What is the most haunting *film* you have ever watched?

[dreamingofblueskies]

Blatantly stealing the idea from the haunting book thread!

Mine has got to be 'Dreams of a Life', the film about Joyce Vincent, the lady who died in her flat and wasn't discovered for years. It just breaks my heart that she lay there for so long. And the thing that haunts me the most is the fact that her TV was still on.

Another one is 'As Above, So Below' a mediocre 'found footage' film set in the Paris catacombs, although it isn't a brilliant film, it really unnerved me.

Angels with Dirty Faces (James Cagney, 1938).

Not a horror film or anything like that, but I watched it when I was about 10 (at a friends- my mother wouldn't have let me watch it! ).

The bit where James Cagney is taken behind the screen to be executed and starts screaming- still sends shivers down my spine.

Eden Lake really upset me.

Too many to just choose one so;
Shoah
Schindler's List
Tree of Life
2001: A Space Odyssey
Eden Lake
Boyhood
Suspicion
The Wickerman
The Diving Bell & The Butterfly
Poltergeist
Flight
Jacob's Ladder
Inception
Rabbit Hole
I know My First Name is Steven
Event Horizon
The Deer Hunter
The Butterfly Effect trilogy
Requiem For A Dream

Yy to The Vanishing - nothing in the film prepares you for what happens.

Whoever said The Orphanage - fuck me, but that was an intense night. I just couldn't stop crying, and it took me weeks to get over it, and during that time I talked about it to everyone who would listen. Will never, ever watch it again.

Agree with Pan's Labyrinth also and the girl actor was extraordinary.

But the major film I will never be able to erase from my mind is Come And See (Idi i Smotri) - about Nazis in Byelorussia. It's not exactly haunting - you feel as though you've been punched repeatedly throughout watching it and it also captures perfectly the profound jangling dislocation that I (having worked in a war zone) certainly experienced when living in the thick of true horror. It's certainly a film that stays with you, and makes the sanitised Hollywood versions of war (Schindler's List, Private Ryan and all the rest of that bollocks) look like something you'd see on Cbeebies. Which makes it all the more important to watch.

limited you'll be safe in UK service stations but beware those in foreign European lands, they aren't quite as CCTV obsessed as the UK...........

Requiem For A Dream. Really disturbed me. Great performances but unrelentingly bleak. I still 'dee' certain scenes every now & again.

Squoosh, not only Europe but what about the wide open spaces of America, where stopping at a service station means certain death from mutants in hills/banjo-playing inbreds/Leatherface himself?

My sister and i went to see Calvary at a screening in London with six other strangers. The end of the film was so shocking and unexpected that every single one of us walked out of the cinema looking and my sis and i didnt say anything for a few minutes! The Woman in Black scared the crap out of me.... things werent improved when i got back to my gate in darkness and my now ex turned up behind me on his bicycle with no lights on and said "good evening" and made my best friend and I jump!

Sophies Choice and Schindlers List.
The Imitation Of Life, the ending kills me.

Both a book and film that really got to me (the book more so) was Sarah's Key. Utterly tragic and haunting.

cruikshank yes! Setting foot inside one of those remotes service stations is tantamount to suicide. Foolz!

Hills have eyes. Scared the shit out of me for weeks.

Mine are really embarrassing.
1: It. Clowns...
2: Blair Witch Project. Woods at night creep me out. On holiday in France I heard a creepy sound in the woods next to our caravan. I was cr*pping myself. It was a hot air balloon above the wood.
I am not sure I could watch Annabel. China faced dolls are scary anyway!

Tali - YY! There's a particular scene involving one of the sisters which still haunts me.

To add:

Creep (the one set in the London Underground).
Grave of the Fireflies - Beautiful film, but I can't watch it again
The original (Japanese?) version of One Missed Call (not the terrible Hollywood remake!)

I'm sure I'll think of more to add later.

Threads
When the Wind Blows

Hostel bothered me, it made me feel really uneasy simply because it could happen.

The Conjuring is possibly the scariest film ive ever seen

1408 - bothered me for weeks, just really freaked me out and i don't know why

10 Rillington Place. It messed me up for weeks and is the only film I've ever seen that has given me nightmares.

Arlington Road

Yes cruikshank. There's a film called Breakdown with Kurt Russell where he and his wife are city folks on holiday somewhere deserty in America and he gets into a road rage incident with some rednecks because he's driving a shiny new car and is being a bit of an arse.

They break down and his wife accepts a lift from a friendly passer-by to the nearby service station so she can call a tow truck while Kurt opts to stay with the shiny new car.

Bad decision.

The car restarts and he drives to the service station but everyone denies having seen her.

I've never been to a US service station in the middle of nowhere and now I never will. It's okay but not that good.

I love horror films Tali but I had to turn off The Hills Have Eyes round about when the mutants rape one of the holiday makers.

That's after a number of other horrific incidents where I was saying to DH: 'Hey, this is going to turn campy any moment now.' Nope.

And it was unfair to kill the dog. Dogs always survive in horror films. It's the roolz.

I do like Drag Me To Hell though.

Another vote for The Vanishing the original version.

The Ring seen American version that terrified me plays on your minds or days after. I watched about 20 minutes of the original Japanese versioning the switching off it's was too weird and scary

The original TV adaptation of The Woman in Black. Only once had it been on TV on Boxing Day it's was terrifying you only saw a glimpse of her that was enough no over the top special effects needed

Agree totally with The Hills....that and The Grudge played on my mind for weeks. Would never watch either again!

I have watched loads of horror films in my yoof, but can't watch them now...wuss! :)

Poltergeist
Blair witch project
Candy man
Sleepers
Return of the living dead

I know what other posters are saying about that scene in American History X. It was a horrible scene for me and then I knew someone for whom the scene was replicated. I went back with the Police within a couple of hrs and they picked up the teeth that were on the pavement and hadn't been embedded in his lip and cheek. I threw up and so did an officer.

Second - a documentary on the terminal illness programme in Angola prison in Louisiana. I know many people would say life sentence prisoners deserve nothing when dying but that's not my opinion.

The prison uses other prisoners as care workers when inmates are dying. To spoonfeed, wash bodies, change incontinence pads etc and push around in a wheelchair if able.

And they'll provide social and emotional support and spend a lot of time with the dying. One of the 'carers' broke down in a support group saying the dying man kissed him and thanked him.

I was in bits.

squoosh and limitedperiodonly - see - we have learnt something from these films. They are kind of like the public education shorts of the 70s - deep water or whatever it was called and the like.

I also loved Drag Me To Hell, especially the stapler! The entire look and feel of it and the colours are very engaging. Did you know it's loosely based on an outstanding British horror Night Of The Demon from the 50s, which in turn is based on an MR James short story. Couldn't really be any less than excellent with that pedigree behind it.

Drag me to hell made me laugh. I love the bit at the old woman's funeral when the corpse falls out of the coffin and starts to suck the heroine's chin!