Last week, I got as far as the 1960s in my decade-by-decade Top 10 Scariest Horror Films list, written in honour of the release of IT FOLLOWS.
However, the frights don’t stop there. Join me now as I continue from where I left off, and bring us up to date with the second half of the Top 10 Scariest Horror Films of all time, as we take a tour through a veritable house of horrors, featuring diabolical children, parents gone bad, and mysterious creatures stalking teenagers through the woods.
6. The Exorcist (1973)
There are numerous horror films that were made in the 1970s that still hold up to this day as genuinely frightening, to say nothing of being genuine game-changers for the genre, as well as offering critique or commentary upon the time in which they were made. Films such as Tobe Hooper‘s THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (1974) and John Carpenter‘s HALLOWEEN (1978), both regarded as being instrumental in the rise of the slasher film. In a similar vein is Ridley Scott‘s ALIEN (1979), which incorporates the tropes of a slasher film into a science fiction scenario to unique effect. However, of all of these, the film that remains the most chilling is William Friedkin‘s THE EXORCIST.
Almost everyone is familiar with the film’s set-pieces and its effective instilling of genuine revulsion, such as the infamous rotating head and projectile vomiting. However, what is really frightening about The Exorcist is far more subtle than that, and is largely illustrated through the truly terrifying dual performance of Linda Blair and Mercedes McCambridge as the possessed girl Reagan and the voice of her possessor, the demon Pazuzu. There’s something immensely disquieting about the heavily made up Linda Blair exuding almost tangible evil whilst completely restrained, which makes it all the more frightening on the instances she does become animated. Meanwhile, McCambridge’s throaty, androgynous rasp lends the voice of Pazuzu an air of aural uncanny, to say nothing of a troubling seeming omniscience.
This nightmarish figure utilised in a scenario in which a priest’s faith is tested to the Nth against a backdrop that seems completely devoid of any goodness makes the film an immensely unsettling viewing.
7. The Shining (1980)
Stephen King has, rather famously, mixed-to-negative feelings of Stanley Kubrick‘s adaptation of his 1977 novel. He has gone on record as feeling that the film strays too far from the narrative of the novel, losing important themes – such as the dissolution of the American family – along the way.
To put it bluntly, I don’t think he’s correct. Familial breakdown and Jack Torrence’s (Jack Nicholson) battle with alcoholism runs through Kubrick’s The Shining like Brighton runs through a stick of rock, and Nicholson’s performance – forever teetering on the precipice between a stressed and desperate husband and father, and insane killer – helps keep the audience on a permanent knife-edge of suspense throughout the film.
Kubrick’s direction and DP John Alcott‘s framing of each shot are also a master class of creating atmosphere with nothing but the cinematography, giving the Overlook Hotel a sense of isolation that is at once both cavernous and labyrinthine. One feels, whilst watching the film, that there is a ghostly presence in the hotel long before one manifests itself, or even before Jack’s behaviour begins to become noticeably erratic.
Irrespective of its fidelity to the book and of King’s misgivings in general, what is absolutely undeniable is that The Shining offers an all-pervasive atmosphere of unease, universally strong performances from the cast (and I am including Danny Lloyd as Danny Torrence in that statement) and a plethora of genuinely haunting and memorable visuals, which stay with the viewer long after the credits have rolled, the sum of which is more than enough to elevate into being one of the very best examples of horror cinema.
8. The Blair Witch Project (1999)
THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT is a rather divisive film. For many, it is a truly terrifying film, that ratchets up a sense of impending doom until its very last scene. For many others, it is a hackneyed and predictable exercise in style compensating for a lack of substance. Speaking personally, I am in the former camp.
Though not the first film to utilise the “found footage” format, THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT is the one that many see as being the archetypal example of that type of filmmaking, and remains one of the better examples of it, and instead of just being a gimmick, here is absolutely integral to what makes the film frightening.
The amateur videotaping of the events as they transpire, married to the raw, often unscripted, performances of the principal cast do give proceedings a genuine sense of verisimilitude, allowing the audience to empathise (if not sympathise) with the increasingly frustrating and disturbing situation in which the protagonists find themselves. Furthermore the fact that, for the vast majority of the film, there is no explicit threat allows the audience to share in the characters’ abject confusion; a deviation from the tried-and-true Hitchcockian method of building tension by allowing the audience to be party to information that the characters are not that in this instance pays off rather well.
Whilst I do think it may be true is that the subsequent overuse of the “found footage” format in more recent, and inferior, horror films and franchises may have dulled the edge of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT somewhat, and whilst in may not stand frequent repeat viewing, in and of itself, I still believe THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT stands rather well as the definitive “found footage” horror film.
9. The Devil’s Backbone (2001)
It is an undeniable fact that the cinemas of non-English speaking countries have always been vastly important parts of the horror genre, having a vast influence on the cinemas of Hollywood and Britain. What’s more, the foreign horror film has – if anything – gained greater mainstream prominence in English speaking markets in recent years than it has probably enjoyed since the silent era of cinema, thanks to the advent of home video and, more recently still, the internet. There are many great, recent horror films from the cinemas of Europe and Asia. However, the best example (for me) would be Guillermo del Toro‘s 2001 ghost story THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE.
With the bleak backdrop of Civil War Spain, Del Torro captures the same sense of childlike fear of a child protagonist as he does in Backbone‘s (much more prominent) sister film PAN’S LABYRINTH, and – similarly – juxtaposes this with the altogether more tangible, and more brutal, terrors of the real world; of a country in the midst of political upheaval. However, where in PAN’S LABYRINTH the fantastical aspects of the film – though occasionally frightening – offer the protagonist an escape from the bleak hopelessness of real life, in THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE the fantastical aspect of the story offers no such escape from the horrors of his circumstances. Indeed, it has come into being directly as a result of them.
The fantastical aspect in question in this film is the ghost of a boy killed at the orphanage at which the protagonist resides; a truly compelling depiction of how such an wraithlike intruder may actually appear if it were in the real world, blending CGI, simple makeup and the understated performance of Junio Valverde (whose dialogue is delivered as a echoing whisper) to chilling effect.
Poignant and haunting in equal measure, THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE is easily on par with PAN’S LABYRINTH, boasting the unique visual style of one of current cinema’s genuine auteurs.
10. The Babadook (2014)
Though it is less than six months old at the time of writing, I think the big screen debut (in a production capacity) of actress-turned-writer/director Jennifer Kent already has earned the status of a genuine classic of horror cinema.
THE BABADOOK is an incredibly strong horror film that deals with widowed single mother Amelia (Essie Davis) endeavouring to raise her troubled son Samuel (Noah Wiseman), who is obsessed with the idea that there are monsters coming to get them both; a fear which only intensifies after she reads him a bedtime story called ‘Mister Babadook’, which apparently leads to a number of strange occurrences in their lives.
What makes THE BABADOOK such a well crafted film is its depiction of the monotony, hopelessness, isolation and exhaustion Amelia feels attempting to raise Samuel, in the face of his increasing misbehaviour and other frustrations placed on her by her life. It is from this milieu of stagnation from which the film’s titular monster grows. The archetypal bogeyman, the Babadook is a shadowy, spider-like figure, whose appearances are as fleeting as they are disturbing, and is perhaps the most unique horror creature in recent cinema, with the film cleverly leave the literality of the Babadook’s existence as something of an ambiguity. More disturbing than even this nightmare incarnate, however, is the effect he (either as a genuine ghoul or a figment of the protagonists’ imaginations) begins to have on the family: because THE BABADOOK is, in fact, the vehicle for two monsters, one of which is more terrible and more unfathomable than any spook hiding under the bed.
Ultimately, the film knows – as did THE SHINING before it, but dealt with here in a far more intimate fashion – that there is no worse monster than a parent who turns on their child.
There you have the complete collection of Top 10 Scariest Horror Films through the decades. Share your thoughts on our choices and what film has given you the biggest chills over the years?
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