comfortable with. I recommend the experience.

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Tina
November 30th, 2005
4:23 pm

Old, handmade dolls scare the holy living bejesus out of me. There’s just something about the unsmiling, unblinking, unwavering stare of something that’s only a foot high that just makes me squeal like a stuck pig.

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Helen
June 23rd, 2007
9:30 am

Anything Haitian voodoo scares me, like “The Believers” when they hex Helen Shaver and spiders erupt from some hideous boil in her face. Scarrrrrrrry.

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