Molly's Top 10 Best Horror Movies & Best Upcoming Movies

by Molly
(Fairfield, CT, USA)

As a 19 year old college student, I have a lot of time on my hands, which I use to watch my favorite movie genre - HORROR. I grew up watching old classics with my dad - you know, those old huge killer insect movies like THEM! and have been hooked ever since. Here is my list of the ten movies that absolutely scare the bejesus out of me, but which I love.

10. Hostel
As of January 2009, I will be studying abroad in Rome and I know every time I step into or see a Hostel in Europe, I will not be able to help thinking about this movie. A movie like Hostel is scary because it seems almost real. Some college kids decide to backpack around Europe, they have sex, get drunk, have a good time, and get kidnapped by crazy killing dudes. Along with the realness of it, there comes the gore, of course, but I loved the revenge ending when the director of the human meat market gets his fingers cut off, as if to say, here is a taste of your own medicine. Just great.

9. The Amityville Horror (2005 remake)
Being just a 30 minute drive from the NY border, the Amityville Horror hit close to home for me. Not only being a house in NY, but it also hit one of my greatest fears in life - buying a perfect house, loving it and living happily in it with a husband and kids, only to find out it is riddled with ghosts and demons. The breakdown of George Lutz and how he is effected by the power of the house is terrifying and the end scenes when he finally breaks through that wall in the basement still makes me cover my eyes when I watch it today.

8. Signs
I love movies like Signs, they not only give you a jump out of your seat scare, but also a little bit of a psychological scare. The cupboard scene, where we first encounter the alien, has you creeping up in your seat with suspense, and the ending scenes after the full-scale attack start to happen is absolutely terrifying. That alien hand creeping under the front door as they are running to the basement? Come on, shivers up my spine. The best scene I would say is when they are in the basement and searching for the coal duct opening. You are expecting something to jump out, but not in the way it does. When that disguised alien hand whips across the boy's face I think I nearly had a heart attack!

7.Poltergeist
I love Poltergeist because it is a conventional horror movie. It gives you the ghosts and jump in your seat scares in the right places and times. There are so many great scary moments throughout the film. The chair scene, the bathroom scene, the clown scene, just a creepy feeling throughout and you are waiting for what is going to happen next.

6. The Saw Series
Great slasher movie without actually having a villain like Freddy or Mike Myers. Saw is so cleverly put together and I love the endings when all the evidence comes together and you realize what has been happening the whole time. It also puts you in the place of-what would you do in this situation, to live? I've sat through every Saw movie asking myself that exact question-would I be willing to live without a foot if I had to saw it off to stay alive? Amazing series.

5. Prince of Darkness
I have not actually seen this entire movie. However, I have seen the dream sequence scene and that alone terrified me enough, I decided the movie must be pretty scary. I have not been able to find it anywhere so I hope to see it soon. I read a review of POD and the author kept mentioning the dream sequence, so I YouTubed it, but before it even got to whoever was coming out of that doorway, I would always shut it off in terror. It took me a good couple months and a well-lighted room before I could watch the whole scene through. The person, demon whatever it is in the doorway still gives me nightmares. The scene looks as if someone caught the devil on a video camera. And don't even talk to me about the white noise in the background...

4. The Blair Witch Project
This movie is why I don't go camping in the woods, or camping at all, or in the woods at all. There are only a few creepy scares and details that you are given throughout the movie, until the end, but they do the job. The tent shaking scene is horrifying, along with the distant screams from their friend of Help me! Help me! Permeating through the quietness of the empty wood. Nothing they could have shown me could have been worse than what I was imagining. The scene where they find their friend's teeth in a bloody cloth the next day sends shivers up my spine. Of course, the end is the best, you have been told the "witch" puts you in the corner before you die and all we see is one of the campers standing facing the corner, until the camera falls.

3. Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes (remake), Wolf Creek
I'm going to loop these together because they are all pretty similar and all good in the same ways. Typical gory, slasher, all brilliant and scary, jump out of your seat types. I particularly like Texas Chainsaw because it is based on a real story, and I think that makes it more creepy. Wolf creek is also pretty scary because of the remote location of the outback, nobody can hear you, help you, and the most terrifying part is how dark it is out there, your eyes are open but the darkness is so incredibly black you can't see a thing.

2. 28 Days Later
I love this movie. A zombie movie with a twist - the zombies are now fast and ready to ravenously eat you. When Jim steps out into London and nobody is there, you can feel the terror he feels of being seemingly the only man left alive there. I love the little zombie shots you get everywhere, people effected by the rage virus hiding in dark corners, and at the end when they are starving to death, their mutilated corpses are sickeningly frightening.

1. The Exorcist
Okay, it may be cliche to put it as the top movie, just because so many others do, but this movie has terrified me and stayed with me the most over the years. Not so much Reagan talking with a demon voice or spewing vomit, but the subliminal messages that you get throughout the movie still give me nightmares. "Captain Howdy" the demon that is possessing Reagan is shown in subliminal messages throughout the movie, and if you did not notice them, go watch it again. I was browsing through a best horror movie scenes list when I clicked on the exorcist and his image came up. If you have not seen the image, go to captainhowdy.com and take a look, I cannot look at it for more than a second and it gives me nightmares every time I see it. The sinister, blank stare of it is completely terrifying and just adds to the other elements of this great movie. If you like the exorcist, I also recommend the Exorcism of Emily Rose, a very good modern day exorcist.

Now for some upcoming horror movies I think look like good ones:

1. The Strangers
Not only scary because it's based on truth, but when I saw the preview for this it was one of the few to make me scream and jump out of my seat. When Liv Tyler is standing in the living room and the guy in the white mask comes out from the shadows behind her I might have had a heart attack. Have not seen this yet, but it is on my list.

2.The Happening
I am a fan of Signs from M. Night Shaymalan and this movie looks like another hit. The mystery of what this disease is plagues me every time the preview comes on TV. I want to know why people are jumping off that building!! In the trailer, the scene that has grabbed my attention is when a man lies down in front of a mower on a golf course and gets run over. Supposedly the disease makes people commit suicide? I don't know, it could be a "The Village" ending but it seems interesting enough.

3.Saw V
of course, how could you not go see the fifth part? Each Saw movie keeps getting better and better and maybe this time, we will end Jigsaw's torture parade?? I am anticipating this very much!

4. Quarantine
From the one preview I saw of this, it looked like a 28 Days Later sort of deal, which appeals to me. In the preview, it starts with the announcer explaining in Los Angeles, LAFD was forced to quarantine an apt. building and 48 hrs later a camera crew followed search and rescue inside, this is the only footage of what occurred in there, etc. When they go inside, there are bodies all over, and they break into an apt where a zombie girl jumps right up in the camera's face. We see a blurry, scurried video of people running into another apt. from her, which becomes a dark room, and through the nightvision on the camera, the newsgirl is attacked by another waiting zombie, and the camera goes black. The preview intrigued me! Looks pretty scary.