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Everyone has a favorite genre of movies, whether it be Romance, Comedic films, or my favorite, Horrors ! In light of a recent conversation with a friend of mine, I realized that while our favorite genre may be the same, our view on the scariest horror movie ever made was completely different. It then occurred to me that as human beings, we are frightened by different things. Personally, I find that movies having to do with ghosts and demons are far scarier than movies with flesh and blood killers due to the mere fact that something not alive is far harder to defend yourself against than something or someone you can kill.
In my personal opinion, 2001 horror movie “13 ghosts” directed by Steve Beck was by far the scariest movie I have ever watched, followed by the 2011 James Wan directed film “Insidious”. When it comes to ghost and demons, what can you do? No matter where you run or hide, they’ll find you! Now I am by no means saying that only horror movies where the plot concerns ghosts and demons are scary, take the 2009 Jaume Collet-Serra directed movie “Orphan” for example.
The entire plot of the movie Orphan dealt with the adoption of a “9 year old” girl by a family still grieving over the death of one of their children. Sounds innocent enough right? Wrong! The movie takes an unexpected turn when the orphan girl turns out to be a psychotic woman looking for love from her adopted fathers and when the feelings she has aren’t returned, she lashes out and kills them. Now I don’t know whether it was the unexpected twist of events or the amazing acting of Isabelle Fuhrman, but something about that movie definitely frightened me.
Some people tend to rate horror movies and thrillers on how well it does on scaring them. I choose to base my movies on how effectively it scares me, but also how interesting the plot is. My favorite horror/thriller movie continues to be the 1960 black and white Alfred Hitchcock classic, “Psycho”. Now while I know the sound of a black and white thriller may not sound so entertaining, I assure you that as the “Father of Thriller”, Hitchcock did a fantastic job with the plot of this movie. “Psycho” being loosely based on the crimes of cannibalistic serial killer Ed Gein (Silence of the Lambs, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Deranged are also based on him), focuses on a disturbed hotel owner Norman Bates who kills a secretary who checks into the Bates motel after embezzling money from a wealthy client.
While horror movies might not be the most family oriented films, they are definitely apart of American culture, whether the films are fictitious like Orphan or based on true stories like Psycho.
