It's a dark night of the soul for Leon Leigh when he returns to his mother's home and has to deal with buried emotions from a traumatic past.
"The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh" is one of those independent horror movies that has such an impact on the art of film itself, that everyone should see it, and it should be used to teach film to students. It's really that good.
There is a heavy weight to this movie, and right off the bat it's easy to see that the cinematography is top notch. The director's artistic style creates a moody, brooding atmosphere with set pieces that are discordant, and discomfiting, and a great visual representation of a main character who isn't comfortable in his own skin.
Rosalind Leigh's house itself is the main character of the movie. Instead of just being a backdrop, everything in the house has meaning. The rooms are full of menace, and the house appears to be watching Leon's every move.
There's life-sized statues, and suits of armor that give the audience the impression that the objects themselves are alive and stalking Leon. At one point in the movie, this turns out to be exactly the case, with terrifying results.
Look at this statue! It's brooding, looming presence is felt the moment it appears onscreen. Those big saucer eyes see everything that occurs in the house. I wouldn't want that thing greeting me every time I came home. Yikes!
Rosalind's cross-stitch needlepoint pieces in particular, are used not only as a symbol for Rosalind, but they also helps establish an otherworldly aura to the house.
Every room is chock-a-block full of knick-knacks, antiques and collectibles; most of which are angels or creepy dolls. The hodgepodge of clutter lends a certain creepiness to the place, especially when Leon realizes that all of the antiques are things that he has sold over the years and that his mother was his best customer. She was so obsessed with being with him that she purchased everything that he touched in an effort to be close to him.
In addition to obsession, Rosalind's life was ruled by superstition, and the strange religious practices of an angel cult.
It is soon revealed by Rosalind that she had purposefully placed strange objects in odd locations around her house in an effort to show Leon that the soul lives beyond death; that she is still there, in that house, waiting for him to contact her.
Needless to say, Rosalind was a very disturbed woman.
After joining a strange angel cult, her husband committed suicide.
The mysterious circumstances surrounding his death are never fully explored. Personally, I think that the cult with it's talk of the soul surviving death, and Rosalind's fractured mind, are what drove Mr. Leigh to kill himself.
"Faith is Fragile"
Rosalind was forced to raise her son on her own. Unable to handle the pressure and stress of raising a son by herself, she turned her frustrations and anger outward and tortured Leon psychologically by playing the "Candles Game."
She would ask him if he believed in God, and every time he said no, she'd blow out a candle and tell him if it got dark, the Angel would turn it's back on him and God would hate him.
It was his mother's mind games that forced Leon to push her away, and left him emotionally scarred.
After he left and cut off all contact with her, Rosalind became obsessed with her son, and felt guilty over the fact that her deep faith in her angel cult is what drove them apart.
Once the audience has had time to really absorb the spooky ambiance of the house, and learn why there are statues and things that are just not right on display everywhere, the creepiness factor slowly begins to amp up as strange, unsettling things start to happen. At first, it's subtle, but soon, you will find yourself wondering, is this real, or is Leon hallucinating while his mind tries to come to terms with his dead mother's abuse?
Personally, I think that it's both.
What makes "The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh" so great, aside from the fact that it is so beautifully directed, is that it has countless layers to it.
On the surface it's a movie about a man coming to terms with child abuse. But beneath that, it's a movie about a cult that ruined a family, and a woman's faith that turns out to be all too real.
Whether or not it is Rosalind's will that brings about the manifestation of the demon Loneliness, called in the movie the creature or the wild animal that came from the woods, it's clear that it is a physical representation of the regret, and bitter anger that Leon feels towards his mother.
The demon Loneliness brings to mind the creature from the famous painting "The Nightmare" by Henry Fuseli. In the painting, the foul beast sits on the dreamer's chest and suffocates them, much like Rosalind's loneliness and regret suffocated her so much that it drove her to commit suicide.
The supernatural occurrences are very suspenseful and tense, to the point of being cringe worthy at times, because you really don't want to see what is chasing after Leon. But since watching and sight are themes of the movie, you are forced to open your eyes and watch with him, terrified of what you will see when the camera finally reveals it.
Fun Fact: I thought that it was a clever way to incorporate angelic themes, since Angels that are on Earth, the Grigori, are called The Watchers.
Ultimately, "The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh" is a wonderfully scary character study of an abusive mother-son relationship, wherein the mother uses religion to control her child. It may not seem like much at the start, because the movie is so quiet and brooding, but by the end, you will find yourself not wanting to watch this movie in the dark by yourself because it's so terrifying and suspenseful. By far, "The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh" is a fantastic independent horror film that doesn't get the attention, or credit, that it deserves. I highly recommend that you watch this movie and see it's terrifying beauty for yourself.
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Watch the trailer of "The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh" below!
If you don't want to read spoilers, stop reading here.
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There is a lot of debate over what happens at the end of the film. Here's my interpretation.
Leon suffered a mental breakdown where he literally thought that he was being haunted by an angel statue, and terrorized by the demon Loneliness while going over the belongings that he inherited from his mother. When he refuses to believe in God, the Angel, the survival of souls after death, and the demon Loneliness, it abruptly stops being real. His disbelief takes away the demon's power. It also denies Rosalind's ghost the closure she so desperately needed.
Leon hated his mother so much, that he disowned her, and the more she wanted him back in her life, the further it pushed him away. This final act of denial, of refusing to acknowledge Rosalind's faith and her ghost, robs Rosalind of the last shred of hope she had left. Leon manages to fight through his own emotional turmoil and comes to terms with an abusive childhood, and leaves the house unscathed.
Rosalind's sad, lonely ghost is now stuck in her house, driven by her own guilt and remorse to repeat the events that occurred after her death for all eternity. Rosalind's testament of her love for her son Leon, (the antiques, and then the house itself) is denied and sold off.
It's a happy ending for Leon, as he finally manages to move on and put his childhood traumas behind him. It's a sad ending for Rosalind because she never receives the closure, and forgiveness from Leon, that she so desperately needed.
The Title "The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh" Explained
The title has two layers. At the surface, it's a movie about the death of Rosalind Leigh and the house that she left to her only son in her will. Beneath the surface, it's about Rosalind's dying wishes, and her testament to her faith, and her love for her son.
Rosalind Leigh's last will was her yearning to be acknowledged and loved by her son. Her testament of her love for her son was the house full of things that Leon sold over the years that she bought.
Rosalind Leigh's last will and testament were destroyed when Leon refused to forgive her of her sins and return her love and turned his back on the house that he grew up in. If the will had been a piece of paper, Leon would've torn it up and set it on fire, and then walked away before the paper had been completely turned to ash. See, the title is a metaphor. And now you know.
'The Conjuring' is based on not just one, but two true stories. It follows the ghost hunting husband and wife team, the Warrens, and the Perrons, a large family of seven that move into a haunted house. There are so many things in the movie that make it good, so it was a bit hard, but I did manage to figure out the six main things that make this ghost movie so good, and so scary.
6. The Doll Annabelle
The doll Annabelle was based on the possessed Raggedy Ann doll of the same name that has been featured in several ghost TV shows over the years.
The Warrens are a real ghost hunting couple who encountered the doll and locked her up in a case, similar to the one that Annabelle is kept in the movie.
The Warrens worked closely with the producers, which I feel only helped enhance the movie and make it all the more terrifying because it felt so real. Of course, most of the events in the film are incredibly embellished, but the way that they are made larger than life is subtle, and when things really get out of hand during the climax of the movie, everything that happens makes perfect sense.
5. The Characters
"The Conjuring" is old school ghost hunters at its best, and was filmed in the same vein as "The Changeling," and "The Awakening," where a haunted building is one of the main characters of the movie.
The movie slowly, and cleverly builds the tension, to the point where audience members are pinned to their seats, staring at the screen in terror as events unfold. This slow burn ghost movie does it right. It sets up the main characters, makes them very sympathetic people that you'd expect to meet in real life, and then throws them through an emotion and at times physical wringer as the ghost tears down their defenses one by one.
The ghost hunting duo are based on the real life husband and wife team, The Warrens. Their relationship is built on faith and love, and not in a cheesy, forced way.
The same thing goes for the poor victims of the haunted house, the Perrons. The five girls act the way that you'd expect sisters to be, and even their parents are believable.
"The Conjuring" avoids the cliche of the father being the one possessed by the evil of the home, and makes him a loving protector of his family- which is a refreshing change of pace from haunted house movies that take their cues from "The Amityville Horror" and turn the father into a vessel of rage and violence.
The thing that I liked the most was the fact that the movie cleverly misdirects your perceptions of the characters; the ones that you think are going to be the main victim of the ghost, aren't the ones that are the most affected by it, and that makes for one heck of a scary surprise at the end of the film.
4. Ghost Story Elements
There are several instances in "The Conjuring" that reminded me of ghost stories told around the campfire. A lot of thought was put into the script by the writers, and it's clear that they did thorough research of the source material prior to writing the screenplay.
The most interesting ghost story elements is the haunted music box, complete with its creepy peeping clown, and a swirled mirror (an embellishment that appears to be a signature visual theme of James Wan) that spins while the music plays. When it stops, you can see a ghost standing in the mirror behind you.
The music that the box plays is disjointed, the rhythm is syncopated, and unsettling, with unnatural pauses in the melody. The rhythm of the song creates tension, and really gets you ready to jump at any moment, making you believe that the ghost will pop up while it is still playing, but it doesn't. And that is one thing that the movie does right.
Another ghost story element in "The Conjuring" is the haunted hanging tree, a common trope of ghost stories, where one of the ghosts killed herself.
Then there is a ghost of a maid that committed suicide. She appears to one of the victims during the Warren's investigation and says, something along the lines of "Look what she did to me!" or "Look at what she made me do!", and manages to scare the crap out of the guy she appears to, and the audience as well.
Another ghost story element is the spooky, dark basement with long discarded items that nobody wants. It even had those steps without the back riser, where you can reach through from underneath the stairs to grab someone's foot when they are walking down them.
The first house that I lived in had basement stairs like that, and I hated going down them, they freaked me out, and there they were, in a scary ghost movie. Thanks a lot James Wan.
The last important ghost story element are the clocks. The clocks in the haunted house stop at the same time every day after the family moves into the haunted house. Ghost stories that feature this element often have the clocks stopping in the middle of the night, around 3:00 am. In the case of "The Conjuring" it's 3:07 am.
Thanks to the director's clever, and subtle use of these ghost story elements, the audience's suspension of disbelief is very rarely shattered during the movie.
3. Staring into Darkness
There are multiple scenes in the movie where both the characters, and the audience, find themselves staring into the darkness, trying to see what menacing, evil presence lurking within. The clever use of light and, more importantly, darkness, creates a wonderful tale of suspense and terror. The ghosts are left mostly in the shadows, and are only shown out of focus in the background of a shot.
The inability of the audience to see what is actually haunting the Perrons allows us to use our imaginations, which makes a scene a heck of a lot more scarier than if everything was shown to us. Many ghost movies don't get this part right. They show too much, too soon, and this ruins whatever scares it is attempting to create. Fortunately for us, "The Conjuring" doesn't fall into that trap.
2. The Set Pieces
The Perron's House
The Perron's house has a menacing feel from the moment they open the front door and movie in. It is full of wide open doorways, dark colors, and blind corners.
The basement is creepy, with several pieces of furniture covered in white sheets that are draped in such a way that they look like they are hiding the silhouettes of people. While it doesn't have a face on it, like the Amityville Horror house, the Perron's house still looks like it is watching, and waiting for its next victim to arrive.
The Hanging Tree
The hanging tree on the property is a dead, menacing presence that looms in the distance. The lake that it sits by is still, and stagnant looking. Water is thought by many to be a conduit for the dead, so it's no wonder that the lake looks like there is nothing living in it. That was done on purpose to add another layer of foreboding dread to the movie.
The Haunted Items Museum
The haunted items museum in the Warren's warm looking home is organized evil. From the arrangement of the items, to its focal point- Annabelle's locked glass display case- we can tell that all of the things that are stored there, no matter how mundane looking, are dangerous items that inhabit menacing, and often deadly spirits.
1. Less is More, Especially for Exorcisms
When the demonic ghost, or demon ghost, or evil ghost (take your pick) possesses one of the main characters, the Warrens are forced to do an emergency exorcism to save the possessed person's life.
The possessed victim attacks two of the children, and the other characters rush to save them. Once they wrestle the girls away, the victim is covered in a blanket (one of the blankets that has been draped over the furniture in the basement for the entire movie) and tied to a chair. You can't see the possessed person's face. This is done on purpose. When the evil entity possessing them is ordered to reveal itself, the sheet tears open and you can see only one half of their face. By not fully revealing the body of the possessed during the exorcism, your mind is allowed to conjure an image of what is happening to them, while you are assaulted by terrifying sounds and the pained screams of the innocent victim. This makes the exorcism scene absolutely bone chilling.
The entire movie holds the premise that less is more and that is what makes it an effective, and terrifying ghost film.
I also think that it's important to note that "The Conjuring" is rated R and yet, there is no foul language, no excessive gore or bloodshed. There isn't even any torture porn, even though the director James Wan is known for using them in his Saw movies, (you know, the franchise that made him famous in the horror movie world). Much like "Don't be Afraid of the Dark," the movie is rated R because it's so scary.
If you like subtle, realistic ghost movies that will creep under your skin and scare you half to death, you'll love "The Conjuring."
"Mama" is the tale of two girls who lived in a nice house in suburbia. When the stock markets crashed, their father killed their mother and took them on a ride into the woods. They came upon an abandoned cabin, and there their father was going to kill them and then himself. But the cabin wasn't really abandoned. A ghost was there, searching for her lost infant. She saw the girl's father about to kill them, she killed him before he could harm them. She then became the girl's mother and kept them alive by feeding them cherries.
Five years later, the girl's uncle Lucas Desange, has spent his life savings looking for them. On what appears to be the last day that the hunters will go out to search of the girls, they find them. The girls are feral and have lived like animals.
When the girls are taken to live with their uncle and his girlfriend Annabel (who clearly isn't ready to have kids) Mama follows them to their new home, and shortly thereafter, the jealous ghost begins to terrorize the family in an attempt to get her girls back.
This ghost movie lends a few new things to the genre, which is a good thing, such as the fairy tale story line and the ghost character design. How Mama moves, interacts and attacks people is unique and quite intense to watch on-screen. There were a few times when I was genuinely scared, but I was quickly jolted out of the suspenseful atmosphere by the ungodly loud score that someone felt was necessary to include in the film.
The ghost, Mama herself, was a great monster. I loved the utterly alien character design and the way her body appeared to be that of a broken corpse. The actor that played her, Javier Botet, was great. (Javier played the demon girl at the end of [REC] and has played several parts that required a very tall and lanky person to portray the monsters.)
I also loved the fact that Mama was played by a real person, that most of the special effects were done with wires and latex, and that the only thing that was CG in the movie was the ghost's hair, which waved around above her head as though she was submerged under water in a lake.
Unfortunately, the good things about the movie are far outweighed by the bad. "Mama" suffers from lazy story telling, and drowns under a cumbersome soundtrack/score with music that ruins any tense moments of suspense that the director builds up by being obnoxiously loud.
For instance, when Annabel is playing her bass guitar in the kitchen and is distracted by the flickering lights and the strange voices on her amp speaker, instead of getting incredibly quiet to leave the audience disturbed by the plinking sound of the lights flickering and the whispering voices, a very loud violin trill starts, leaving the audience jumping at the sound, instead of being scared by the fact that Lilly has leapt up on the counter behind Annabel and is staring at her like a predatory animal that is ready to pounce on its prey.
Over and over again, the audience is assaulted by jump scares created by horribly loud sounds from the movie's score. It was like being in one of those haunted house carnival rides; you don't jump because the skeleton pops out at you, you jump and scream because that damned air horn just went off in your ear. It's loud and startling. Kind of like those lame screamer videos on Youtube. Like this one.
That's what watching "Mama" is like.
I found that to be very disappointing because even though the movie is flawed and riddled with plot holes and filled with unnecessary characters and scenes that could have very easily been cut from the movie, overall it was a decent film.
In addition to the terrible score, the pacing of the film seemed a bit off, and there were scenes, such as those with the child psychiatrist Dr. Dreyfuss that were cheesy, such as when he goes to speak with the record keeper/archivist of the county and she point-blank tells him that ghosts are made when something bad happens, and a wrong needs to be righted.
Really? I had no idea that some ghosts were vengeful mo-fos hell-bent on destroying anything that reminded them of the injustice surrounding their deaths. Honestly, that sort of audience hand-holding isn't necessary as it is common folklore, and knowledge that is implied as the events unfold in the movie.
It's this type of ham-handedness that breaks my suspension of disbelief, and unfortunately, "Mama" suffers from this type of a lack of subtlety on all counts. The audience isn't allowed to put all the pieces together, there is no mystery to solve, and the characters don't have to surpass any sort of challenge to get their answers.
For instance, there's a dark creepy black spot on the wall encircled by a wreath of flowers that the girl's drew. This black spot is how Mama gets into the house. When she isn't out and about doing her haunting thing, she passes through it and stays in the wall. It's a ghost portal. Dr. Dreyfuss figures this out right after he sees it, we know because his voice-over tells us.
A ghost portal you say? Interesting...
Huh. Really? That's a portal? I had no idea that's what that was used for. It's just that the ghost's freaking hands come right out of the dang thing while we're watching and she pulls herself out of the wall and attacks people.
I'm not sure why some directors decide that the audience is too stupid to put two and two together and get four, but it's really annoying for me to have to sit through such insufferable dialog that hits you over the head with information, instead of slowly revealing what is going on and letting your imagination do some of the work for you.
Aside from the jump scares and the not-so-subtle exposition sequences, there are also several dangling plot threads that occur that are just strange. For instance, the foreshadowing that occurs during the opening credits in the children's drawings. I thought for sure that the poor Dachshund was going to become feral children chow, after seeing the drawings of them killing and eating raccoons, but it wasn't.
In fact, the dog was one of the weirdest things about this movie. For the most part, it's common in ghost movies for dogs to freak out and start barking angrily at the presence or attempt to attack the ghost, or at the very least, get jumpy and bite their owners when in the presence of the supernatural. However, in "Mama" the dog ran happily towards the ghost, it's little wiener dog tail wagging as it was greeted by the dead woman. Right around the third act (where the movie really starts to fall apart) the dog disappears. Nothing happens to it, we don't see it dead, or devoured or anything. It's just gone.
It's around that time as well that the movie cannot decide if it's late fall or early spring, if it's hot or cold out, nor what time of day it is. It's either day, or it's night in a scene. There is no transition between the two. Sunset? Who needs a sunset? Not me.
During this time, we also see a random ghost of the girls' dad (yes the one that tried to kill them) appear and tell their uncle where to find them after Mama takes them back.
Uncle Lucas goes to the woods, then like the poor wiener dog, he disappears, only to pop out in front of the car when Annabel is driving to the cabin to find the girls. Their uncle, who was a key player in the beginning of the story, suddenly becomes a two-bit character with a glass jaw.
Apparently he's just there to be knocked out while Annabel, with her new-found maternal instinct musters the strength to fight off the ghost's "sleep spell" three times in an effort to grab the girls and take them back from the ghost before she kills them.
While it wasn't the best ghost movie I've ever seen, it certainly wasn't the worst either, it's kind of in the middle. "Mama" is interesting to watch, even with it's flaws, and the actors did a fantastic job on the film as a whole. The only thing that tips it more towards the bad movie category in my mind is the fact that the score killed any sort of suspense that the director and actors managed to conjure on the screen.
I'd watch it again, but at home, where I can control the volume and put the bass to a tolerable level so that I'm not jumping out of my skin whenever a big jump scare starts to build up. Violin trills, I'm talking about you.
There are a lot of ghost movies in the world, and like ghosts themselves, some are good, some are bad, and some are downright terrifying. The good ghost movies avoid cliches and get right into the suspense and horror of being haunted by the vengeful dead.
Here's my list of the top 13 scariest ghost movies. Enjoy!
13. The Devil's Backbone (2001)
"What is a ghost? A tragedy condemned to repeat itself time and again? An instant of pain, perhaps. Something dead which still seems to be alive. An emotion suspended in time. Like a blurred photograph. Like an insect trapped in amber."
1939, near the end of the three year Spanish Civil War, The right-wing Nationalists are about to defeat the left-wing Republican forces. Carlos, son of a Republican war hero is dropped off by his tutor at an orphanage that is far away from civilization, where an undetonated bomb sits ominously in the courtyard. The orphanage is run by a strict headmistress Carmen, the kind Professor Casares, and the brutal, sociopathic caretaker Jacinto who hides a terrible secret that the ghost of Santi, the boy who disappeared when the bomb fell, is desperate to share with the living in an effort to stop Jacinto from getting away with murder.
This cinematic masterpiece by Guillermo Del Toro is a wonderfully scary ghost movie that is both an allegory for the Spanish Civil War, and a terrific fairy tale all wrapped up in one.
12. The Dark (2005)
Sarah and her mother have not been getting along. Her mother thinks that a trip to visit her father in Wales will be just the thing to fix their strained relationship. But she's dead wrong.
While taking a stroll along the cliffs near the sea, they come across a memorial with a missing plate, with the word Annwyn (pronounced ah-noon) written on it. Annwyn is the Welsh afterlife, and is represented by the water.
Soon afterward, Sarah vanishes while walking along the beach and is replaced with a girl named Ebrill- the dead daughter of a local shepherd and the town pastor, who died tragically when her father, desperate to save her, gave her to the sea where she was swept away to Annwyn. In an effort to get her back by exchanging a life for a life, he convinces his followers to throw themselves over the cliffs to enter Paradise.
Ebrill did come back, but something returned with her, something evil. Soon the sheep began throwing themselves off the cliff and into the waters.
When Adele and Sarah visit James, the sheep begin to once again throw themselves off the cliff, an ominous sign that the evil that Ebrill brought with her into the land of the living has returned.
This little known ghost movie has an interesting folk-lore premise and some very creepy scenes that you have to see to believe. It is based on the book "Sheep" by Simon Maginn.
11. Fragile
Jaume Balagueró's "Fragile" is about Amy Nicholls, an American Nurse, who gets a job at the dilapidated English children's hospital, Mercy Falls, to help transfer the last eight patients to a new hospital prior to the building being shut down for good. Soon after she starts working there, Amy learns that there is a malevolent spirit, called "The Mechanical Girl", a ghost wearing orthopedic braces that is attacking the children and breaking their bones.
This ghost movie has a tense atmosphere, and a strong female protagonist who will do anything to protect her young charges. It covers the themes of loneliness, and the bonding that occurs between nurses and children when they are patients in a hospital and suffering from an incurable, often painful, disease. Unfortunately, some nurses become too attached to their wards, and will do anything to keep them in the hospital.
The paranormal elements, and the mystery behind the Mechanical Girl is well done and creates an eery amount of suspense and dread that many other ghost movies fail to produce.
10. Shutter (2004)
After being involved in a hit-and-run accident, a photographer, Tun, starts to see white faces appear in his photos. It is soon clear that the ghost of the accident victim is haunting him, and she won't stop until she gets her revenge.
The original version of "Shutter" is a fantastic Thai horror movie that has a lot of really intense, scary moments that you have to see to believe. When the ghost appears in the apartment and begins to haunt Tun's girlfriend is when the movie really starts to get good.
9. The Orphanage (2007)
You may have noticed that this is the second movie with Guillermo del Toro's name on it that appears on my list of Top 13 Scariest Ghost Movies. There's a reason for that. He has a great talent for story telling and interweaving historical set pieces with heart breaking tragedies and his appreciation for horror movies shows in every work he undertakes.
In "The Orphanage," Laura and her husband Carlos have moved back in to her childhood home, which also happens to be an orphanage. She wants to turn it into a home for disabled children. While living there, her adopted son Simon makes a friend with a masked boy, Tomas, and starts playing a hiding game with him, where they hide other people's possessions and Simon has to find them in order to get his wish granted.
Unfortunately, Simon uncovers his adoption papers and learns that he is HIV-positive. Angry with his adopted mother for not telling him the truth about his past, or that he is deathly ill, he runs away and hides from her. Laura desperately searches for Simon, and encounters Tomas, whom she believes is a ghost.
After six months of searching, there are strange banging sounds in the home, and other instances of paranormal activity, which leads Laura to believe that the ghosts of children that died at the orphanage are responsible for her son's disappearance.
The interaction between Laura and the ghosts makes some really good scares, with my favorite being the one where she plays a hide-and-seek game with them.
8. Stir of Echoes (1999)
"Stir of Echoes" is based on a book of the same name by Richard Matheson, which I highly recommend by the way.
Tom is a normal guy living in a working class neighborhood in Chicago. One night at a party, his wife's sister Lisa, convinces him to let her hypnotize him. Tom doesn't believe in it, but ends up being hypnotized anyway. Lisa ordered him to become more open-minded, but instead of making him be less cynical and jaded, it actually opens his third eye and allows him to receive messages from the dead.
This movie is one of the most underrated movies from 1999. It was completely overshadowed by "The Sixth Sense," which pales in comparison.
"Stir of Echoes" is more of a slow burner, and involves a tormented man attempting to solve a murder and find the body of the dead girl that is haunting him and his son (who can also communicate with the dead). The slow build of tension and suspense allows the frightening conclusion of the movie to stick with you for quite some time. At least, I know that it did for me.
7. The St. Francisville Experiment (2000)
"The St. Francisville Experiment" came out one year after "The Blair Witch Project," and the found footage film's influence on the movie is hard to miss. It follows the same format of introducing the people involved in the ghost hunting experiment, laying down the folklore and local legends of what occurred in the mansion as a means to set up the foundation for the scares of the movie, and then proceeds to place the group of four strangers in a building over night; a formula for the boiler room plot device where some of the tension is caused by the fact that the people that are involved in the story cannot leave or run away from it.
In "The St. Francisville Experiment," ghosts of the slaves of the sadistic murderer, Delphine LaLaurie (an actual historical figure in New Orleans who has had her name slandered and has been branded as a serial killer according to local legends) haunt the LaLaurie house. A group of four people has been gathered to enter the house and spend the night. While there, they record everything that they experience, and it's soon clear that they are not alone, and that the ghosts are real.
Unfortunately for the ghost hunters, the vicious ghost of the house's mistress has remained behind, and has turned the tables on them, making the ghost hunters, the hunted.
This is one of those horror movies that are best when watched in the dark, when you are all alone and in the mood for a good scare. While there are some cheesy moments in the first half of the movie, once the action ramps up and the ghosts start to haunt them, it really gets good and spooky. Fans of "Grave Encounters" will especially like this ghost movie.
6. The Ring (2002)
Based on "Ringu" a book by Koji Suzuki, this ghost movie is about a cursed video tape. After you watch the tape, the phone rings. The voice on the other end says, "Seven days." After seven days, the vengeful hungry ghost of Samara comes for you and kills you.
The main character, Rachel, is a newspaper reporter. When her niece dies of fright, she begins investigating the circumstances surrounding her death and uncovers a cursed video tape. If she can't find a way to placate the ghost that killed her niece, she will soon be its next victim.
"The Ring" is one of those rare U.S. remakes that was actually better than the original film. In this case, it is a remake of the Japanese horror film, "Ringu." While some of the main plot points of the original movie have been dropped, the U.S. version added several layers to the myth of the Video Tape of Death, added character development to make us really care for the main character's young son, and overall created a well paced and scary ghost movie.
The movie was so good, that it brought J-horror into popular American culture, well, at least in many horror circles at any rate, and that's a good thing. While Americans generally don't scare as easily as the Japanese (or so I'm told), there are story elements from Japanese culture that are absolutely fascinating. The mixture of American and Japanese ghost stories has created a wonderfully terrifying movie.
Actually, "The Ring" has two scary movies in one, the first is the absolutely creepy cursed video tape that perpetuates the curse, and allows the ghost to kill more victims, and the second is a movie that is more fast paced and suspenseful ghost story than it's overseas counterpart.
5. Darkness (2002)
"Darkness" is a film directed by Jaume Balaguero, the co-director of [REC] and [REC] 2, and stars Anna Paquin in what I think is the best role I have ever seen her play.
The movie is about a teenage girl, Regina, who moves into a haunted house in Spain with her family. Her father suffers from mental breakdowns and periods of psychotic attacks, so when he first starts having problems it is thought that the stress of moving into a new home is the cause of it.
Regina's little brother Paul, suddenly becomes terrified of the dark, and claims that something is living under his bed. As her father slips further into insanity, her brother becomes more and more afraid. After observing the power outages in the home and her father and brother's behavior, she believes that the power outages and their problems are related. So she hunts down the architect of the house and learns that it was built for a dark magic ritual, and that the ghosts of the children that were killed there are roaming the halls while a dark presence is waiting to kill the last sacrificial victim.
4. Session 9 (2001)
"Session 9" is one of the best psychological horror films I have ever seen. On top of that, it is also one of the scariest ghost movies out there, which is why it is on this list.
I love ghost stories that take place in abandoned insane asylums. Between the atmosphere and the eerie backdrop of a dilapidated building that always seems to have at least one wheelchair left behind, they always manage to creep me out.
In "Session 9", Gordon Fleming and his hazmat removal crew are hired to take out the asbestos from the Danvers State Hospital, which was shut down in 1985. One member of Gordon's crew uncovers an evidence box in a tunnel beneath the hospital. Inside the box are nine tapes of therapy sessions with patient number 444, Mary Hobbes.
When Mike finds a working tape player, he starts to listen to the tapes, which slowly uncover the bizarre, twisted mind of a killer suffering from multiple personality disorder. As we learn about the personalities and what happened to Mary, the members of the cleaning crew begin to be killed off, one by one. But is it the ghost of Mary, or the evil entity that claims to possess her who calls himself Simon that is killing the men?
This low budget film more than makes up for its small pocket book with big scares and intense, spooky scenes that will leave on the edge of your seat, constantly looking behind you to make sure that something isn't standing right behind you, waiting to pounce.
3. Grave Encounters (2011)
Pouty-lips girl aside, "Grave Encounters" is one of those movies that actually earned the hype surrounding it. Really, it is. This found footage film features ghost hunters that were a part of a paranormal reality TV show called "Grave Encounters." The ill-fated sixth episode took place in the Collingwood Psychiatric Hospital, which was shut down years ago, and is supposed to be haunted.
What was meant to be another installment in the series turned out to be the last episode the crew ever filmed. It starts out innocently enough, with the crew interviewing people about the hauntings and talking with the groundskeeper, who shows them a window that opens by itself every night.
They lock themselves inside the building over night to begin the paranormal investigation and capture everything on camera. One by one, the crew begins to disappear, and it's made apparent that the building is not just haunted, it's sentient and has become a labyrinthine maze of horror. The ghosts of former patients and the doctors that performed terrible experiments upon them, up to and including transorbital lobotomies, won't leave them alone. Trapped in a realm of forever night, where the pitch black darkness threatens to swallow them whole while they are relentlessly hunted and hounded by the tormented souls of the tortured dead at every turn.
What I really loved about this movie is that it wasn't predictable, and it borrowed ideas from "House of Leaves" and faerie abductions, where time has no meaning and dawn never comes to bring light to the world. The terrible fate of Lance Preston and his crew induces mind numbing horror in the viewer, and it reminded me a lot of the stories of H.P. Lovecraft.
2. The Changeling (1980)
"The Changeling" is based on true life events that author Russel Hunter claims to have experienced when he lived at the Henry Treat Roger Mansions in Denver, Colorado.
Composer John Russell is a grieving widow looking for solace. He moves into a secluded estate near Seattle Washington in an attempt to return to composing music and picking up the pieces of his broken life. It is soon clear that he is not alone, and the house is haunted by a violent ghost of a young boy who was murdered there years ago.
Some of the best ghost stories have settings that take on a personality and life of their own. Much like the hospital in "Grave Encounters," the Victorian house that Russell lives in has a looming presence. There are tense moments when you can practically hear the house breathing as the poor man attempts to uncover the mystery behind the ghostly apparition's origin.
The scares in this ghost movie are subtle and the tension builds up beautifully in this utterly terrifying ghost movie. Don't watch this one alone. I mean it.
1. Poltergeist (1982)
"Poltergeist" is about a middle class American family, the Freelings, who move into a haunted house. The dark malevolent forces are playful at first, but things take a bad turn once their youngest child, Carol Anne, is stolen and taken over to the other side; the Land of the Dead.
Diane and Steven Freeling have to confront the invisible forces that are manipulating objects in the home and becoming increasingly dangerous as they attempt to get their little girl back.
Once they contact parapsychologists from UC Irvine, they learn that it's not just one ghost inhabiting their house, but a whole slew of them, and they are being led by an evil presence called "The Beast," who is using Carol Anne to manipulate the other spirits and use them to its own gain. What exactly it means to accomplish is never truly revealed, but this doesn't matter.
All I know is, you shouldn't build a house on a cemetery that is still inhabited by interred corpses. It never ends well.
"Poltergeist" has to be the scariest PG movie ever made.
Never before has static on a television instilled so much horror.
Even at 30 years old, this horror film still manages to scare me. It's the clown man, that damned clown doll. Gets me every time.
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