Unnerving Movies

by Kaylee

 

Nearly everyone goes through what I would call a Scary Movie Phase, and it might only happen once when you’re 15 or it might happen every year around Halloween time, but during this aforementioned phase you spend days and days talking/watching/breathing/living/reliving old classics like Alfred HItchcock's Psycho and the Birds and checking off your list of which Friday the 13th remakes you’ve seen and which ones you never want to see.

Scary movies are usually filled with gore and pop ups meant to make you jump; it really just depends on what you find “scary.” There are psychotic and elucid serial killers, ghost and demons imbedded in the foundation of old houses, aliens that will snatch you and your loved ones from your beds at night, but there’s a special type of scary movie that seems to be forgotten amidst the guts and gore - the believable and unnerving thriller. Mostly tales of home invasion, this breed of movie replaces axe-wielding crazies with quiet and sneaky everyday people. Innocent next door neighbors, the people who you wave to in the mornings and share a mailman with, are suddenly turned hostile, and that’s when things get real. And you thought you were safe in your home.

The Strangers (2008): This was the first really unnerving movie I ever saw. It scared me the most because of how quiet the whole thing is. It starts with a young couple who, after leaving a wedding reception, decide to spend some time in their isolated vacation house. A late night knock at the door begins a series of increasingly creepy events involving three masked strangers who just decide, “Hey, let’s go scare the crap out of whoever’s home,” and like a friend of mine said when I showed him the film, it scares you because “THAT COULD HAPPEN TO ME SO EASILY.”

 

Funny Games (1997): This movie was never intended to be a horror flick, but what was produced was one of the most unsettling films ever produced. Before watching it I heard countless tales of people leaving in the middle of the movie and vomiting, and it was even banned from several film festivals. It bothered me from beginning to end. The first shot is of a nice, civil-looking family - a man, woman, and little boy. They’re playing a game in which one of them plays a classical song and the other guesses the composer, and in the middle of them rolling through the idyllic countryside, they just cut it off in the middle with very loud and pretty terrifying screaming and drum pounding. Everything seems to be going well for the family until two boys who are friends with the neighbors come over and ask to borrow some eggs. And then they drop the eggs. And ask for more eggs. And things go wrong so quickly that it’s difficult to watch. The two boys seem so friendly until they’re not. The movie is shot in a way that makes it feel less like a movie and more like a terrible alternate reality all the way up until the end, and you’ll be left wondering why there is no justice for the innocent and anyone would ever make a movie like this. But it was good to the point that there was a shot-by-shot remake done in the late 2000s, so the director did something right.

 

In Their Skin (2012): I found this movie by accident one dark midnight, and I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, but looking back on it, I’m glad I did. Some people consider this a knock-off of Funny Games, and as I watched it, I could tell why. Once again, a family of three (a husband, wife, and little boy) take some time off in their vacation home out in the woods after the death of their daughter. While things are awkward and uncomfortable in the first place, more complications arise when the neighbors (see the pattern here?) come over in the early morning to bring over a little firewood. This family also consists of a husband, a younger wife, and little boy, but they are less than socially adept. After an awkward dinner party filled with too many intrusive questions and creepy smiles from the neighbor’s wife, things get real fast, and the night unravels into a scene that had me on edge the entire time.

Requiem for a Dream (2000): This wasn’t originally going to be a part of my list, but as I thought about what movies scared me more than anything else, this came to mind. It’s not exactly a horror story about neighbors gone wild, but it gives you a front row seat to how addiction and drugs can lead you to do terrible, terrible things. It starts out harmless and slips out of control so quickly that you don’t notice how bad it’s gotten until the end. After you watch it once, you won’t want to again, but it’s worth being on edge for.