Eighteen Film Buffs Talk About The Scariest Movies They’ve Ever Seen
Even film critics watch these movies with the lights on.
The Strangers
Conor Bateman, 4:3
Outside of two shots from David Lynch’s Inland Empire, the scariest film I can recall seeing was as part of a triple-bill of horror movies I watched with some friends in high school. The line-up: Scream, Ring and The Strangers.
The first is wickedly funny, the second more disturbing than scary, but the final film is genuinely terrifying. Ostensibly a slow-burn home-invasion flick, Bryan Bertino’s The Strangers divided critics and audiences upon its release, but I remember being tense the whole runtime.
Whilst there’s virtually no real plot and it coasts on archetypal characters and a premise done to death (pun intended), the film expertly uses spare visuals and minimalist sound design to make the falsely labelled “true story” feel like it could be happening anywhere at any time. Only this and The Shining have made me feel unsafe in my own home.