When I lived in London, my mates and I would regularly hit up the cheap beer offers at Sainsbury’s and settle in for horror movie nights at our flat. While years have since passed (and with them, my steely nerves), I still get the urge for a good scare every now and then. Just in time for Halloween, here are five scary movies worth turning out the lights for.
1. Halloween (1978) – Forget Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers is the king of horror movie monsters. The original and easily the best of the series, Halloween is packed with frights and iconic images. This is the film that introduced Jamie Lee Curtis to the world, and sadly, she would never scream like this again.
2. The Thing (1982) – Most sci-fi junkies will point to Ridley Scott’s Alien as the class of the genre, but I’ll go with this cult classic about a parasitic creature that wreaks havoc on an Antarctic research station. By creating an organism that takes the form of its hosts, director John Carpenter (he also directed Halloween) infuses the film with the ultimate sense of paranoia.
3. Battle Royale (2000) – About the same time as The Ring and the inferior The Grudge were taking the western world by storm, this controversial movie about a ninth-grade class thrown on an island and forced to kill each other was causing quite the uproar in Japan. Listed by Quentin Tarantino as his favourite release since 1992, the film features a brilliant performance by Beat Takeshi as the children’s sadistic teacher.
4. 28 Days Later (2002) – England finally gets some love with this smart zombie movie set in an eerily deserted London. The film includes a star-turning role for Cillian Murphy and is perhaps the only movie on this list worthy of buying a new TV for. A good HD TV (I recommend the Sony Bravia KDL37S5500U) reveals the urban beauty of the film and the widescreen will lend added vacancy to the already stark landscapes, so grab the cheapest blu ray player you can find and dig in.
5. The Descent (2005) – Filmed in the UK but set in the American Appalachians, The Descent is the rarest of horror films, utilizing an all female cast and relying as much on its natural setting for scares as it does its creatures (equally frightening cave crawlers). By crafting a film built on claustrophobia and a building sense of dread sure to overtake his characters, director Neil Marshall has made a movie that’s good to its last paralyzing shot.
