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.

Downfall-especially the scene where goebels and his wife poison their children

The prestige, watched it too close to bedtime and had the worst nightmares ever

Yy to picnic at hanging rock and schindlers list

Yes cruikshank. I know never to play near slurry pits, fly a kite close to overhead power lines or refuse a hideous gipsy woman a loan.

I'm going to look up Night Of The Demon.

spanky2 I'd forgotten about that bit! There are so many excellent moments in that film.

limitedperiodonly - yes, do! It's kind of tame compared to more modern horrors, obv, as it's from the 50s - I think it's only rated 12 or something, but it really does build up tension nicely, all the people involved in it are great (Dana Andrews, Peggy Cummins, Niall McGuinness, loads of other 'faces' from the time) and it's intelligent and has a real understated menace to it.

The original 1989 version of, The Woman in Black scared me to death when it was repeated over Christmas 1994. I was only 11 years old.

10 Rillington Place freaked me out. I bought it on DVD in 2006, and NOTHING will induce me to watch that film again. I didn't realise that it was based on a true story. And having since read online about John Christie and how evil he was Those poor women, the baby and Timothy Evans!

Those skeletons behind the walls were the last straw for me.

The stoning of soraya has stayed with me for a long time, so brutal

Anything with aliens portrayed as bad/evil I have a hard time watching.

The Changeling is a movie they showed as at daycare, I was only 8 FFS and there were kids younger than me there. The scene in the bathtub still makes me feel uncomfortable to this day.

A lot of these movies aren't scary, just have plots and ideas people would find disturbing. For example the Saw movies if you thought about them happening to you gives you that sort of funny feeling in your stomach, but also has things that jump out and scare you.

watcher in the woods. Disney live action movie. saw it as a child. could not bare to be in a room with a mirror. I had to stay at my nans house at the weekends. 4 huge ass mirrors in the room I slept!

Anything with aliens portrayed as bad/evil I have a hard time watching.

Have you seen Enemy Mine itsonlysubterfuge?

I loved The Changeling but it's not suitable for an under 16 or maybe a mature 14-year-old but definitely not someone of eight.

The thing that really got me was that it was directed by Clint Eastwood and the received wisdom is that he's not friendly towards women but The Changeling was.

Night of the Demon is based on MR James's Casting The Runes, which coincidentally I was going to mention. My mum and I were scared shitless by a TV dramatisation of CTR . We never forgot it! Sadly all that survives is

Antichrist! Not many films have stayed in my mind like this one. The opening scene had me in tears and a scene near the end had my eyes watering for other reasons. I spent many nights analysing it and wondering if I'd missed something but I'm too scared to watch it again.

I see the Japanese version of the ring has been mentioned... That freaked me out for years, still can get nervous around blank tv screens.

Another vote for the Japanese version of One Missed Call, the Japanese really know how to do horror films!

Threads
Schindler's List
The Day After - Steve Guttenberg's first film, very much like Threads.
Grave of the Fireflies. Oh. My. God. DD1 has just got into Studio Ghibli films, no bloody way is she watching that one!

limitedperiod No I haven't seen it.

The Changeling I was referring to is this one from the 1980's.

Oh I love scary films. The scarier the better for me, but Eden Lake did really freak me out. Possibly because you know that could actually happen

Last Exit to Brooklyn. Just so bleak.

I read the book Enb76 and have vowed never to watch the film. SO grim.

BothEndsBurning - what a shame it was lost! That's bloody vandalism, that is, destroying work like that, especially as from the clip it looks really good.

Agree about Japanese horrors - I also like the Korean ones too - they are all more about planting a suggestion and letting your imagination do the work. Thing is, that sounds so easy to do and if it was then everyone would be on the same game, but there really is quite an art in tapping into primal fears - all sorts of subtleties, and they go beyond cultural mores, which is why I as a Westerner can enjoy things like Ringu - it's kind of a universal human condition thing and recognising those signifiers and using them is really an art I think. That's not to say that the Freddies of the horror world have no artistic merit, because I think they do. I remember seeing an interview with someone once (have no idea who it was - director/actor/critic or what) and they said that even with your basic teen shocker, they are tapping into these same stripped-to-the-bone fears - eg the character will call out for their friends, but no friends rescue them. They call out for their mother, but their mother isn't there. Then they say 'Oh my God' but even God isn't there. And I think that is very powerful - the thought that there is literally nothing that can help you. That is what makes horror films chime with people - it comes from a very real understanding that ultimately we are all alone in a Godless arbitrary universe which most of the time we push to the back of our minds.

Oh yes to 10 Rillington Place, stealthily creepy.
And to Imitation of Life, one of my favourite ever films. Mahalia Jackson's gospel at the end is incredible and still makes my hair stand on end.
Heavenly Creatures: the murder of the mother is so brutal and calculated in what first seems like a magical and imaginative world of teenage girls.

And Gone, Baby Gone (which I watched when it popped up on TV, having heard about it on MN before). A seemingly simple tale of a missing child in Boston's underbelly (not the slick side of the city we usually see) and a neat moral dilemma that emerges from it.

The Vanishing (non-Hollywood), gives me the shivers.

Anyone seen Wolf Creek? Awful awful film, I won't watch it again, but it's stayed with me.

And an oldie but a goodie 'Theatre Of Blood', I was v young when I first saw that and have vivid memories of poodle pie!

I had to switch Wolf Creek off. It was absolutely vile.

I love Theatre of Blood and the poodle pie.

watcher in the woods. Disney live action movie. saw it as a child. could not bare to be in a room with a mirror. I had to stay at my nans house at the weekends. 4 huge ass mirrors in the room I slept

Did it have a scene in it with a young girl who got trapped under a huge bell? Or am i thinking of something else? Either way i watched a film called Watcher in the Woods when i was about 10 and i couldn't sleep because of it!

Wolf Creek really fucked me off. There were some good bits in it but it got utterly ridiculous towards the end. And the dishonest way it was marketed as a 'true story' got on my tits - I have friends to this day who believe it was based on real events. I know, I know, the almighty Texas Chainsaw Massacre did the same but at least that was a good film.

The Ring stayed with me for years.

Hostel was awful, vile, mainly because I think it could really happen.

It was a truly shite film but "The Forgotten" with Julianne Moore really affected me. I had to sleep with the lights on.

Salo - ugh. Fascinating but just awful.

Audition - the guy in the bag, while she sat by the phone....

Dual is a film that enthralled and frustrated me in equal measure.