Favorite Types of Horror

[Goman Fox]

What types of horror themes scare you the most?  I would have just said "what scares you the most?" but I'm not really looking for things like phobias and such.  Like Kritter's fear of spiders, unless they're giant, mutated spiders, like you see in cheesy horror films, I don't wanna hear about in this thread.  What I'm looking for is what types of horror films/games/stories/etc. scare you the most?  Or which do you enjoy being scared by the most?  This can include things like slasher flicks, alien abductions, zombie outbreaks, psychological thrillers, things like that.

Personally, the things that scare/disturb me the most, are things that are believable.  The more realistic and believable it is, the scarier it can be for me.  For example, the first Parasite Eve game on the Playstation really freaked me out when I first played it.  It's set in New York City and you play a police officer named Aya Brea.  The game starts off with her attending an opera where the star actress ends up mutating into this monster and causes part of the audience, as well as her fellow actors, to spontaneously combust.  As a police officer, Aya feels she must investigate, so she fights the monster and in the process, learns what the monster is actually wanting.

Apparently the mitochondria in her cells had evolved and became sentient and ended up taking over her body, naming the new body "Mitochondria Eve."  Eve ends up talking about a type of "mitochondria revolution" where the mitochondria will end up controlling the cells in organisms, rather than the nuclei and such.  Throughout the game, you end up fighting a variety of animals and such that have been mutated by the mitochondria in their cells.

The thing that scared me the most was how realistic the game seemed.  I'm sure to anyone that knows biology really well, it may not seem realistic.  It's realism is probably along the same lines of the "realistic" physics in Star Trek when it comes to talking about faster-than-light travel.  It sounds good and such when explained, but probably isn't actually correct.  It was still interesting though because that's a direction I had never expected a video game to go, since mitochondria are believed to be descended from other organisms, and they have their own DNA, even within our own cells.  I was also only 15 or so when I first played it, so it was really believable to me.

So really, the horror themes that end up scaring me the most are the ones that are most believable, even if the science behind them isn't completely accurate, as long as it's still believable in a way.

So what kinds of horror do you all enjoy?

[Oni]

I am not really scared of horrow movies, more put off by most of them. Especially ones now adays. They lack the good scare factor that the ones of my days did.
Though I do get jumpy from them, not scared. I do end up with bad dreams at itmes. For the most part I am just not to fond of them.
Give me Freddy or Jig Saw anyday of the week though and I will watch with the biggest grin on my face.

Though Doom 3...well that not only scared the sh** out of me (and before you guys say its wasn't scary try playing it with 4.1 suround  hearing things that you can only hear with a nice sound system, sitting all alone, in the dark and playing that game) but also gave me Torrents (sp .. i think) Syndrom.

I like scary/thriller/horror movies that have chracter, and reason. NOt just mindless killing. Wasnt impressed by Jason, Scream, or alot of the modern fliks.

[Kritter]

Bah! I am a pussy when it comes to scary movies. I have to watch it during the daylight and have someone I know quite well for me to watch almost any scary movie. Shooot, you (as in Foxie) saw how I reacted to the movie UNREST. *drops head* That was a scary movie- wish I never seen it.

But anywaz, what I consider “scary movies” are as followed:
1. Has something to do with possession/religion/Satanic (such as The Exorcist & The Exorcism of Emily Rose)
Movies like those always terrify me because I was brought up to fear it. In church, possession is a serious matter and something that should be taken lightly.

2. Something with terrifying monsters (such as Freddie and Chucky).

3. Something mixed in with reality (such as The Ring, Grudge, Unrest, ect.)
Come on now, I am naive and quite gullible girl, something that uses a TV and/or a haunted house will scary me to death.

Now gore such as SAW does not scare me, in fact, it excites me. But that is off topic.

[Oni]

Ya and picking on you for the next two hours after the movie are the best parts of it.

[Rosa D.]

Oh man, I love horror movies. It is true that they are less scary and more gory these days. I still think that they have their charm. Anyways, I love psychological thrillers the most, I find that they are by far the scariest thing. One movie that I saw recently scared the piss out of me when "Simon" says "I live in the weak and the wounded." It honestly sent chills up my spine.  In case anyone is curious the movie that I am reffering to is called Session 9. Good movie and I would reccomend it to those who like horror movies. I tend to idolize movie monsters, like most cult classic fans do, so monster movies don't really scare me anymore. Zombie movies scare me, not because of the zombies themselves (although for a while that's what I thought it was), but because there is no happy ending. I find that beside movies that get into your head, movies that involve hopeless situations are also frightening.

For all you movie lovers out there here are two films that I would reccomend:

Session 9
Jacob's Ladder

[Rachael]

I'm scared by most horror films, except for the really hokey ones like THEM! and King Kong.  The only non-hokey one that didn't scare me was Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds."

But here are the themes that are scariest for me.

1. Bugs.  Not giant, mutant bugs that smash things and eat people.  No, I'm talking about movies with normal-sized bugs that swarm all around you and eat you alive--or worse yet, crawl under your skin and destroy you from the inside.  I will NOT see any movie with this theme in it, because it really, really upsets me.  Actually, anything with tiny creatures that swarm around someone is too much.  I saw "The Graveyard Shift," and it was the only horror movie I actually had to leave.  I left my poor brother alone in the family room XD although he didn't seem to care.

2. Torture.  I saw Saw and Saw 2, and I will NOT see Saw 3.  I hate movies like that, where people are tortured, and are subjected to the mind-raping and unimaginable dilemmas.  I could turn this into a sermon but I'll stop here.

3. Possession.  Like Esther, I was raised in a religious background, and although my church never put heavy emphasis on demon possession or Satanic control, anything combining elements of religion and horror terrifies me.  "The Exorcist" and "Amityville Horror" were some of the most terrifying movies to me, because they seemed almost as if they could actually happen.  The idea of being helplessly controled and forced to commit sacrilegious and demonic acts is nothing short of terrifying.

However, it should be noted that the horror films that scare me the most aren't necessarily my favorites.  I prefer watching movies that explore things that a) would never happen to me, or b) aren't particularly frightening due to poor special effects or being portrayed in a humorous light (like "Undead").

My favorite horror film is probably "Dawn of the Dead."

[Oni]

To make a minor correction.
The saw movies were not about Tortur, mindraping, or killing, not revenge, not a desire to kill.
Saw was a piece of Art. A story well told, and from my perspective was tamed down alot for children.

[Rachael]

What?  I'm sure you're joking, but...I'm not entirely sure what the point of that post was. 

[Oni]

No point really just making a correction, so that people did not think that Saw was about tortur, mindraping ,killing or revenge. ... well the 3rd one had a bit of revenge theme to it, but it was more about forgiving people.

[Kritter]

In my point of view “Jig-saw” is not a murderer. He is just trying to show curtain people to appreciate their lives more. He just shows them in an EXTREME measure. However, if you stop and think about it, that is like the best way for one to learn. I mean come on; folks really don’t listen and take advice from other too well. And not until something bad happens to them would they actually listen and input it to their life.

I personally love the SAW movies. Course most of it is because of the gore; however, it seriously makes you think about the limits of ones morals when it comes to how much should a person help one another.

[Goman Fox]

I never really understood the point of Amanda's test in the first Saw movie.  I mean, she was a drug addict and her test was to cut a guy open to get a key to keep her head from being torn apart by a reverse beartrap.  How exactly did that help her?  I mean, I can understand it if it was someone who cared about others, they would have to fight with their morals on if they should kill someone so they can live or not, but from my experience, drug addicts don't really care about anyone but themselves.  I don't really see what her difficult decision was...  Most everyone else in the Saw movies had to go through some sort of pain to pass their tests, so hers seems kind of odd.

[Kritter]

I never really understood the point of Amanda's test in the first Saw movie.  I mean, she was a drug addict and her test was to cut a guy open to get a key to keep her head from being torn apart by a reverse beartrap.  How exactly did that help her?  I mean, I can understand it if it was someone who cared about others, they would have to fight with their morals on if they should kill someone so they can live or not, but from my experience, drug addicts don't really care about anyone but themselves.  I don't really see what her difficult decision was...  Most everyone else in the Saw movies had to go through some sort of pain to pass their tests, so hers seems kind of odd.

You know what, that is a good point you made there Foxie!!! I never noticed that. However, the dude she killed was someone she knew. Her boyfriend if I remember it correctly. It may not have been a physical pain she had gone through; however, she did have to go through the guilt of killing her bf to save her life. And on another note, Amanda did state to the police that she has changed thanks to “Jig-saw.” But one must think if she said that before or after meeting him and then become his apprentice. Dam dam dammmmm!!!!!! 

Maybe there will be more clues on the 4th movie! 

[Goman Fox]

Oh, I guess I never caught that it was her boyfriend.  I guess that would make more sense, but it doesn't seem very "Jigsaw"-ish to require one of his test subjects to kill another person.  I mean, in the third movie, he pretty much gave the test subject the choice to let people die or save them, but he wasn't -supposed- to kill them to pass the test.

[Rachael]

I'm pretty sure both legally and morally, if not literally, Jigsaw was a murderer.

Look, it ticks me off as much as anybody when people don't appreciate what they've got, but you know what?  That's their choice.  And screwing with someone's mind and body by placing them in a no-win situation is not the best way to go about making them appreciate how good they've got it.  The first movie ticked me off; the second movie even more so.

I suppose it could be argued that the man in the second movie was a murderer, if he allowed people to be falsely convicted. (That's only if they got the death sentence, by the way).  But murder is one thing.  Murdering someone by torture (or even not killing them at all, but still torturing them) is much, MUCH worse.  Jigsaw was a sick NSFW who deserved to be thrown in prison.  The stuff he put people through was NOT justifiable under any circumstances.

Locking people up in circumstances such as those in the "Saw" movies is NOT the solution.  Period.  And I refuse to budge on this.

[Kritter]

If you didn't like the first SAW movie, then why watch the 2nd one? *shrugs* Don't care really. It's just a movie and I don't see anything wrong by it.

So in reference to the SAW movies, CUBE won't be a good movie for you watch either since it's base on the same idea.