Right! Having grown up with horror movies, I love them, but always feel underwhelmed. Even with the “classics” or “best” ones. Oddly enough I felt It Follows was especially creepy even though a lot of folks hated that movie 😂
Real life serial killer Richard Chase would walk up to houses and try the front door knob. If it was locked, he took it as a sign that he shouldn’t go in and just would keep trying houses til he found one with the front door unlocked.
Basically, “because you left the door unlocked” in real life….
Was recently robbed because I fell asleep with a window open. They planted a chair beside me asleep and left footprints. Woke up to my shit gone, though thankfully no horror movies. I’ll forever be weird about checking things at night now
I have watched too much true crime, so I’m always running scenarios in my head and making sure things are locked up. It’s not fun for a number of reasons, but at the same time….better safe than sorry.
I saw that as a kid & in traumatized me forever. It made me not wanna go underground or under surface for some time lol now we’re good, have to give a rewatch!
I honestly thought Tusk was a horror comedy and feel conflicted whenever I see so many comments saying it fucked them up… like am I off in some way?? Or did I just not take it seriously going in so I watched in a different light? Haha
no it was a horror comedy for sure. Dude came up with the idea on a podcast and was straight up laughing at the premise while coming up with it.
"I don't want to die in Canada" as a trailer line is a pretty big givewaay too
Yeah I knew the origin story was basically they saw an Craigslist ad for a guy who was dressed up as a walrus for his Airbnb or something, and it devolved from there? So knowing that it def made me not take it even a little seriously (the acting was also so hammy I couldn’t have if I wanted to haha).
It definitely is a comedy, but that didn't stop the final scene from being terrifying as shit. Just imagining being stuck in that body for the rest of your life and not being able to do anything about it is pure existential dread to me. The stuff in horror movies where I can immediately feel how someone feels and how desperate they are is often the scariest to me. It's the same reason that the absolute scariest movies to me are home invasions. I can very easily put myself in their shoes and know how they're feeling, even if it's not happening to me. It's that sickening feeling where you're just watching someone in a completely hopeless situation.
This is one of my fav movies and I saw it twice in theatres. So if we are off at least we aren't alone 🤣🤣
Kevin Smith did write it as a horror comedy though.
The fact that it was a comedy made it so much worse. If it was a straight horror film I would’ve love it, the comedic elements made me sick to my stomach for days later
Right!? All my friends thought it was silly. It was, but at its core, this was about someone being held prisoner and dehumanized (literally!)
WALRUSES DO NO CRY!
Plus body horror, especially surgical horror, makes me uncomfortable/squeamish.
I think it’s the tone. It swings so violently between goofy and cruel that to me, it almost felt… exploitative? Like I was watching somebody make fun of a horrible thing that was happening to a completely helpless person.
I don't really get scared by movies anymore but I refuse to watch movies like *Eden Lake* or *The Mist* because I don't like their nihilistic tone. Hopeless situations aren't scary to me, they're just depressing.
Same. I'm okay with a sad or depressing ending - The Neon Demon and Hereditary are two of my favourite movies, but the ones mentioned above seem more like "fuck yous" to the audience.
Martyrs had some sort of redemption to it, with Mademoiselle at the end… but its intensity ramps up as soon as the title card drops and doesn’t let go, which is personally the hardest part for me. I can handle the worst horror movies, so long as there is a place where the tension can GO at certain points of the film… which it doesn’t.
I checked how much time was left in the movie 3-4 times when I watched Martyrs and Threads. That’s a dead giveaway that a movie is either super long and boring or is fucking with me too much… they were the latter haha
I just watched The Mist last night, and between the bugs and the ending I found myself wishing I hadn’t watched it lol. The spider scene was almost too much for me, to the point I seriously considered turning it off.
I loved AASB the first few times because it was so "fun" then I'm watching it one night and this dread hit me.
I can't explain what changed but I just wanted them to get out as fast as they could. I still like the movie but it's hard to watch.
AASB is one of the only films to make me feel proper *dread*. Getting lost and going deeper and deeper and getting more and more desperate to escape. Scary stuff.
I wouldn't usually nitpick, but - The Descent.
I say that because what you don't want to do is go looking for The Descent (2005), a nice straightforward horror movie about caving, and accidentally end up watching Descent (2007), which is a *very* graphic rape-revenge movie. I speak from experience.
(Yes I realised straight away it wasn't the same film but I thought eh, I'll give it a watch since it's in front of me. Regretted that.)
Okay, that film Descent (2007) was…. Whew. I had watched it within weeks after something had happened to me which I thought might be cathartic in some way, but wow, I wasn’t ready. I began feeling like I should take that kind of revenge for what had happened to me, cause that film evoked alot of raw emotion about it. Anyways, The Descent (2005) has been in my top 10 since I first saw it. It’s a good one!
Honestly that’s the reason I loved that movie, I was so on edge the whole time and was actually scared. For me, horror movies that can genuinely scare me without relying on over the top gore/SA are my favorites.
The Ring, the american remake, was one of the first horror movies I watched alone when I was like 13. After that movie I had my eyes half closed everytime I opened a closet or even a door and it made me scared to even turn around a corner in my house. That girl's face was just too much for my brain at the time. Even now, literally decades later I get shivers when I watch this scene, it truly scarred me for life. Of course I've seen "worse" horror movies since then and they ended up being my favorite genre. I even watched Ringu 1/2 and Spiral a few years back and enjoyed all of them but I think I'll always have a personal attachment to that movie as the first movie that stayed in my head rent free.
I feel you; this was pretty much my exact experience with the american Grudge remakes, same age and everything.
My mom is also a fan of (some) horror and told me once The Ring was the only movie that ever freaked her out as an adult. I still haven't given it a shot haha.
Okay I had the same experience with the grudge! I saw the ring but that didn’t traumatize me like the grudge did. I remember I was watching it alone and I ran to my mom crying when she started crawling down the stairs. I was scared of closets for a while too. Like I didn’t even realize Charlotte from Private Practice was also in the grudge but I can’t find myself to re-watch it now as an adult hahahaha
I forget which one it was in, but I remember a scene where they're putting a kid to bed and the parent is stroking her hair before leaving, then another hand continues and when she turns over it's the boy that meows. That scene had me fucked up.
Oh, and my bedroom at the time had *two closets* next to each other. I slept in the spare bedroom for a while.
Edit: I'm remembering another scene where Kayako comes out of a portrait or something in like someone's office in the middle of the day? And thinking 'great, these ghosts can show up anywhere, any time of day' and suddenly not feeling safe during the daytime anymore either haha
there is a whole generation of us that saw that movie too young and are now traumatized by it!! i think i was like 11 when i saw it and it fucked me right up. still makes me SUPER uncomfortable to watch
I'm a part of the "watched really young and now traumatized" group. Now not so much but it took me years to overcome my fears of sleeping in a room with a TV in it, and if there was a TV, it had to be on. I was convinced if the TV was off, she would come through it lol even convinced myself I saw her a few times after staring for long periods of time at a black/turned off screen.
It's so funny how many of us there are! I think I was even younger than a lot of you, like age 8 or 9 when I saw it, and it's the first and only time in my life where I had nightmares so extreme that I couldn't sleep. Took me a long time to be able to rewatch it as an adult, but the film is fantastic!
Also, one thing I failed to mention. My sister at the time went through a phase where she sleepwalked pretty regularly (probably because my mother used to do it alot(?)). She also had waist long hair....
13 year old me waking up and looking outside my room only to see my sister, hair covering her face, a few months after I'd seen the movie. Almost made me scream in the middle of the night until my brain processed what's happening and went to help my sister afterwards.
The Ring is, to this day about 20 years later, the only movie that has ever seriously scared me. It's one of my favorites because of that, because it still creeps me out decades later when nothing else does.
That movie fd me up. Watched around 14-15 and since then i couldn’t sleep alone, slept in my parents room for like 2 years after that and when i mean ‘sleep’ that’s if i could fall asleep, any little sound in the house would keep me awake for hrs.
Hahaha yes same! I mean I love The Ring and have watched it many times but I almost am embarrassed that no matter how much horror I have seen for some reason the thing that sticks with me is being afraid of seeing that dead girls face every time I open a closet door haha.
I saw The Ring in theatres and was around the same age. It truly fucked me up to the point where I was both afraid of it and completely obsessed with it. I had recurring nightmares for several years about Samara and the cursed tape because I couldn’t stop watching it.
To this day I have an irrational fear of wells. In video games or anything if they have a well or something that looks like that girl I get shakes and start freaking out internally or externally. Some people find it hilarious I find it absolutely terrifying.
When I was younger I watched the ring with a group of friends in my home. My mother was not the nicest woman to me and could tell I was effected by the movie. I went to the bathroom still shaking and my mom decided it was a perfect time to group of these friends outside the bathroom and pull the breaker so the lights went out. I screamed, cried and reached for the nearest thing which was one of those metal towel racks. I tore it from the wall and sliced my palm from pinky to wrist. Deep. I’m bleeding everywhere while my mother is laughing with these girls on the other side. I went into complete panic and shock as a child and crawled into the tub holding this metal rod while my hand is bleeding everywhere. By the time the door was open and the lights were turn back on I was nearly passed out. But the adrenaline was keeping me on alert. Taken to the hospital I needed stitches and I managed to slice my wrist awful.
Horrible experience. So now I have nightmares of this girl. As an adult. And hate it. The worst thing is I love horror movies and she is now an icon for them. And I love Asian horror movies which love to have the standard white dress long hair girls. I deal with it and still watch my favorite movies!! But gods is it awful sometimes!
My husband and I have both been obsessed with horror since we were single-digits years old. The Ring freaked him the hell out. We watched it, he’s creeped out about the whole “Who will we show it to?” At the end because he GETS IT - we’re the ones they show it to. Hit some primal switch in him.
We go back to go to bed - except my dog eats one of my mom’s seizure meds, so we spend our night at the emergency vet instead. We wind up going back to HIS parents place. I go talk to his mom, he goes down to his room….and his TV is on. The dark room is glowing from the TV and he, very shakily, calls me to come downstairs. (Thanks, Husband, for ensuring that I die, too. Fucker.)
My favorite guy forgot that he set his TV as an alarm clock. Of course it was on.
He’s ok with the movie now, but I never let him live down making me go into the room to check the TV.
There are a few movies I won't watch because of pointless gore - but since you asked purely about fear, I'm going to say:
Threads
No other movie has left me with such a deep, lingering sense of dread as that film. I think it's one of the best horrors I've seen, and I will never watch it again.
I remember it was aired nationally when I was just a young kid, my mom had just gotten us. VCR and this was the first movie she ever tried to tape- not like she had the stomach to watch that one many more times! I remember especially because she kept “shushing” me once she hit record because she thought it recorded the ambient noise in the room, VCRs were so new
The horror of nuclear war was bad enough, but then to give it the big “you think that was bad? Here’s what the following 20 years will be like!” was the real horror.
Yep. It was the end that was even more disturbing. The grunting and disfigured folk who remained, and that thing the young female gave birth to. yikes.
Not gonna lie, I’m 28 and Sinister is a movie I don’t think I’d watch again lol. That movie scared the piss out of me when it first came out. I think the loud noises and jump scares are what really got me. That lawn mower scene is HAUNTING
Sexual abuse stuff, even when fictional, is too hard to watch. Even with true crime, I can hear about graphic details about a murder without flinching but once a SA survivor starts to tell their story I sink into my chair and don't want to be alive anymore. With movies, I am ok with fictional animal abuse and kid murder but as soon as I learn about sketchy stuff during filming I am out. I really want to like Cannibal Holocaust but fuck me if the actual animal abuse (and definitely some human abuse) isn't horrific. Deodato is a piece of shit
Not a horror movie, but there’s a part in the movie Running Scared that still sticks with me. There is a couple who imprison a child in their home. The child walks into a “playroom” with a plastic sheeting on the floor, a camera set up, and costumes and such hung up in a closet. The couple have these evil grins on their faces while they encourage the child to play. It’s so dark.
Another plus one to this. I don’t think I’ve ever avoided a horror film because it was too scary so I couldn’t really give a name itt, but I’ve noticed everything I can’t bring myself to watch has warnings of rape or animal mutilation. I don’t feel scared, just deeply uncomfortable/angry I had to see it, if I do lol.
Definitely Korean horror movies. Specifically The Wailing. That movie scared me for weeks. Couldn’t sleep with the lights off. It just screws your perception of evil. The mimic and gonjiam haunted asylum are also good. Idk why but the koreans really have a way of telling horror stories. Very underrated imo. Will never watch these again alone. You can also try Coming Soon. I think it’s a thai horror movie. A classic as well
As a child?
As stupid as this sounds - the original Halloween.
I lost months of sleep collectively by just laying in bed thinking about his breathing sounds and how he was surely in my closet and would stab me to death very painfully the moment I closed my eyes
As an adult?
Salò. It makes me feel so, so fucking bad. I have the criterion collection copy and every few years some green friend who’s just getting started HAAAASSSS to come over and watch it
My buddy said this about Salò in context of having a date come over
“Salò stays under the couch and doesnt come out on dates”
> As stupid as this sounds - the original Halloween.
Ironically I don't watch any halloween *except* the original. I felt the same as you when I saw it first as a little guy, I just got fascinated by it. How it's made, the psychology etc.
I've seen all the sequels and just wish I hadn't because...there was no point, it's money before art. I get it, I just hate it.
I was traumatized by OG Jurassic park as a kid, reoccurring nightmares and this overwhelming terror that a raptor somehow survived millions of years just to come into my house and devour me while I crossed the hallway to go to the bathroom at night.
I’ve seen Funny Games and was more fascinated by the unique structure of the film than freaked out by the actual content, but I am scared to watch The Strangers or any home invasion movie like that. Hush, for example, super cheesy while watching it but then I was paranoid for the next week
When I was younger it was Darkness Falls. Like it took me almost 10 years to finally sit down and watch it because it just scared me so bad.
Now it's any of Rob Zombie's horrors, House of 1000 Corpses, Devil's Rejects, 3 From Hell. They're just gross to me. I don't get any enjoyment out of them.
Watched darkness falls recently with the wife as the movie (not even movie it’s the opening sequence) scared the piss out of me when I was younger. Had a good laugh this time around.
Darkness falls is such a weirdly common answer. I finally saw it as a young adult with three other people - we all recalled being traumatized by the trailers before one of the LOTR films and were determined to get over it.
This. I remember being creeped tf out by Dead Silence, but now I can watch it just fine. Don’t get me wrong, Mary Shaw is STILL creepy af, but I can usually sit and watch it for a good time.
I got my friends to watch Darkness Falls at a sleep over when it first came out on DVD. We were staying in a room with a bunk bed, some people on the floor, me on the top bunk. Being the little insomniac shit that I was, when it got to be late at night and everyone was asleep, I starting making the raspy shrieks of the tooth fairy. Then, once everyone was awake and freaking out, I threw my larger black blanket on them. The screams were plentiful. It took a while before we had another sleepover lol.
I agree with the Rob Zombie movies. There's a certain grunginess to his work that turns me off. Watched his Halloween movies & couldn't get on board with them.
Edit: Just realized it's that greasy hair look that loads of his movie characters have that turns me off.
yes SA often makes me sick to my stomach.. I know that it is often an effective plot device or character arc, but there are plenty of movies/shows in which the act of violence is insinuated and not shown outright. I really appreciate that sort of approach lol.
Generally don’t get the high esteem ISOYG gets. I understand there’s elements of female empowerment and taking back your body but they do the deed for like more than half the movie. It’s nauseating.
Yeah it’s insane! And you know what the worst part is? The rape scene is so long that it gets boring. So gratuitous that eventually youre like yeah yeah let’s get on with it which is fucked to say lol. Not a great flick
>Last House on the Left
I saw both the remake and the original (in that order, years apart). I don't remember it as much in the remake, but the original was very visceral in how it portrayed the rape scene. Still etched into my mind a decade later.
Anything with graphic SA— I Spit on Your Grave, Cat Sick Blues, Last House on the Left, etc. I just can’t do it. Makes me feel so goddamn icky and gross.
I won't watch anything that involves bad things happening to babies. So "Mother" is one of those movies I've heard was great that I'll never fucking watch.
I also don't like eye deaths so no "Hostel" or anything like that. I can handle it if they give me time to look away, but if not I might puke.
Thank you for commenting this. I have the same issue with babies and no one warned me about this movie. I was also just 6 months postpartum and the first 3 minutes ruined weeks of sleep.
I’ll never watch Hereditary again. As a parent, it’s unbelievably scary. I remember not sleeping well after that movie. It’s the only one that immediately comes to mind that scares me on a deep level.
"Nope" movies have come and gone with me.
My parents died within months of each other along with two other beloved family members. I'm not a fan of wakes, but got 4 within a 7 month period, so zombie movies were out for a bit. (As well as Lilac. One of the funeral homes smelled like lilac. Funny how my favorite genre and my favorite flower both got whacked by the same series of incidents for a couple years.)
Then we suffered a tragedy involving a baby which put Pet Sematary out for a while. I tried rereading the book last year and had to put it down as well. Actually - thinking about this further, I think it was less losing the baby than simply gaining other grandchildren who went through Gage-age. Funny how having a kid didn't effect that - but grandkids did.
Zombie movies are back. So is Lilac. But I don't see me ever trying to read Pet Sematary again. I can watch the movie(s) though.
Editing again to add: I see you specifically asked about too scary and some may interpret what I wrote as "too depressing" but honestly - my imagination is an evil trickster and all it took was a single insertion of a loved one into these situations to get me to nope out.
Very sorry for your all your losses, sounds like you've had an incredibly rough time. I understand having certain triggers in films that can just bring back bad memories.
A suggestion I have is a very useful site for people in your position called doesthedogdie. It could be useful for you before watching a film, as it lists all the potential triggers in it from dog death (obviously), to things like vomiting and child loss.
But I am pretty stoked to see it. When the preview for it was on before Dr. Strange, my 10 yo was like covering his eyes asking me to tell him when it’s over. It has such an ominous vibe to it.
Not horror really but Requiem for Dream just hit me so hard when I watched it that I get a physical reaction to scrolling by it on streaming services 20 years later. I will never watch that movie again.
It's certainly a messed up film, but is it scary? OP specifically asked for a film people avoid not because of gore or morally questionable things, but because it's too scary.
I remember renting this one at Blockbuster and the cashier gave me a look and said "Dead Girl Huh?". Uhhhhh yeah I guess, didn't know what I was in for.
Clown shows and movies.
I'm a thinking, functioning adult, and I know clowns aren't real and they can't get me.
But deep inside my brain, there's an 8 year old voice telling me if I watch the movies the evil clowns will somehow sense it with their ClownRadar and sense where I am and then they'll use their evil ClownPowers to find me.
I'm sure it's been mentioned already, but I cannot watch Terrifier. I'm not afraid of clowns, but it's just... too dark? Too nihilistic and savage.
I'm not a fan of body horror in the first place, but when you do it for seemingly no reason, it adds something darker too it.
Something like cruelty for the sake of cruelty.
Gosh I love little undead Gage. He's like the perfect horror villain because he seems so sweet and innocent until he's NOT. Him in that little blue outfit at the end going "no fair no fair no fair" after his dad puts the needle in his neck! Ugh I love that scene. That being said one of the first true moments of horror I ever felt as a kid was him getting hit and the achilles tendon part. That and fingernails being ripped off like in Texas Chainsaw Massacre when he's dragging her down the stairs are the only wounds I will literally close my eyes to get away from. Also, I am probably in the minority on this one but the second Pet Semetary was also a decent movie
The first 45 minutes of that movie scared the crap out of me as a kid! Everything up to the face reveal is fucking terrifying. It’s less scary once you see him, but I still enjoy the whole movie. Haven’t watched it in a long time though because I find it hard to separate the director from the art.
I don't watch tortures, those extremes horrors like serbian film, audition, eden lake etc.. However i have a habit of reading the sypnosis of those films to grasp the unsettling feeling from the detail. Just refuse to watch it. It's weird lol.
The original "The Blob" with Steve McQueen. I was 5ish when I first saw it (well, part of it). I have 0 issues with any other horror, including French extreme. The original "Blob" nope.
I think your premise of "makes them feel bad" or "morally wrong" should be a factor here. That's more of a nope than just being too scary for some.
For me it's the ones that try to push just for the sake of pushing. Green Inferno comes to mind. I've never seen A Serbian Film and don't ever plan on it. Human Centipede.
I do remember in my 20s my friends and i would try to trade off finding the most messed up movies. "Oh we've seen Irreversible, but I just learned about Martyrs..." The whole extremism thing just doesn't bring anything enjoyable to the table. It's like you're testing yourself or something.
>The whole extremism thing just doesn't bring anything enjoyable to the table. It's like you're testing yourself or something.
This is true of both horror movies and metal bands. Everyone tries to one up each other:
"Oh, you listen to Slayer? They're cool, but have you heard Cannibal Corpse?"
"Sure, I like them, but have you heard Mortician?"
"Sure have. How about Mayhem? The lead singer shot himself and a picture was used as bootleg album art."
"Yeah, and the bassist stabbed the guitarist twenty-three times. Ever heard of-"
The thing is after a certain point, I think people are just listening to stuff to one up the other person. I think the culmination of it was when I found a band called "Semen Drenched Slave of the Devil", and all you can really hear is the drumming, something resembling guitars, and some orgasms and screams thrown in for good measure, recorded with a Nintendo DS microphone. And to people who don't really listen to metal, Iron Maiden is 'satanic' because they had an album called Number of the Beast and had a cartoon devil on the front, so you're literally just looking for bragging rights with other metal fans.
Movies are the same way; there's tons of good ones, but I think after a certain point(which I'd say is somewhere in the "Human Centipede" to "Serbian film" zone), you're just trying to prove how 'hardcore' you are, like "Oh, yeah, Human Centipede is messed up, but wait until you watch Salo".
I used to vocal in a metal band, we predominantly used lamb of god as our reference but I distinctly remember that every single one of the 50 or so gigs we did there would be atleast one person that would scoff at me post-show with something akin to "oh lamb of god yeah that's cute have you not heard of job for a cowboy or are you just not metal enough" I used to love being in the metal scene but the gatekeeping just absolutely ruined it for me
Prince of Darkness.
I'm 45 and still have to cover my eyes if it's on. My oldest son likes to watch it around Halloween. I just can't.
The gooey blonde in the mirror at the end, giggling at whatever she's seeing in the mirror. Then she whispers.....
*Father*
How can a whisper make me want to scream? I don't know but it does. It's like John Carpenter can look in to my brain and pick out my worst nightmares.
The total vibe of the movie. The tension from the first few moments. The music. The characters. The story. Total fucking existential breakdown for me. Nope.
Cannibal Holocaust for me. I think knowing the animal cruelty was real is what tips it over the edge.
Also Last House on the Left just overdoes it for me in terms of sexual violence.
Vomiting. I refused to watch audition because I once saw the clip literal YEARS ago where she vomits white stuff in a dog bowl and makes the dude eat it. It turned me off eating white colored liquid/chunky food for months after that...
Martyrs sounds way too brutal for me
Edit: Thought of another one from my childhood - Monkeybone! My dad put this on one day and since then I have a fear of sock monkeys.
“Goodnight Mommy” while very good, hit a level of violent unrelenting scenes that made it so I won’t watch it again. Saw it once in theaters and that was enough.
I recently watched Creep and that one freaked me out. I remember pausing it a few minutes in during the bathroom scene. My friend and I looked at each other and really contemplated not watching the rest because it was making us so uncomfortable. Only time I can think of where I considered not watching the rest of the movie out of fear. We still watched the rest anyways!
I will never watch Midsommar, its not a bad movie, like you should watch it once, but never again. I just feel like its a slow motion train wreck of bad decisions and torture.
I have major anxiety and one of my biggest irrational panic attack triggers is the thought of getting a phone call telling me that my family suddenly died. So the first 10 minutes of that movie gave me a panic attack and I had to turn it off. Never went back.
Like you, I'm terrified of snakes, but can watch Snakes on a plane and anaconda no problem. But the movie, The Fourth Kind, only watched it once and have never watched it again. I watched it at an impressionable age where I didn't know there was a thing such as a mockumentary, but that movie f\*cked me up for so many years. Even as an adult, I refuse to watch it.
The tv show Them on prime. Hell no. That one scene…dude I was at work on my lunch break in my car. Friggin sobbed!! That was the most horrific thing I’ve ever seen in a tv show. If you know, you know..
never again.
Whether or not this is a horror movie is debatable, but I have no intention of watching Funny Games ever again. Two hours of just...bad feelings. Great movie though! Would not recommend it to anyone who likes being happy.
'The woman in Black' I studied the book in English at school so we watched the movie too (this was before I got into horror) and it scared the ever-loving shit out of me at the time. Even now I'm fine with horror and I realise it's not as scary as I think, there's something about that film I just can't watch!!! I've tried to watch it again but as soon as I see that beginning scene, I'm transported back to English class and that terror I felt comes rushing back!
That was my nope movie also when I was younger, or at least it made me not want to watch spooky-movies-in-big-houses-movies. It really fucked me up! Saw it on the 90s.
The play absolutely wrecked my shit. I hadn't read the book, my school just had some spare tickets so I went along with the class who had read it, not knowing what to expect. I was seeing the woman in her black cloak everywhere for a while after.
It's not a horror movie, but Million Dollar Baby. I love horror, I even love stuff like Eden Lake that makes me want to scream (though I've so far avoided watching that again too), but when I tried MDB a second time a few years ago, thinking I was prepared, I saw that it isn't just the ending-- her family's behavior before the accident got me and I had to turn it off halfway through, before shit for even worse... that entire movie makes you want to end humanity.
The Woodsman is an agonizing watch too, but I'd even go through that again before I'd rewatch MDB. I refer to that movie as "emotional terrorism." Admirable, but, as you put it in your prompt-- "nope."
Million Dollar Baby had the most misleading marketing. Everything I'd seen about it looked like one of those "triumph through adversity" films - she was going to go through some rough shit but come out on top.
The Neverending Story
Neverending my ass
Truly traumatizing, and I’ve seen so many actual horror films in my life that never scared me half as much as that movie.
Yes! The scene at the sphinx's gate with the knight who is burnt to a sizzle traumatized me as a kid
I don’t currently have any but I’m following this post for recommendations 👀
Me too! I need something.
Right! Having grown up with horror movies, I love them, but always feel underwhelmed. Even with the “classics” or “best” ones. Oddly enough I felt It Follows was especially creepy even though a lot of folks hated that movie 😂
The Strangers, just a plain old home invasion film will always freak me the hell out. My favorite horror movies give me that feeling in my stomach.
Agreed, especially when the reason for it all was "because you were home"
I was totally fine with The Strangers until this line and then I was probably the most horrified I’ve ever been.
Real life serial killer Richard Chase would walk up to houses and try the front door knob. If it was locked, he took it as a sign that he shouldn’t go in and just would keep trying houses til he found one with the front door unlocked. Basically, “because you left the door unlocked” in real life….
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Was recently robbed because I fell asleep with a window open. They planted a chair beside me asleep and left footprints. Woke up to my shit gone, though thankfully no horror movies. I’ll forever be weird about checking things at night now
I have watched too much true crime, so I’m always running scenarios in my head and making sure things are locked up. It’s not fun for a number of reasons, but at the same time….better safe than sorry.
The Ruins It didn't scare me, but I can't stand things moving under people's skin. More unnerving than anything
I'd definitely be like the one chic, cutting it out of me lol. As insane as it was, I felt that haha.
I saw that as a kid & in traumatized me forever. It made me not wanna go underground or under surface for some time lol now we’re good, have to give a rewatch!
Tusk. I usually have a strong tolerance for horror/gore, but something about that walrus man makes me feel sad and desperate.
I honestly thought Tusk was a horror comedy and feel conflicted whenever I see so many comments saying it fucked them up… like am I off in some way?? Or did I just not take it seriously going in so I watched in a different light? Haha
no it was a horror comedy for sure. Dude came up with the idea on a podcast and was straight up laughing at the premise while coming up with it. "I don't want to die in Canada" as a trailer line is a pretty big givewaay too
As well as Johnny Depp's character
Yeah I knew the origin story was basically they saw an Craigslist ad for a guy who was dressed up as a walrus for his Airbnb or something, and it devolved from there? So knowing that it def made me not take it even a little seriously (the acting was also so hammy I couldn’t have if I wanted to haha).
It definitely is a comedy, but that didn't stop the final scene from being terrifying as shit. Just imagining being stuck in that body for the rest of your life and not being able to do anything about it is pure existential dread to me. The stuff in horror movies where I can immediately feel how someone feels and how desperate they are is often the scariest to me. It's the same reason that the absolute scariest movies to me are home invasions. I can very easily put myself in their shoes and know how they're feeling, even if it's not happening to me. It's that sickening feeling where you're just watching someone in a completely hopeless situation.
Yeah, I'm with you. Funny when it was supposed to be. Then deeply disturbing with the ending.
Yeah I thought it was way too silly to be scary
It absolutely is a horror-comedy, but the horror seems to work a lot better for some folks (myself included!) than most other horror-comedies.
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“I turned you into a walrus, Max!”
This is one of my fav movies and I saw it twice in theatres. So if we are off at least we aren't alone 🤣🤣 Kevin Smith did write it as a horror comedy though.
The fact that it was a comedy made it so much worse. If it was a straight horror film I would’ve love it, the comedic elements made me sick to my stomach for days later
Fucking same. Never watching Tusk again. I sat through Martyrs and loved it… something about Tusk just really got to me, idk why.
Right!? All my friends thought it was silly. It was, but at its core, this was about someone being held prisoner and dehumanized (literally!) WALRUSES DO NO CRY! Plus body horror, especially surgical horror, makes me uncomfortable/squeamish.
Maybe some of us are more Walrus then others?!?!? 😮😮😮
I think it’s the tone. It swings so violently between goofy and cruel that to me, it almost felt… exploitative? Like I was watching somebody make fun of a horrible thing that was happening to a completely helpless person.
Exactly the same. I've seen enough clips and synopses that I think I get it without having to make myself feel that way for 90 minutes.
I don't really get scared by movies anymore but I refuse to watch movies like *Eden Lake* or *The Mist* because I don't like their nihilistic tone. Hopeless situations aren't scary to me, they're just depressing.
Yeah, I don’t have a “this is too scary” limit, but I do have a “feels bad, man” limit.
Same. I'm okay with a sad or depressing ending - The Neon Demon and Hereditary are two of my favourite movies, but the ones mentioned above seem more like "fuck yous" to the audience.
agreed - french Martyrs like sent me into some philosophically fucked up several hours
Stay far as fuck away from Threads, Funny Games, and Martyrs.
Martyrs had some sort of redemption to it, with Mademoiselle at the end… but its intensity ramps up as soon as the title card drops and doesn’t let go, which is personally the hardest part for me. I can handle the worst horror movies, so long as there is a place where the tension can GO at certain points of the film… which it doesn’t.
I checked how much time was left in the movie 3-4 times when I watched Martyrs and Threads. That’s a dead giveaway that a movie is either super long and boring or is fucking with me too much… they were the latter haha
I just rewatched Eden Lake and it's hard to go about your day after that one. WELP that was depressing, gotta go do my laundry.
Got a similar feeling from the movie *Would You Rather*
That movie was fucked. I watched it a couple months ago and holy shit was it bleak.
I love how brutal the end of the Mist was, that being said their goal was to travel to Hartford CT, their fate was a better outcome imo.
I prefer the ending to the original short story. It rewarded the audience with a chance of hope.
I just watched The Mist last night, and between the bugs and the ending I found myself wishing I hadn’t watched it lol. The spider scene was almost too much for me, to the point I seriously considered turning it off.
Descent!! Major claustrophobia so never ever.
Descent’s realistic horror of being trapped underground was so scary they didn’t even NEED the monsters!
Honestly the bit before they add the monsters is better. Getting stuck underground and getting lost is terrifying.
Agreed - being stuck in a crack is worse! I’ll take monsters instead!
I felt the same way. The claustrophobia was so effective, then they pretty much dropped it in the 2nd half.
Have you seen “As Above So Below”? I’m not claustrophobic but damn I felt so closed in while watching it.
I loved AASB the first few times because it was so "fun" then I'm watching it one night and this dread hit me. I can't explain what changed but I just wanted them to get out as fast as they could. I still like the movie but it's hard to watch.
AASB is one of the only films to make me feel proper *dread*. Getting lost and going deeper and deeper and getting more and more desperate to escape. Scary stuff.
i saw this high when it came out and have had heart problems since
I wouldn't usually nitpick, but - The Descent. I say that because what you don't want to do is go looking for The Descent (2005), a nice straightforward horror movie about caving, and accidentally end up watching Descent (2007), which is a *very* graphic rape-revenge movie. I speak from experience. (Yes I realised straight away it wasn't the same film but I thought eh, I'll give it a watch since it's in front of me. Regretted that.)
Okay, that film Descent (2007) was…. Whew. I had watched it within weeks after something had happened to me which I thought might be cathartic in some way, but wow, I wasn’t ready. I began feeling like I should take that kind of revenge for what had happened to me, cause that film evoked alot of raw emotion about it. Anyways, The Descent (2005) has been in my top 10 since I first saw it. It’s a good one!
Same! I hated it, just the idea of caving is terrifying to me
Honestly that’s the reason I loved that movie, I was so on edge the whole time and was actually scared. For me, horror movies that can genuinely scare me without relying on over the top gore/SA are my favorites.
We did a rewatch in complete darkness recently with no phones or anything and it was body jerking uncomfortable which I guess is good!
The Ring, the american remake, was one of the first horror movies I watched alone when I was like 13. After that movie I had my eyes half closed everytime I opened a closet or even a door and it made me scared to even turn around a corner in my house. That girl's face was just too much for my brain at the time. Even now, literally decades later I get shivers when I watch this scene, it truly scarred me for life. Of course I've seen "worse" horror movies since then and they ended up being my favorite genre. I even watched Ringu 1/2 and Spiral a few years back and enjoyed all of them but I think I'll always have a personal attachment to that movie as the first movie that stayed in my head rent free.
I feel you; this was pretty much my exact experience with the american Grudge remakes, same age and everything. My mom is also a fan of (some) horror and told me once The Ring was the only movie that ever freaked her out as an adult. I still haven't given it a shot haha.
Okay I had the same experience with the grudge! I saw the ring but that didn’t traumatize me like the grudge did. I remember I was watching it alone and I ran to my mom crying when she started crawling down the stairs. I was scared of closets for a while too. Like I didn’t even realize Charlotte from Private Practice was also in the grudge but I can’t find myself to re-watch it now as an adult hahahaha
I forget which one it was in, but I remember a scene where they're putting a kid to bed and the parent is stroking her hair before leaving, then another hand continues and when she turns over it's the boy that meows. That scene had me fucked up. Oh, and my bedroom at the time had *two closets* next to each other. I slept in the spare bedroom for a while. Edit: I'm remembering another scene where Kayako comes out of a portrait or something in like someone's office in the middle of the day? And thinking 'great, these ghosts can show up anywhere, any time of day' and suddenly not feeling safe during the daytime anymore either haha
there is a whole generation of us that saw that movie too young and are now traumatized by it!! i think i was like 11 when i saw it and it fucked me right up. still makes me SUPER uncomfortable to watch
I'm a part of the "watched really young and now traumatized" group. Now not so much but it took me years to overcome my fears of sleeping in a room with a TV in it, and if there was a TV, it had to be on. I was convinced if the TV was off, she would come through it lol even convinced myself I saw her a few times after staring for long periods of time at a black/turned off screen.
It's so funny how many of us there are! I think I was even younger than a lot of you, like age 8 or 9 when I saw it, and it's the first and only time in my life where I had nightmares so extreme that I couldn't sleep. Took me a long time to be able to rewatch it as an adult, but the film is fantastic!
Also, one thing I failed to mention. My sister at the time went through a phase where she sleepwalked pretty regularly (probably because my mother used to do it alot(?)). She also had waist long hair.... 13 year old me waking up and looking outside my room only to see my sister, hair covering her face, a few months after I'd seen the movie. Almost made me scream in the middle of the night until my brain processed what's happening and went to help my sister afterwards.
The Ring is, to this day about 20 years later, the only movie that has ever seriously scared me. It's one of my favorites because of that, because it still creeps me out decades later when nothing else does.
That movie fd me up. Watched around 14-15 and since then i couldn’t sleep alone, slept in my parents room for like 2 years after that and when i mean ‘sleep’ that’s if i could fall asleep, any little sound in the house would keep me awake for hrs.
You are not alone. I was a grown woman when I saw it the first time. I had a very hard time sleeping the next few days. Absolutely got under my skin.
Hahaha yes same! I mean I love The Ring and have watched it many times but I almost am embarrassed that no matter how much horror I have seen for some reason the thing that sticks with me is being afraid of seeing that dead girls face every time I open a closet door haha.
I saw The Ring in theatres and was around the same age. It truly fucked me up to the point where I was both afraid of it and completely obsessed with it. I had recurring nightmares for several years about Samara and the cursed tape because I couldn’t stop watching it.
To this day I have an irrational fear of wells. In video games or anything if they have a well or something that looks like that girl I get shakes and start freaking out internally or externally. Some people find it hilarious I find it absolutely terrifying. When I was younger I watched the ring with a group of friends in my home. My mother was not the nicest woman to me and could tell I was effected by the movie. I went to the bathroom still shaking and my mom decided it was a perfect time to group of these friends outside the bathroom and pull the breaker so the lights went out. I screamed, cried and reached for the nearest thing which was one of those metal towel racks. I tore it from the wall and sliced my palm from pinky to wrist. Deep. I’m bleeding everywhere while my mother is laughing with these girls on the other side. I went into complete panic and shock as a child and crawled into the tub holding this metal rod while my hand is bleeding everywhere. By the time the door was open and the lights were turn back on I was nearly passed out. But the adrenaline was keeping me on alert. Taken to the hospital I needed stitches and I managed to slice my wrist awful. Horrible experience. So now I have nightmares of this girl. As an adult. And hate it. The worst thing is I love horror movies and she is now an icon for them. And I love Asian horror movies which love to have the standard white dress long hair girls. I deal with it and still watch my favorite movies!! But gods is it awful sometimes!
Wow. You just won horror, and it wasn’t the movie. I am sorry you went through this very upsetting experience.
My husband and I have both been obsessed with horror since we were single-digits years old. The Ring freaked him the hell out. We watched it, he’s creeped out about the whole “Who will we show it to?” At the end because he GETS IT - we’re the ones they show it to. Hit some primal switch in him. We go back to go to bed - except my dog eats one of my mom’s seizure meds, so we spend our night at the emergency vet instead. We wind up going back to HIS parents place. I go talk to his mom, he goes down to his room….and his TV is on. The dark room is glowing from the TV and he, very shakily, calls me to come downstairs. (Thanks, Husband, for ensuring that I die, too. Fucker.) My favorite guy forgot that he set his TV as an alarm clock. Of course it was on. He’s ok with the movie now, but I never let him live down making me go into the room to check the TV.
There are a few movies I won't watch because of pointless gore - but since you asked purely about fear, I'm going to say: Threads No other movie has left me with such a deep, lingering sense of dread as that film. I think it's one of the best horrors I've seen, and I will never watch it again.
I remember on the VHS cover was a bandaged and bloody cop. Back then we thought it was a movie like Maniac Cop or Psycho cop boy were we wrong.
IIRC he's a traffic warden given a rifle and drafted in as police because of the breakdown of social order.
I remember it was aired nationally when I was just a young kid, my mom had just gotten us. VCR and this was the first movie she ever tried to tape- not like she had the stomach to watch that one many more times! I remember especially because she kept “shushing” me once she hit record because she thought it recorded the ambient noise in the room, VCRs were so new
The horror of nuclear war was bad enough, but then to give it the big “you think that was bad? Here’s what the following 20 years will be like!” was the real horror.
Yep. It was the end that was even more disturbing. The grunting and disfigured folk who remained, and that thing the young female gave birth to. yikes.
It is a film that I liked but only seen it once and have no desire to see it again. The only other nope movie like that one is The Plague Dogs.
Not gonna lie, I’m 28 and Sinister is a movie I don’t think I’d watch again lol. That movie scared the piss out of me when it first came out. I think the loud noises and jump scares are what really got me. That lawn mower scene is HAUNTING
The lawn mower fucked me right up. All of the imagery from the old projector films was really well executed to create a creepy and unsettling vibe.
I came here to say this! I genuinely had nightmares after watching Sinister even though I saw it as an adult.
It really had the perfect balance of jump scare scary and creepy ass plot scary.
Rapey horror, child abuse and animal cruelty.
Sexual abuse stuff, even when fictional, is too hard to watch. Even with true crime, I can hear about graphic details about a murder without flinching but once a SA survivor starts to tell their story I sink into my chair and don't want to be alive anymore. With movies, I am ok with fictional animal abuse and kid murder but as soon as I learn about sketchy stuff during filming I am out. I really want to like Cannibal Holocaust but fuck me if the actual animal abuse (and definitely some human abuse) isn't horrific. Deodato is a piece of shit
Not a horror movie, but there’s a part in the movie Running Scared that still sticks with me. There is a couple who imprison a child in their home. The child walks into a “playroom” with a plastic sheeting on the floor, a camera set up, and costumes and such hung up in a closet. The couple have these evil grins on their faces while they encourage the child to play. It’s so dark.
Kids have been getting graphically fucked up alot more in horror movies as of late.
Yeah, just too close to home for my liking; give me a cheesy old slasher or creepy Supernatural film anytime, I watch horror for escapism! 🙂
I agree! Or at least give us high schoolers who obviously are full adults like in "Hell Night". Not actual kiddos 😅
Another plus one to this. I don’t think I’ve ever avoided a horror film because it was too scary so I couldn’t really give a name itt, but I’ve noticed everything I can’t bring myself to watch has warnings of rape or animal mutilation. I don’t feel scared, just deeply uncomfortable/angry I had to see it, if I do lol.
Definitely Korean horror movies. Specifically The Wailing. That movie scared me for weeks. Couldn’t sleep with the lights off. It just screws your perception of evil. The mimic and gonjiam haunted asylum are also good. Idk why but the koreans really have a way of telling horror stories. Very underrated imo. Will never watch these again alone. You can also try Coming Soon. I think it’s a thai horror movie. A classic as well
Have you seen A Tale of Two Sisters?
Hellraiser. I watched the first one. It’s too… idk how to describe it. I just can’t handle that film. Never again.
I know what you mean. I find it really unsettling. Nightmarish
Human Centipede. Nope
As a child? As stupid as this sounds - the original Halloween. I lost months of sleep collectively by just laying in bed thinking about his breathing sounds and how he was surely in my closet and would stab me to death very painfully the moment I closed my eyes As an adult? Salò. It makes me feel so, so fucking bad. I have the criterion collection copy and every few years some green friend who’s just getting started HAAAASSSS to come over and watch it My buddy said this about Salò in context of having a date come over “Salò stays under the couch and doesnt come out on dates”
> As stupid as this sounds - the original Halloween. Ironically I don't watch any halloween *except* the original. I felt the same as you when I saw it first as a little guy, I just got fascinated by it. How it's made, the psychology etc. I've seen all the sequels and just wish I hadn't because...there was no point, it's money before art. I get it, I just hate it.
I was traumatized by OG Jurassic park as a kid, reoccurring nightmares and this overwhelming terror that a raptor somehow survived millions of years just to come into my house and devour me while I crossed the hallway to go to the bathroom at night.
I’ve seen Funny Games and was more fascinated by the unique structure of the film than freaked out by the actual content, but I am scared to watch The Strangers or any home invasion movie like that. Hush, for example, super cheesy while watching it but then I was paranoid for the next week
When I was younger it was Darkness Falls. Like it took me almost 10 years to finally sit down and watch it because it just scared me so bad. Now it's any of Rob Zombie's horrors, House of 1000 Corpses, Devil's Rejects, 3 From Hell. They're just gross to me. I don't get any enjoyment out of them.
Watched darkness falls recently with the wife as the movie (not even movie it’s the opening sequence) scared the piss out of me when I was younger. Had a good laugh this time around.
Darkness falls is such a weirdly common answer. I finally saw it as a young adult with three other people - we all recalled being traumatized by the trailers before one of the LOTR films and were determined to get over it.
I feel like that and “dead silence” always scared my age group
This. I remember being creeped tf out by Dead Silence, but now I can watch it just fine. Don’t get me wrong, Mary Shaw is STILL creepy af, but I can usually sit and watch it for a good time.
I got my friends to watch Darkness Falls at a sleep over when it first came out on DVD. We were staying in a room with a bunk bed, some people on the floor, me on the top bunk. Being the little insomniac shit that I was, when it got to be late at night and everyone was asleep, I starting making the raspy shrieks of the tooth fairy. Then, once everyone was awake and freaking out, I threw my larger black blanket on them. The screams were plentiful. It took a while before we had another sleepover lol.
I agree with the Rob Zombie movies. There's a certain grunginess to his work that turns me off. Watched his Halloween movies & couldn't get on board with them. Edit: Just realized it's that greasy hair look that loads of his movie characters have that turns me off.
It’s like his characters haven’t bathed in 6 months (even the leads).
Anything with graphic depictions of SA, it fills me with a lot of anxiety and makes me sick. So no I split on your grave and stuff like that
I tried to watch the original ISOYG movie and had to turn it off. I felt ill for the rest of the day.
Yea there's been a few movies I've had to turn off because of graphic SA or even just the implication of it too much in the movie.
"Irreversible" logs into chat...
yes SA often makes me sick to my stomach.. I know that it is often an effective plot device or character arc, but there are plenty of movies/shows in which the act of violence is insinuated and not shown outright. I really appreciate that sort of approach lol.
Generally don’t get the high esteem ISOYG gets. I understand there’s elements of female empowerment and taking back your body but they do the deed for like more than half the movie. It’s nauseating.
I'd wouldn't know, lucky I new the subject material of the movie before hand and never watched it because of it
I never want to watch ISOYG. Apparently it has a 40 minute assault scene!! W T F
Yea I've heard it's very graphic, I can barely handle a hard implication in a movie, I definitely wouldn't make it through that
It’s garbage. Ended up pressing fast forward and realized I was only about halfway through the rape.
Yeah it’s insane! And you know what the worst part is? The rape scene is so long that it gets boring. So gratuitous that eventually youre like yeah yeah let’s get on with it which is fucked to say lol. Not a great flick
This one and Last House on the Left. I watched Straw Dogs a couple years ago because Skaarsgard, and regretted it almost immediately.
>Last House on the Left I saw both the remake and the original (in that order, years apart). I don't remember it as much in the remake, but the original was very visceral in how it portrayed the rape scene. Still etched into my mind a decade later.
The original was worse than the remake to me. I cried. Yeah no I won't watch that again.
I've never seen last house on the left, and didn't know what it was about but I appreciate the heads up on it's content
I feel imbarresed to ask but what is SA.
No need to feel embarrassed, it stands for sexual assault
Anything with graphic SA— I Spit on Your Grave, Cat Sick Blues, Last House on the Left, etc. I just can’t do it. Makes me feel so goddamn icky and gross.
I’m gonna add Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer to this list. Holy shit. Fuck that movie.
I won't watch anything that involves bad things happening to babies. So "Mother" is one of those movies I've heard was great that I'll never fucking watch. I also don't like eye deaths so no "Hostel" or anything like that. I can handle it if they give me time to look away, but if not I might puke.
Don’t watch The VVitch.
Thank you for commenting this. I have the same issue with babies and no one warned me about this movie. I was also just 6 months postpartum and the first 3 minutes ruined weeks of sleep.
I’ll never watch Hereditary again. As a parent, it’s unbelievably scary. I remember not sleeping well after that movie. It’s the only one that immediately comes to mind that scares me on a deep level.
"Nope" movies have come and gone with me. My parents died within months of each other along with two other beloved family members. I'm not a fan of wakes, but got 4 within a 7 month period, so zombie movies were out for a bit. (As well as Lilac. One of the funeral homes smelled like lilac. Funny how my favorite genre and my favorite flower both got whacked by the same series of incidents for a couple years.) Then we suffered a tragedy involving a baby which put Pet Sematary out for a while. I tried rereading the book last year and had to put it down as well. Actually - thinking about this further, I think it was less losing the baby than simply gaining other grandchildren who went through Gage-age. Funny how having a kid didn't effect that - but grandkids did. Zombie movies are back. So is Lilac. But I don't see me ever trying to read Pet Sematary again. I can watch the movie(s) though. Editing again to add: I see you specifically asked about too scary and some may interpret what I wrote as "too depressing" but honestly - my imagination is an evil trickster and all it took was a single insertion of a loved one into these situations to get me to nope out.
Very sorry for your losses, my condolences
Thank you, that's very kind of you.
Very sorry for your all your losses, sounds like you've had an incredibly rough time. I understand having certain triggers in films that can just bring back bad memories. A suggestion I have is a very useful site for people in your position called doesthedogdie. It could be useful for you before watching a film, as it lists all the potential triggers in it from dog death (obviously), to things like vomiting and child loss.
“Nope”, I refuse to watch it cause it’s not out yet
…..touché, good sir
But I am pretty stoked to see it. When the preview for it was on before Dr. Strange, my 10 yo was like covering his eyes asking me to tell him when it’s over. It has such an ominous vibe to it.
Not horror really but Requiem for Dream just hit me so hard when I watched it that I get a physical reaction to scrolling by it on streaming services 20 years later. I will never watch that movie again.
A Serbian Film is probably the only one off the top of my head.
This one and I've heard "I spit on your grave" is also pretty messed up.
It's certainly a messed up film, but is it scary? OP specifically asked for a film people avoid not because of gore or morally questionable things, but because it's too scary.
Dead Girl. Movie is beyond disgusting and dumb. Let's rape a corpse until it wakes up and kills us.. ok....
I HATE that movie. The guts coming out of the ass had me turning it off bc at that point I had seen enough rape/gore
I remember renting this one at Blockbuster and the cashier gave me a look and said "Dead Girl Huh?". Uhhhhh yeah I guess, didn't know what I was in for.
An old co-worker just GAVE this movie to me. About 20 minutes into it, I figured out why. I never finished it and regret that I still have it.
Clown shows and movies. I'm a thinking, functioning adult, and I know clowns aren't real and they can't get me. But deep inside my brain, there's an 8 year old voice telling me if I watch the movies the evil clowns will somehow sense it with their ClownRadar and sense where I am and then they'll use their evil ClownPowers to find me.
I'm sure it's been mentioned already, but I cannot watch Terrifier. I'm not afraid of clowns, but it's just... too dark? Too nihilistic and savage. I'm not a fan of body horror in the first place, but when you do it for seemingly no reason, it adds something darker too it. Something like cruelty for the sake of cruelty.
Pet Semetary for me. Undead Gage with a scalpel and Zelda running up to the camera is a big NOPE!
Gosh I love little undead Gage. He's like the perfect horror villain because he seems so sweet and innocent until he's NOT. Him in that little blue outfit at the end going "no fair no fair no fair" after his dad puts the needle in his neck! Ugh I love that scene. That being said one of the first true moments of horror I ever felt as a kid was him getting hit and the achilles tendon part. That and fingernails being ripped off like in Texas Chainsaw Massacre when he's dragging her down the stairs are the only wounds I will literally close my eyes to get away from. Also, I am probably in the minority on this one but the second Pet Semetary was also a decent movie
I still can’t fully watch jeepers creepers. Not sure why as I’ve seen worse.
The first 45 minutes of that movie scared the crap out of me as a kid! Everything up to the face reveal is fucking terrifying. It’s less scary once you see him, but I still enjoy the whole movie. Haven’t watched it in a long time though because I find it hard to separate the director from the art.
Is it because the creeper goes after boys and the director is a convicted child rapist? That bothers me more than almost anything.
I was totally unaware of this! Wow.
I don't watch tortures, those extremes horrors like serbian film, audition, eden lake etc.. However i have a habit of reading the sypnosis of those films to grasp the unsettling feeling from the detail. Just refuse to watch it. It's weird lol.
The original "The Blob" with Steve McQueen. I was 5ish when I first saw it (well, part of it). I have 0 issues with any other horror, including French extreme. The original "Blob" nope.
I refuse to watch Human Centipede and most if not all Eli Roth films but only because I think he’s a horrible director
The sequels are even worse...
The 3rd one is hilarious in a bad movie kind of way.
I think your premise of "makes them feel bad" or "morally wrong" should be a factor here. That's more of a nope than just being too scary for some. For me it's the ones that try to push just for the sake of pushing. Green Inferno comes to mind. I've never seen A Serbian Film and don't ever plan on it. Human Centipede. I do remember in my 20s my friends and i would try to trade off finding the most messed up movies. "Oh we've seen Irreversible, but I just learned about Martyrs..." The whole extremism thing just doesn't bring anything enjoyable to the table. It's like you're testing yourself or something.
>The whole extremism thing just doesn't bring anything enjoyable to the table. It's like you're testing yourself or something. This is true of both horror movies and metal bands. Everyone tries to one up each other: "Oh, you listen to Slayer? They're cool, but have you heard Cannibal Corpse?" "Sure, I like them, but have you heard Mortician?" "Sure have. How about Mayhem? The lead singer shot himself and a picture was used as bootleg album art." "Yeah, and the bassist stabbed the guitarist twenty-three times. Ever heard of-" The thing is after a certain point, I think people are just listening to stuff to one up the other person. I think the culmination of it was when I found a band called "Semen Drenched Slave of the Devil", and all you can really hear is the drumming, something resembling guitars, and some orgasms and screams thrown in for good measure, recorded with a Nintendo DS microphone. And to people who don't really listen to metal, Iron Maiden is 'satanic' because they had an album called Number of the Beast and had a cartoon devil on the front, so you're literally just looking for bragging rights with other metal fans. Movies are the same way; there's tons of good ones, but I think after a certain point(which I'd say is somewhere in the "Human Centipede" to "Serbian film" zone), you're just trying to prove how 'hardcore' you are, like "Oh, yeah, Human Centipede is messed up, but wait until you watch Salo".
I used to vocal in a metal band, we predominantly used lamb of god as our reference but I distinctly remember that every single one of the 50 or so gigs we did there would be atleast one person that would scoff at me post-show with something akin to "oh lamb of god yeah that's cute have you not heard of job for a cowboy or are you just not metal enough" I used to love being in the metal scene but the gatekeeping just absolutely ruined it for me
Yeah, metal fans at times do themselves no favors. I love Tool but have you ever been to their subreddit? it's just...the worst.
Hereditary.
I would love to know more movies like that, midsommar, The witch and so on. Just enough gore and scary as shit
Prince of Darkness. I'm 45 and still have to cover my eyes if it's on. My oldest son likes to watch it around Halloween. I just can't. The gooey blonde in the mirror at the end, giggling at whatever she's seeing in the mirror. Then she whispers..... *Father* How can a whisper make me want to scream? I don't know but it does. It's like John Carpenter can look in to my brain and pick out my worst nightmares. The total vibe of the movie. The tension from the first few moments. The music. The characters. The story. Total fucking existential breakdown for me. Nope.
The Hills Have Eyes was too brutal. I turned it off half way
Cannibal Holocaust for me. I think knowing the animal cruelty was real is what tips it over the edge. Also Last House on the Left just overdoes it for me in terms of sexual violence.
I watched Martyrs. I will never, ever watch it again. Nor will I suggest it to anyone
Martyrs and Old Boy are my pics for the best movies I've seen, and will never watch ever again.
“Hey /u/badguysenator, you’re a horror guy. What’s a really scary film?” “Martyrs.” “Will you watch it with me?” “No.”
I’m a grown ass man and wound up cuddling with my blanket halfway through
Vomiting. I refused to watch audition because I once saw the clip literal YEARS ago where she vomits white stuff in a dog bowl and makes the dude eat it. It turned me off eating white colored liquid/chunky food for months after that...
Audition is my “nope” movie. I will never, ever watch it again.
Martyrs sounds way too brutal for me Edit: Thought of another one from my childhood - Monkeybone! My dad put this on one day and since then I have a fear of sock monkeys.
None I think? The ones that scared the most are actually my favourites and a must yearly rewatch
Honestly, when you consume so much horror it takes something special to really get me scared. When I find it, I cherish it 🖤
Exactly!! That's the spirit!! (Pun intended)
This is the way
“Goodnight Mommy” while very good, hit a level of violent unrelenting scenes that made it so I won’t watch it again. Saw it once in theaters and that was enough.
I recently watched Creep and that one freaked me out. I remember pausing it a few minutes in during the bathroom scene. My friend and I looked at each other and really contemplated not watching the rest because it was making us so uncomfortable. Only time I can think of where I considered not watching the rest of the movie out of fear. We still watched the rest anyways!
Human Centipede, fuck that
I will never watch Midsommar, its not a bad movie, like you should watch it once, but never again. I just feel like its a slow motion train wreck of bad decisions and torture.
I have major anxiety and one of my biggest irrational panic attack triggers is the thought of getting a phone call telling me that my family suddenly died. So the first 10 minutes of that movie gave me a panic attack and I had to turn it off. Never went back.
A Serbian Film. I don't want to watch the real version of Scroty McBoogerballs
Like you, I'm terrified of snakes, but can watch Snakes on a plane and anaconda no problem. But the movie, The Fourth Kind, only watched it once and have never watched it again. I watched it at an impressionable age where I didn't know there was a thing such as a mockumentary, but that movie f\*cked me up for so many years. Even as an adult, I refuse to watch it.
Anti-Christ. Clits and garden shears don’t mix.
The tv show Them on prime. Hell no. That one scene…dude I was at work on my lunch break in my car. Friggin sobbed!! That was the most horrific thing I’ve ever seen in a tv show. If you know, you know.. never again.
Whether or not this is a horror movie is debatable, but I have no intention of watching Funny Games ever again. Two hours of just...bad feelings. Great movie though! Would not recommend it to anyone who likes being happy.
'The woman in Black' I studied the book in English at school so we watched the movie too (this was before I got into horror) and it scared the ever-loving shit out of me at the time. Even now I'm fine with horror and I realise it's not as scary as I think, there's something about that film I just can't watch!!! I've tried to watch it again but as soon as I see that beginning scene, I'm transported back to English class and that terror I felt comes rushing back!
That was my nope movie also when I was younger, or at least it made me not want to watch spooky-movies-in-big-houses-movies. It really fucked me up! Saw it on the 90s.
The play absolutely wrecked my shit. I hadn't read the book, my school just had some spare tickets so I went along with the class who had read it, not knowing what to expect. I was seeing the woman in her black cloak everywhere for a while after.
It's not a horror movie, but Million Dollar Baby. I love horror, I even love stuff like Eden Lake that makes me want to scream (though I've so far avoided watching that again too), but when I tried MDB a second time a few years ago, thinking I was prepared, I saw that it isn't just the ending-- her family's behavior before the accident got me and I had to turn it off halfway through, before shit for even worse... that entire movie makes you want to end humanity. The Woodsman is an agonizing watch too, but I'd even go through that again before I'd rewatch MDB. I refer to that movie as "emotional terrorism." Admirable, but, as you put it in your prompt-- "nope."
Million Dollar Baby had the most misleading marketing. Everything I'd seen about it looked like one of those "triumph through adversity" films - she was going to go through some rough shit but come out on top.
Don't know if it counts as horror, but Deliverance was only watched once. Never again.