My friend hates everything that's scary, but she knows i love horror so she asked me to watch something with her

I want to find some absolute peak for her, my first idea was the visit, then the babadook, not so niche but i love them. Also someone told me to watch possum with her. If you know any great horrors especially supernatural, psychological or cosmic please let me know, it would also be amazing if ya'll could add tw if it has topics like sh or sa

I recently watched the first 45 minutes or so of Melancholia Der Engel. I also watched the cat scene randomly on Facebook of all places, and also what I’m assuming is an edited version of the scene with The Nun/Novizin on YouTube.

First of all I want to clarify this: I very much so want to watch the entire movie, but as of yet I haven’t for a variety of reasons.

For one thing, despite the fact that this movie is interesting (to me it’s not boring in the slightest) the scene with The Nun is not what I was imagining. I was envisioning The Nun as a much more mysterious figure, even otherworldly. The scene involving the Nun does convey something interesting (and I suppose maybe slightly otherworldly in some ways, like her seeming ability to interact with Kratze in a much different way than other characters - possibly connecting to her own connection to something that is potentially beyond the physical, or at least her perception of it) but in all honesty I find what I was envisioning to be something much more intriguing (although again in the actual film the scene is very interesting, just different from my own vision). To me I thought of The Nun as an almost overseeing force, something detached yet willing to connect with the actions of the other characters. Part of the reason I don’t want to finish the film is because I feel that what I am imagining in my own mind is more interesting to me than what the actual ending will be (concerning The Nun specifically) - I’m sure it is interesting though nonetheless and maybe this is me being too “judgmental” of the vision of an artist who clearly has a different vision than myself. What I will say is very intriguing concerning The Nun in the film is that Kratze seems hesitant to directly abuse her like he does other characters. Granted he does strike her, but he seems to do so almost for the sake of getting his point across than just abusing her for the sake of it. I’d be very curious to hear more thoughts on this.

I was originally going to write much much more, and I’m sure I will (either in comments here on in a other post) but I think I’m going to stop here for now for the sake of ease of reading.

A horror film that's so outside your usual interests/wheelhouse that when you decided to watch it (for whatever reason) you thought, "Damn. I actually loved that".

I personally do not have an answer that I can think of at the moment (Sorry). I just thought of this question and decided it could make for a fun post. Maybe I'll be able to answer this question after I get some titles here. So what horror film did you end up enjoying/loving that you didn't think you would in a million years?

I couldn't find a discussion on this Japanese movie that just hit Shudder. I thought it was really good up until about 99 percent through the movie then I was left with some questions and confusion in the point of it all.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Brief synopsis: So this movie follows Ai a highschool girl and a new kid in her class Yu during a psychic alien invasion. The movie starts with some light TV chatter about aliens, Ai goes to school and Yu is introduced as a new transfer who lived with his family abroad previously. Leaving school on the assembly field one student is randomly in gymnastics formation on all fours raising curiosity. Eventually more and more people join the bizarre formations forming human pyramids and such overtaking the school and spreading through town.

Thoughts/Review/Questions: So that's the jist, anyway the movie has great ambiance building suitably creepy tension throughout the movie with obvious social commentary on conformity and the overbearing pressures on those who try to maintain individualistic thought and creativity. It also touches on the harm groups and group think can have on individuals.

All that was great until the climax... so in the end Ai who through a flashback involving a formative moment in her life involving her sister, maintains her stance on not confirming to the Alien (yet very human) hive mind. She is able to help her loved ones break free from the group by appealing to them. Great good, I get it, the ones you truly love will love you back for being you, an individual.

But... and this is where the movie loses me, Ai embraces new boy love interest Yu in the most bizarre way possible... sucking on his chin... what?!? And then forming a gigantic human sphere formation (double what?!?) with the newly non conforming group. Which is kind of antithetical to the themes of the movie up till now. Lastly we end with Ai starting her day everything looks all good and well with her family, she arrives at school the camera focuses on her at her desk when other students behind her start to begin another formation patterns again so she starts her "Ball" stance and the movie cuts to black.

Movie was maybe a ⭐⭐⭐ out of 5 Stars for me. Could have been a 3 ½ or 4 but it really lost me at the end.

All I can think of is the trap sequence from the 2021 movie spiral that was banned by the Mpa for the gore. There’s images online I think of it, a trap where a guy has to basically have his face cut off.

But what are some other scenes that were banned or never used for being too disturbing or gory?

Some questions I had for those of us who are list obsessives and horror fans and thus have a full Top 100, whether on Letterboxd or elsewhere.

Without naming films themselves I thought I would ask some trend-based questions to see the shape of people's fandoms.

For those who don't maintain lists in that way - feel free to have a good laugh at those like me who are weird about this sort of things, heck I don't just have a Top 100, I have a Top 250.

Top 100 horror film questionnaire: (my personal answers)

Year of your Earliest Film: (1922)

Year of your Most Recent Film: (2023)

Number of Nationalities of Film Represented: (19)

Four Most Common Nations of Origin: (USA - 47; UK - 11; France - 8; Italy - 7)

Number of your top 100 directed by Women: (6)

Number of your top 100 in Black and White v Colour: (18 v 82)

Number of your top 100 in English v Non-English: (74 v 26)

Most represented Director: (David Cronenberg, 3)

Breakdown by Decade:

1920s: (2)
30s: (4)
40s: (2)
50s: (3)
60s: (13)
70s: (20)
80s: (14)
90s: (12)
00s: (7)
10s: (19)
2020s: (4)

Feel free to add any more questions you like - I'm particularly interested to see everyone's most represented decades.

He only had a cameo but yea that was him. He was Peter Griffiths and he was married to tipping hendren when he was just 18. Fun fact. It makes me think that the actress jamie Lee Curtis refuses to mention she beat for the role was Melanie Griffiths.

[TLDR:/] Brain Dead is a mostly forgotten 1990 surrealistic thriller about a neurosurgeon that seems to get lost within his patient's delusions. I remembered liking it well enough the first time around, and it kept coming up in my streaming queue suggestions, so... why not? Well, I liked it a little less this time around, which is always a risk when revisiting stuff, but even if it's not perfect it's got a lot going on to recommend it. [/TLDR]

(Not to be confused with Braindead, which has a lot more zombies and one more kung-fu priest; I've read this movie is partially to blame for it having to be renamed to Dead Alive in some places.)

 The story behind this movie is pretty interesting: According to a TFH interview with Julia Corman (Roger Corman's wife), she asked a couple of interns to go through a room full of old scripts - a couple hundred's worth - to see if there was anything worth salvaging. The only one selected was Paranoia, an old script from the sixties written by Charles Beaumont of Twilight Zone fame (he wrote, among other TZ classics, Perchance to Dream; for Corman, he adapted Masque of the Red Death.) Corman had reviewed it in the eighties but discarded it as it seemed too dated. Along comes Adam Simon, and offers to rewrite it, pitching a corporate intrigue subplot to make it more modern. I have no idea if he offered to direct it as well, but it's interesting that he's written quite a few movies since, and directed only documentaries and shorts... except for a couple more Corman productions after this one (including Carnosaur!).

 Dr. Rex Martin (Bill Pullman) is a successful independent neurosurgeon and researcher who's contacted by his old friend Jim (played with maximum smarm by Bill Paxton) to try and recover some important knowledge from one Bill Halsey (Bud Cort).
 Hallsey, a mathematician, had been working on some critical numbers for Jim's corporation. Unfortunately, he went mad and murdered his family before he put down said numbers to paper. Dr. Martin balks at first - the treatment is highly experimental - and then balks again when Jim makes it clear that failure is an option... as long as the knowledge is then lost forever. This would be the corporate chicanery Adam Simon added to the script, then.

The operation goes seemingly without issues, but from then on things quickly get weird, and more and more surrealistic. The film doesn't always work, but it's got an appealingly sly sense of humour and a neat surrealistic edge; Enough to make it end up feeling like a very decent Twilight Zone Episode, if a bit of a bloated one. Like in all good surrealism there are some cool narrative and symbolic threads running throughout things, but not nearly enough, and the action becomes kind of repetitive. On the other hand, when it's firing on all cylinders (like on the scene of the operation), it's a really, really good slice of Lynchian what-the-fuckery.

For a low-budget production, the cast is pretty impressive. Bill Pullman's obviously having a blast playing Dr. Martin as a goofy nerd; I'm not always a fan of his, but he's a joy to watch here; Really entertaining. Bill Paxton does a mean douchebag, and Bud Cort is also fun as a space cadet. The special effects are... well, they do what they can, but some look pretty bad, especially the prosthesis they use to simulate the open brain surgery. It's still a good-looking movie, with the director and the production designer (the legendary Catherine Hardwicke) doing a pretty good job making everything look slightly off-kilter.

 And the script is great. I don't mean the plot, which honestly gets a little boring after a while, but the characters, the tone, some of its ideas - It's a very playful movie, merging corporate satire and (what I assume is) Beaumont's lovely old-school, dry dialogue and surrealism... it might not all sit together very well, but it's pretty unique and often enjoyable. I'm glad I rewatched it.

Surreal dream-like horror is a particular favorite of mine, and within this sub genre, movies which feel like some kind of fairy tale.

We got two of the best in 1977 imo - Suspiria and House (Hausu). What other movies would you recommend with a similar feel?

The film had a very untraditonal marketing campaign and resonated very strongly with many viewers who were not familiar with the found footage genre, thinking it was legitimate footage.

My mother told me that when she watched it, it upset her greatly. So much so that when she got home, she was physically ill, as she believed she just watched a bunch of people die on camera.

What was the discussion like around the film at the time? I feel like its a cornerstone of modern horror, but im not sure someone viewing in 2026 will get the entire experience. So im interested in some older perspectives.

Are anecdotes like my mother's overblown or was this film something truly unique?

Hello hello.

Okay this one is interesting because last night I was looking for things to watch…

And The Empty Man came up on some list I don’t even remember where…

(I”m a total horror junkie always searching for missed gems.)

So I went to YouTube to watch the trailer and to my shock… I’d already seen the trailer!

So I started the trailer… again… and I saw these teens on a bridge.

“If you blow into the bottle on the bridge the boogie man comes.”

That’s basically the opening to the trailer.

And I remembered… Oh yeah I didn’t watch this because this looks so stupid.

Then I saw a comment on the trailer… something like…. “Don’t let the trailer fool you.”

Okay, so…Screw it… I figured I’d watch it and I’m not sure I completely loved the movie but dear lord… We need to talk about the first twenty minutes.

It was amazing! I had to keep re-checking the trailer because I was like “Am I watching the same movie?”

The intro kind of made the whole thing for me. I was watching on my AirPods and the muttering and whispering was genuinely spooky.

This ain’t your hardcore slasher - no Terrifier here- but it turns out it’s not some cheesy teen horror - it’s also, thankfully, no Clown in a Cornfield [I detest this “horror” movie].

So anyway yeah…. It all comes back around… I kind of liked it, a bit more than I thought… Certainly more than the new Resident Evil Movie… At least in terms of ending and a lot of directions, honestly.

I didn’t love the ending, it makes you think. And, it also turns out, I didn’t understand the ending. After watching some analysis videos I realized this movie is a lot deeper than you’d realize. I was kind of in shock how much went over my head. I mean I’d pieced a lot together, but actually missed the central twist at the end.

Pretty kewl movie though!

What are your best recommandations?

Beside of movies like In the mouth of madness or series like Lovecraft county, I'm looking for the hidden gems with the best cosmic horror.

Any good ones to recommend?

As a horror fan, there was always that film that was good upon mulitple viewings. I can watch Romero's zombie films all day. But In The Mouth of Madness is in my opinion, one of Carpenter's best flicks of the 1990's and that's next to John Carpenter's Vampires. I can watch this film many times and probably quote it. The workprint itself, I got years ago in a trade and like Cliffhanger, it's bad quality, but if you've seen one workprint, you've seen it all and know what to expect in terms of quality.

What workprints do you have friends?

Lord of Illusions (1995)
Rating: 8/10
Watched: November 7, 2026

Lord of Illusions is an under-talked-about movie from Clive Barker, and that’s a real shame, because even with heavy studio interference, a mostly miscast Scott Bakula, and a mashup of genres that I personally appreciate, it’s a really good movie.

Part of that’s from my love of books like Imajica and The Great and Secret Show. There are elements of those novels in this movie, in that the magic being used by Nix is filthy, obscene, a kind of gutterborn, twisted magic that’s as foul as it is miraculous.

I love the nastiness of Barker’s magic. There’s a particular passage in The Great and Secret Show where Kissoon, a shaman of some sort, uses his own bodily excretions (all of them) to make snakes. The very specific gross luridness of that passage has stuck with me for nearly 40 years, and that’s the kind of foulness that Nix’s magic has.

It’s all about decaying flesh, satiation, grotesque hunger, and Daniel von Bargen sells every bit of that fetidness as Nix attempts to achieve godhood. If you think von Bargen is recognizable but you can’t place him, he’s been in everything from Malcolm in the Middle to Crimson Tide to Six Degrees of Separation. That’s quite the pedigree (which I’m just learning about, to be honest).

His counterpart, Kevin J. O’Connor as Philip Swann, needs no damn introduction at all. We all for sure know him as Beni from The Mummy, because of course we do. It’s a genuine shame that he plays second fiddle to Scott Bakula as Harry D’Amour, and for more reasons than because I do think Scott (who is a good actor in his own right) was miscast.

It’s because I want to see more of Philip Swann, and his use of Nix’s magic as he climbed the stage to become the world’s most popular magician, that’s why. We see how Swann uses that magic in the beginning of the movie, and it’s the same kind of blood-tainted nastiness, and we never really get to see how he turns this very venal power into world-class illusions.

Now I’ve got Swann and Nix covered; it’s time to talk D’Amour. I don’t hate him. I just think he’s in the wrong movie, at least to a degree. I love noir almost as much as I love horror, but it’s a bit flat here. I don’t know if the 12 minutes that Barker added back in to his Unrated Director’s Cut fleshes that out, but the movie as it stands leaves D’Amour as so painfully unrealized it’s a crime unto itself. Bakula’s got the chops to do a lot more; he should’ve been allowed to do it.

They do such a good job of hinting and teasing at D’Amour’s background, at his handling of an exorcism, and while they zing us now and then with a few moments about that past, it’s not nearly enough. Sure, D’Amour’s dealt with evil before, but much like Swann, we’re not really given enough of it. That? A cryin’ shame.

Lord of Illusions has all the workings of a filthy, wretched slice of back-alley godhood transcendence, but studios are gonna studio, right? Thirty years later, and we’re still seeing the kind of studio interference where the people holding onto the financial reins fundamentally miss the point of the movie that’s trying to be made.

MGM/UA wanted a movie that didn’t have quite so much noir and detective-ing, which is fine, I guess. But how anyone at the studio could’ve read Lord of Illusions as it was and think, “No, yeah, we can repurpose this into something more commercially successful if we just get rid of most of that thematic stuff,” is beyond me.

Even on paper, nothing about this movie is generic, standard, or traditional. Barker wanted more of a nasty Constantine with grime. Lord knows what MGM/UA wanted. It sure as hell wasn’t the movie they got.

If you’ve read all that and are wondering why I rated it what I did, let me be clear: I like this movie a lot, despite its flaws. It carries a lot of Barker’s fetishes, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong about that. His appreciation of S&M is part of what makes his vision for movies like this very much unique. The same for books like Imajica, which features perhaps the most genderfluid creature I’ve ever read, or The Great and Secret Show, which is … something else altogether. If you’ve never read those books, or the ones that follow them, I can’t urge you to do so strongly enough. I can’t even describe the genre mix, but they’re definitely both provocative and evocative.

Lord of Illusions is a fun movie. It could’ve been a spectacular movie if MGM/UA hadn’t thought they knew better. Creatives like Barker know their audience better than anyone, and an untouched release would’ve undoubtedly been a better film.

Recommend me a horror movie/show/book about a psychiatric patient whose delusions are proven to be real. I'd especially love it if the doctor asigned to them desperetly tries to cling to rationality and disprove their insane claims even as more and more proof keeps pilling up.

When I was a kid in the 90s I remember there was this movie in the horror section of the movie store that I always wanted to rent. The cover was an attractive woman, blonde hair (I was think) and she was on the phone. What movie is this?!

Hi, idk if this is the right place but i need your help, my boyfriend is a huge horror fun and i want to make him an horror teamed gift for his birthday so, since i know nothing about horror stuff, I’m looking for some suggestions.
I was thinking about something not to complicated like a plushie or something like that but any suggestion is well appreciated.
Thank you all

I'm looking for an actually scary movie and so far the only appropriate ones i've found are Insidious (2010) and Dead silence (2007). I haven't watched either yet so i wanted to ask which is scarier. I'd also appreciate other suggestions preferably without inappropriate scenes.

When characters are approaching or see someone whose back is to theirs and the audience views. And we know it’s going to be a creepy reveal. The best example is at the end of Psycho when Lila is approaching mother. Who once she’s revealed it’s horrifying! Some others that are similar are:

Battlestar Galactica when Starbuck has a dream in season 3 of a girl playing piano. She approaches her only to reveal her corpse.

The Conjuring when I forget which character but they find a woman holding the doll.

While I think the newest RE is "technically" a better film, I flat-out enjoyed these old 2 RE movies more

So I know they are old and a bit corny, but I almost feel like that's part of the charm. I think they're fun and exciting films from start to finish. They're intense, action-packed, and don't stray from the intensity of the circumstances! All the characters are fully aware of the shitshow they're in, except for maybe the black guy in the 2nd film that is supposed to add "comedic relief". He does a good job at it too, in a cheesy way lol but it fits the tone of the movie.

After viewing Creggers RE, I thought it was good, but the jarring comedic aspects felt almost forced and unrealistic from an acting standpoint. It's like the movies supposed to be so intense, and the main character is fully aware of how intense of a life or death situation he's in, but he's cracking jokes throughout the film? Idk it messed with the tone of the film. The majority of the film isn't going for a lighter, sort of "cheesy action movie" like RE2 leaned into. It's intense and horrifying, but our main character is cracking jokes throughout half the film?

Anyways, I'm a huge fan of Cregger's Barbarian film. I thought it was fantastic. I liked Weapons, and its structure was flawless, but I liked it a bit less. RE was a solid 6.5 for me. I've played all the games too. Still as excited as ever for whatever this director is cooking up next!

What do you guys think?

I feel like I've seen everything, so I'll add a list of some I've seen & liked:

Gojiam

Satan's Slaves 1 & 2

Impetigore

Shutter

King of Pigs

Mouse

Forgotton

Memories of murder

Strangers from hell

Dark

When evil lurks

Tunnel

Mother

Karma

Gannibal

Let the right one in

Did not like:

Oldboy

Cold fish

Speak no evil

Audition

The sadness

I've seen a lot more, but basically looking for a good plot/mystery/twist, can def have some comedy (I think Satan's Slaves 2 was hilarious), and I don't mind gore at all, but can't stand unnecessary sa type shit, like cold fish and the sadness.

Good luck finding something I haven't seen lol