What's the scariest movie your seen?

[starbelly]

Film was my first love, specifically horror, and I've seen EVERY horror movie in the book... well, just about every one. Ask me, and I've probably seen it (and I'm not one of those people who says that and has only seen gore flicks of the past 10 years). I think I'm pretty educated on the genre, and I have to say the two that stick out in my mind are Vampyr (1932), and The Strangers (2008).

Vampyr is like a nightmare more than anything, and is really absorbing. It's a silent movie, but it's so offbeat and dreamy and it totally got under my skin. Really haunting cinematography. I'd consider one of the earliest examples of the horror film.

The Strangers, on the other hand, makes the cut frankly because after I saw it in the theater at a midnight showing, I was so rattled by it that I went home and couldn't sleep. It was the night before my high school graduation, and I had to get up early the next morning for graduation practice. My friend slept over, and neither her nor I were able to sleep. I actually incessantly made sure every entry to the house was locked, and I don't get frightened by horror films really ever, so I knew there was something special about it. It was the most tense experience I've ever had in a movie theater, before or since, and I went to my graduation practice in zombie mode. The tension is wound so finely that I found it almost unbearable at times. It's not a perfect movie, but it's probably the best horror movie of that decade, IMO.

The remake of Silent House with Elizabeth Olsen had a similar effect on me, although not quite as much so.

A couple other eerie ones (although not particularly petrifying) that stick out in my mind are:

Let's Scare Jessica to Death
Suspiria
The Innocents
Don't Look Now
Session 9