by Raven Kross:
Yes, I have finally decided to do a personal blog about my VERY FAVORITE horror movies. Figured I might as well, since goodness knows I have blogged enough about movies I don’t like.
So, here they are. My top five favorite horror movies.
WARNING: SPOILERS TO COME!! IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE MOVIES I SUGGEST YOU DO SO!!!!!!
I first watched The Uninvited when it came out in theaters in 2009. It was a Tuesday, I believe. I remember it clearly because it was the day I finished ninth in the school spelling bee, and since I was in eighth grade at the time, it had been my last year to compete. If you knew me, you’d understand how serious I am about my spelling. So, needless to say, I was feeling terribly down. Seeing this movie cheered me up immensely.
Not only is the plot incredibly well thought out, the setting perfectly attuned to the story, and the gore balanced out wonderfully with the psycho, it has an AMAZING plot twist at the end. If you don’t know already, I positively ADORE plot twists. In fact, this one was so great, it inspired me to create my own (which I later deemed unbefitting my genius and discarded, but that’s a story for another blog).
The movie is about a girl named Anna who has spent the last several years in a mental institution and is coming back to live with her father and his new girlfriend at their scenic lake house. Her grown sister, Alex, is spending the summer there as well, and the two are somewhat united against their father’s relationship. (He’s a wealthy middle aged author, she’s a voluptuous young blonde… need I say more?)
All Anna wants to do is move on from the horror of that summer… the night she came home from a party and witnessed the boathouse explode, with her sickly mother inside it. But that becomes nearly impossible when reminders from her past keep popping up. She keeps hearing that ringing sound, like a frantically chiming bell- exactly like the one her mother had used to signal when she needed help. Then of course she begins seeing visions of her mother, her skin brown and putrefying and barely clinging to her bones, her eyes empty gray sockets that seem to haunt Anna even in waking, the brittle, rotten finger pointed in accusation. And then there’s the little matter of the three children that only Anna can see. The three dead children.
Anna is driven to believe that there is something her mother is trying to tell her, something suspicious about her father’s new woman, Rachel. She discovers what she believes to be a scandalous secret- that her father is dating Mildred Kemp, the murderer of three young children who has eluded the police for years. One night, she decides to take her evidence to the police… but the sheriff doesn’t believe her. No one believes her.
Alex and Anna soon find themselves immersed in a stepmother nightmare. Since they can’t convince anyone that the stranger in their home is a murderer, they take the situation into their own hands- and it doesn’t end well for either of them. Long story short- Anna ends up standing in the dark in her nightgown in the dark, a dead body in the Dumpster outside their house, staring at the bloody knife in her sister’s hand.
What a surprise for dear old Dad- coming home early from his business trip to find his daughters standing outside in the middle of the night, drenched in blood. Only, the only one he can see is Anna- because Alex is already dead. On that fateful night years ago, it was Anna who blew up the boathouse. Coming home to a darkened house, seeing her father and Rachel doing the nasty (Rachel was, at the time, her mother’s nurse), she flew into a fit of rage, which drove her to snatch the oil can from the shed, fill it up with gasoline from the tank in the boathouse, and rush back up to the bedroom in which the fatal paramour was taking place. Little did she know- she’d forgotten to tighten the valve on the gasoline tank, and a steady stream was making its way across the boathouse floor to her mother’s sickbed-and the candle that Anna had conveniently knocked over in her haste.
Naturally, her mother began ringing that bell for all she was worth. And who should be the closest one to hear it but Alex, home from another night of getting wasted. “Coming, Mom.” The last words she ever said, and then…
KA-BOOM!
My favorite part is the ending. Anna is back in the mental institution, probably for good, sitting at her desk in her neat little bedroom. Her doctor stops in to say hello, and she tells him, “I did what you told me. I finished what I started.” It gets better- after the doctor walks away in puzzlement, the creepy woman who stays in the room across the hall (you first see her in the beginning of the movie, but don’t know her name) gives Anna a knowing smile, closes the door, and then you see the plaque with her name on it- Mildred Kemp.
Can you say EPIC SCHIZOPHRENIA???
Being a born and raised New Englander, I’m a natural Stephen King fan. Although I haven’t gotten around to reading the book, the two-part movie version of Bag of Bones is absolutely PHENOMENAL. It has everything- romance, ghosts, tragedy, and a generations-old curse. It follows the story of Mike Noonan, an author who suffers the death of his wife, Jo, at the hands of a speeding truck (I started tearing up a little when he saw the pregnancy test clutched in her hand). Mike goes up to the old family lake house in Maine to get away from the hype and focus on his writing- and hopefully escape the fearful visions that Jo seems to be sending him.
On his first day, he meets a young girl named Kyra and her mother, Mattie. The story circulating the tiny town is that Mattie killed her husband, son of the wealthy Max Devore, when he tried to kill Kyra. Now good old Max is trying to gain custody of Kyra, and it seems as if he will win. Among other things, Mike helps Mattie win permanent custody of her daughter. (Max dies not long after, so it’s not like there’s much of a difference.)
Meanwhile, the spirit of his wife has followed him to the house. He can sometimes communicate with her by asking her yes or no questions, and she responds by ringing a bell he has hung on the moose head in the living room. But their “conversations” are usually interrupted by a second paranormal presence, this one more poltergeist than anything. Your typical furniture moving by itself, dishes flying across the room, walls quaking uncontrollably, yada yada yada. But as Mike delves further into the murky history of the town, he uncovers a dark and terrible secret that has deadly ties to his own present.
Over sixty years ago, at the 1939 county fair, a beautiful young singer named Sara Tidwell performed for a crowd of adoring citizens. Among them were the young Max Devore and his group of cohorts. Even at that age, Devore had an air of power about him, a presence that commanded obedience. He and his buddies followed Sara into the woods to congratulate her on her performance. But it wasn’t long before the casual exchange turned into a case of first-degree rape, ending with the murder of Sara and her little girl. With her dying breaths, Sara cursed all the boys, that they would do to their daughters what they had done to hers, and their sons to their daughters, until all their kin had passed away.
This explained the lake’s history of violent father-daughter murders, and Max’s eagerness to get his hands on his granddaughter. He would be able to kill her and finally end the curse once and for all. But when Mattie is shot by one of the group of men descended from those that first experienced the brunt of Sara’s curse, full custody of Kyra falls to Mike- and, as luck should have it, it turns out that he is also a descendant of the curse.
After a long and violent struggle, Mike manages to destroy Sara Tidwell’s remains, thus finally putting her spirit to rest, and takes Kyra into his care. All in all, it’s a fabulous story, riddled with a myriad of emotions and resonating with that lovely darkness that King sows within his stories.
Fun fact-a representative from the New England School of Communications came to talk to my video production class and told us that the school, which is in Bangkor, Maine, is ten minutes from King’s house. The rep said that he grew up in Bangkor and used to go trick or treating to his house, which is apparently freaky-looking enough on a normal day.
3. The Haunting In Connecticut (2009)
This movie is AWESOME!!!!! I absolutely adore scary movies that are based on true stories. And this one had a particular fear factor involved for me. I will admit that I am absolutely terrified of furnaces. I once read a book of scary ghost stories when I was nine, and ever since I have had two huge fears: middle aged men wearing hospital scrubs and goggles carrying enormous syringes and furnaces. So when Jonah died by being trapped in a furnace, banging on the door frantically and screaming for help, I was scared shitless. Add to that the fact that at the time, he was trying to escape, and, well… I nearly slept with the lights on for the first time since third grade.
I’m also fascinated by the paranormal and necromancy, so this movie had that element as well. And, truth be told, Jonah is kinda hot.
The movie is based on an allegedly true story about the Campbell family, who move to a new house so they can be closer to the hospital where their eldest son, Matthew, is undergoing cancer treatment. The house is huge, ancient, and totally within their price range- of COURSE it’s haunted. Matthew’s bedroom is in the basement, where murky glass and a locked door hide a mysterious room. His dreams are haunted by visions of old fashioned men and women looking stiff and grim, and a strange dark substance erupting from the mouth of a boy no older than Matthew himself.
When they do end up getting into the room beyond the door, they find the creepiest science lab in the world. A little research on the big sister’s part begins to uncover the story of the house- it was once owned by a mortician and scientist-of-sorts who experimented with paranormal magic. He would kill people and write magic incantations in their skin, and he’d remove their eyelids so they’d be forced to see in the afterlife or something. He would use Jonah as a medium during seances. One night, a seance went horribly wrong- the plasma (ghostly matter) that came out of Jonah caused an explosion that killed everyone in the room except him and the mortician. Terrified out of his mind, Jonah tried to escape in the dumbwaiter, but when he crawled out, he found himself trapped in the furnace with no one to hear his cries.
Goodness, it freaks me out just to think about it.
So anyway, the Campbells think that these freaky things happening around the house are Jonah’s malicious attempts to hurt them. They call in a holy man to do an exorcism. But it’s not until the bones are in the back of the priest’s car and Jonah’s ghost appears to him that the priest realizes it’s not Jonah that’s the danger, but the spirits of the dead that are still buried in that house. Hundreds of corpses are stuffed in the walls, each of them with an angry restless ghost seeking revenge, and they just removed their one source of protection. Matthew might be in the hospital, but he is not safe for long.
When Matthew realizes what’s wrong, he returns to the house and smashes open the walls. I love that part- Jonah has possessed him and he’s running around like a madman, swinging an axe around the room, bodies tumbling onto the floor, and then he sets fire to them. It’s utter bedlam. The spirits are still surrounding him, though- trying to take his soul? I don’t really know why they’re attacking him-and it seems like all hope is lost. But then comes Mommy to the rescue, and the family watches their house burn, and with it, the evil that has haunted (pun intended) them.
Seriously, though, Jonah’s pretty hot for a dead guy.
As you know from one of my previous blog entries, The Ring is one of my favorite movies of all time. I don’t know if it counts as a true horror movie, but for the sake of writing, I’m going to call it one.
The movie is about a woman named Rachel (what is up with attractive young blondes named Rachel??) whose niece dies of a sudden and unidentified cause. She does a little digging and finds out that her niece watched a video that apparently dictates that you will die in seven days. Rachel finds the video and watches it. It’s a really creepy, seemingly random mish mash of images- an empty chair that spins in a circle all by itself, a throbbing crowd of maggots, a beach littered with horse corpses. When it’s over, the phone rings, and Rachel answers it.
“Seven days.”
She makes a copy and watches the tape over and over, examining every detail. She comes to one part where there is a view of a small island, where she realizes that there is more to see outside of the screen. She stretches the view of the tape until she sees a lighthouse… hmm. The remainder of the movie follows her as she investigates the tape and what it’s about. The search becomes personal when her son, Aidan, watches the tape- now she has to find a way to save him before his seven days are up.
She discovers the story of Anna Morgan, a horse breeder who became a recluse in the later years of her life after she and her husband had a daughter named Samara (which, by the way, I am so naming my future daughter). The child seemed to bring a curse with her- the horses start dying, and the Morgans drew into themselves in despair. One day, Anna snapped and threw her daughter into the well, then later killed herself.
The significance of “the ring” is that it refers to the ring of light around the cover of the well where Samara died. When Rachel’s investigation leads her and her ex (and the father of her son), Noah, to a rundown old cabin, they find the place beneath the floorboards where the well has been covered up. Due to not-so-coincidental circumstances, Rachel ends up in the bottom of the well, shaken but not badly hurt. That is, until the cover is slid over the well opening, trapping her inside.
After coming to some great personal truth or something and discovering Samara’s body, Rachel is rescued and she and her son return home safely. Noah, however, is not so lucky. Rachel and Aidan are safe from the tape because they make copies of it, but Noah is sitting unknowingly in his office when Samara’s figure emerges from his flickering television and advances toward him.
I have yet to see the sequel, and I’ve heard they’re making a third one… OH MUH GOOOOOSH YES!!! *horror fangirl moment*
1. My Super Psycho Sweet 16 (2009)
Yes… my number one favorite horror movie of all time was made by MTV.
My Super Psycho Sweet Sixteen is, in my opinion, one of the best horror movies ever. It has all the base elements of a scary movie-a stuck up blonde girl, an abandoned roller rink, a psycho killer, and lots and lots of blood.
It’s about a girl named Skye whose father once killed and dismembered several teenagers who were making fun of him at the roller rink where he worked. Skye is your typical misfit girl- sweet, shy, but cast into social Siberia by her father’s crimes. Her one friend is a dorky, lovable guy named Derek. Snobby, rich, blonde Madison is, of course, her number one tormentor, and she just loves rubbing her popularity in Skye’s face. When Madison’s on-and-off boyfriend Brigg takes an interest in Skye (unbeknownst to Madison, of course), Skye works up the courage to crash Madison’s sweet sixteen party at the roller rink.
Now, you know that when the popular girl demands that Mummy and Daddy rent the abandoned Roller Dome for her sweet sixteen, the same place that was home to several murders committed by the father of said girl’s favorite object of torment, you just know there’s gonna be a bloodbath.
Sure enough, Skye’s dad makes a surprise appearance at the party, picking off her friends one by one. The slaughter comes to a climax when Madison’s friend Olivia rolls out on her roller skates, her head rolling around in the shadows, blood spurting from her neck, and crashes into the sushi cake. Chaos ensues as teenagers scatter from the building, and Skye and Madison end up cornered by the psycho killer. Skye’s father tries to convince her to kill Madison, but instead, she stabs him in the knee and tries to escape. Once Madison is no longer at the mercy of the girl’s knife, she begins to liberally insult her and trips her so she can get out first. She almost makes it.
Realizing that she made a mistake in helping her enemy, Skye locks her in the Roller Dome with her father and runs away. The movie ends with Brigg in the hospital. He wakes from a nightmare about Skye brutally stabbing him to death and sees a watercolor painting of a girl with black tears running down her face.
So, there you have it. In-depth descriptions of my five favorite horror movies of all time. I’m sure the list will change eventually, but don’t expect me to write another blog when it does. It’s taken me three freaking hours to write this one.
Love all things Horror? Come join us DarkMediaCity, a free social network for those who like it Dark. Whether it be literature or film, music or art, horror or sci-fi, paranormal romance or paranormal investigation, we’ve got something for you. www.DarkMediaCity.com
DarkMedia contributor Raven Kross can be found on Twitter @RavenDelMuerto.
(The opinions within articles, news and editorial pieces do not necessarily reflect the views of DarkMedia, its partners, sponsors or subsidiaries.)
1 Comment