Horror Movie Favorites

Scary Movies As Art Forms

A love for horror movies is a mysterious thing. I can’t say for sure where it comes from or why it persists long after your old enough to be somewhat resistant to them. A great horror movie can scare you naturally—that is an adult audience member just gets lost in it and succumbs easily to the bumps and jumps. These movies are rare and precious.

A good horror movie, of which there are many, often requires us to intentionally suspend disbelief and just enjoy. They really can’t scare us unless we let them. It’s a more active form of audience participation than most movies require and it’s usually worth the effort. That’s why horror movies represent such a gamble; if a moviegoer takes the energy to prepare for a horror movie and the payoff isn’t there the disappointment is exaggerated and the film despised.

For me, it started when I was very young. The house was dark and I woke up in the middle of the night. Leaving my bedroom I could hear the most simplistic yet creepy music I have ever, to this day, heard. It was a haunting melody and had the unbelievable ability to put me on guard right away. My progress to the source of the music, the living room, slowed. I had become unsure.

I could see my parents sitting in the room bathed in the glow of the television, that simple, scary music rising to a crescendo.

I poked my head around the corner just in time to see Michael Meyers plunge a butcer knife into some unsuspecting high school student.

Terrified I shrunk back around the corner. But I couldn’t resist. I had to see more. One more peek: There was Meyer’s again, that terrible mask with the creepy brown hair and empty looking eye holes.

Shrink back again.

Another peek.

I was hooked. Eventually a gasp of some sort alerted my parents to my presence and stopped the horror movie I was put, wide-eyed, back to bed.

And so it began. Ever since I could easily appreciate any piece of art that could elicit this visceral response. That’s a talent. I realize that horror movies are sort of seen as the trashy second cousin to cinematic achievements but it’s unfair. It takes hard work and talent to scare people. Every bit as much as it does to make people happy, sad or both. People who look down their noses at horror movies and think them easy to make aggravate me to no end. Just once I would like to see a critic say, “This movie could have had better actors, could have had characters a little more well developed, but it scared the crap out of me and I loved it.”

I found a tremendous website with a great list of upcoming horror movies for 2006and a ton of great links. It’s obviously made by great horror fans and it’s called Bloody Disgusting!

Also check out the cool reviews and in-depth list of horror films at All Horror Movies.

What follows is a very partial and very incomplete list of some of my favorite horror movies. One way or another these movies raised the hair on the back of my neck.

• Halloween


• Friday the Thirteenth


• TheGrudge


• Hellraiser


• Night of the Living Dead


• Day of the Dead


• Dawn of the Dead


• Land of the Dead


• The Hitcher (Might properly belong in suspense/thriller)


• Boogeyman (I can't understand why horror fans dont like this more. I had great fun with it).


• The Ring


• Pet Cemetary


• The Evil Dead


• I Know What You Did Last Summer


• Night of the Demons


• Wish Master


• Wes Cravens New Nightmare


• My Deadly Friend


• Nightmare on Elmstreet


• Wishmaster


• Night of the Creeps (Alien Slugs, how can you not love it?)


• 976-Evil


• Fright Night


• Saw