Some movies are perfect for passing the popcorn on a date, while others can be the cherry on top of a night in with Ben & Jerry. We all love kicking back with friends and watching films that make us laugh until we cry, but everybody knows that autumn is – first and foremost – the season of scary movies. What better way to take your mind off of midterms, costume shopping, and the cold New England weather, than to curl up and watch a horror flick with that hottie you met last week? Halloween is less than three weeks away, so time is running out to turn down the lights, find a comforting male body, and conquer these – HerCampus Tufts’ top 13 scariest movies:
1) PSYCHO (1960)
This film, directed by the legendary Alfred Hitchcock, begins just after Marion Crane (played by Janet Leigh) has stolen $40,000 in order to help her struggling boyfriend, Sam. While fleeing her home in Arizona to join Sam in California, Crane gets stuck in a heavy rainstorm, leading her to seek refuge at the eerie Bates Motel, where she is stabbed to death during the night. After learning of her death, Sam and her sister travel to the motel to solve the rattling mystery of her death and uncover the truth about the motel’s owner. More than 50 years after its release, we still consider this four-time Academy Award nominee to be the Scariest Movie of All Time.
2) THE SHINING (1980)
As this Stanley Kubrick masterpiece begins, author Jack Torrence (played by Jack Nicholson) and his family have just been hired as the winter caretakers for the isolated Overlook Hotel. Jack’s son Danny, who has ESP, is haunted by disturbing visions of the hotel’s violent history. Although the family has been warned against entering Room 237, Jack visits the room and is immediately affected by the hotel’s supernatural forces, which eventually drive him to insanity. Fearing for their lives, Danny and Wendy – Jack’s wife – must find a way to escape the hotel, before it is too late. Steven King’s famous line, “Honey, I’m home,” will be ringing through your ears long after the movie is over.
3) THE EXORCIST (1973)
Soon after moving to Washington, D.C., actress Chris MacNeil begins to notice dramatic changes in her daughter Regan (played by Linda Blair)’s physical and mental wellbeing. Although Regan’s violent behavior persists, no medical or psychological explanations can be found, and thus – as Regan has begun to refer to herself as the Devil – it is suggested that an exorcism be performed upon Regan. Desperate and afraid, Chris calls upon the help of Fathers Merrin and Karras to perform the exorcism, and free her daughter from the evil spirit that has been possessing her. This is a good one to watch with your man so he can ward off evil spirits and protect you when the film sends chills rushing down your spine.
4) THE WOMAN IN BLACK (2012)
Once our beloved Harry Potter, Daniel Radcliffe takes on the darker role of Arthur Kipps, a poor, widowed father. In order to keep his job, Kipps must obtain the paperwork to sell a vacant, nearby manor, called Eel Marsh House. He decides to stay at the manor until he has completed his work, but, once there, he begins to hear phantom footsteps and odd noises, and believes he sees the spirit if a woman dressed in all black. Soon learning that this woman believes that her son, Nathaniel, was taken from her before her death, Kipps must find a way to recover Nathaniel’s body before the woman in black takes his own son.
5) POLTERGEIST (1982)
In the small community of Cuesta Verde, Steven and Diane Freeling live a quiet life with their three children. One night, however, their daughter Carol Anne (played by Heather O’Rourke) becomes fixated on communicating with the static on the TV. The Freelings’ lives become filled with paranormal activity, until, one day, Carol Anne suddenly disappears. When the family hires a spiritual medium to clear malevolent ghosts and demons from their home, they discover an entrance to an alternate dimension, into which they must venture to recover their daughter, and eradicate the house of its ghoulish infestation for good.
6) THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991)
Grab your bravest girl friends and watch as a young Jodie Foster kicks ass as FBI trainee Clarice Starling, in this classic American thriller. In an attempt to gain an inside perspective as to how to apprehend the elusive serial killed nicknamed “Buffalo Bill,” Starling is sent to interview incarcerated cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter. When Buffalo Bill captures a U.S. Senator’s daughter, however, Clarice is forced to continue her interrogation of Lecter as a game of quid pro quo, revealing details her traumatic past in exchange for Lecter’s insights. Both a genius and a psychopath, Lecter escapes from prison, sending Starling and the FBI on a race to find him, Buffalo Bill, and the senator’s daughter, before it is too late.
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7) TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (2003)
Get ready for blood, gore, and guts, as our seventh-scariest movie does not hold anything back. While driving through Texas on the way home from a concert, five young adults are traumatized when a hitchhiker they’ve picked up shoots herself in their van. While frantically seeking help, the five come across a family of inbred psychopaths, including a deranged, chainsaw-wielding cannibal known only as Leatherface. As Leatherface comes after the young adults one by one, each must fight for his life and the dwindling possibility of making it out of this small town alive.
8) THE CRAZIES (2010)
All of a sudden, residents in the town of Ogden Marsh, Iowa, begin to exhibit listless, bizarre, and violent behavior. The town’s sheriff and deputy, David and Russell, soon discover that a wrecked military aircraft has begun to contaminate the town’s drinking water, thus causing these outbursts. Military forces are brought in to quarantine the area, but when David’s pregnant wife, Judy, is misdiagnosed as having been affected, David and Russell must rescue her and flee Ogden Marsh before they are attacked by their deranged neighbors.
9) BUG (2006)
Still mourning her son’s disappearance, waitress Agnes White frequently turns to drugs and alcohol to dull the pain. When a friend introduces her to a supposedly discharged soldier, Peter, the two find each other a comfort for their own loneliness. Soon, however, they discover a local bug infestation that drives them both to near-insanity. Agnes, following Peter’s lead, believes that the government is after them, and both recede from society, becoming more and more engrossed in their “bug world” until, eventually, their delusions are so strong that they are unable to leave them behind and re-enter the community.
10) THE STRANGERS (2008)
Keeping you on your toes from the very beginning, this film opens with an unhappy couple, Kristen and James, arriving at their summer home after attending a friend’s wedding. A strange woman – unrecognizable in the low light – knocks on the couple’s door asking for a resident of another home, and James turns her away. However, the woman soon returns along with two masked accomplices, and the trio begins harassing a frantic Kristen. With their phone line dead and their safety threatened, the couple must scramble to try to ward off the three violent, masked strangers, and stay alive in the process.
11) THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (1999)
Three film students, Mike, Josh, and Heather, travel to Burkittsville, Maryland, to uncover the mystery of the Blair Witch. Locals tell the students the story of Rustin Parr, a hermit who had kidnapped, tortured, and killed seven children in a basement, claiming that the spirit of Elly Keward – a witch hanged in the 18th century – had compelled his actions. Overtaken by curiosity, Mike, Josh, and Heather decide to explore the woods around Burkittsville, and make an amateur documentary about their experience. The three soon get lost, however, and begin to find themselves haunted by humanoid stick figures and the phantom screams of children. After Josh disappears, Mike and Heather must search the woods for Parr’s legendary basement, to try to find and rescue Josh before it is too late.
12) SAW (2004)
As the film opens, we see two men named Adam and Lawrence, both of whom are wearing ankle chains. We soon learn that the two are in a subterranean bathroom, and, upon seeing a dead body lying in a pool of blood on the floor nearby, are given the impression of impending doom. One of hands of the corpse is still gripping a revolver, while the other holds a microcassette player. Finding cassettes in their pockets, Adam and Lawrence take the recorder, and begin to receive instructions from an unknown voice. Lawrence is told that he must kill Adam by a certain time that day, or his own family will be killed. Consequentially, Adam is launched into a desperate attempt to escape the bathroom. As we watch the men in the room struggle with fear and apprehension, we see police detectives scrambling around the area, trying to -apprehend the mastermind behind this so-called game.
13) THE GRUDGE (2004)
To end our thirteen scariest movies for this season is a supernatural film about a family who moves into a modest house in Tokyo, possessed by a violent plague known as the Grudge. Karen Davis, an American nurse, agrees to go to the house and take care of the already dementia ridden mother, only to be attacked by Kayako, the Grudge. Now it is up to Detective Nakagawa, Karen, and her employer Alex to find Kayako and kill herm before she kills anyone else who enters the house.
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