You can make a scary survival horror game that is popular and scary by scaling back the encounters, removing the ammo and guns, and focusing on the environment and puzzles-- something Capcom used to do very well and should return to in the Resident Evil Series, and something that EA's "Deadspace" did quite well up until the third installment of the series.
OK Capcom, EA, pay attention. I'm going to share a secret with you, it's the winning formula for a horror video game:
Tension + Variability + Vulnerability + Being Alone = Fear
Did you get that? Good. Now here's four reasons why it works.
4. High Tension
Creating and sustaining tension in a horror video game is a somewhat of an art form. Ultimately it is the perceived threat that makes someone experience high tension, which in turn induces fear in the player.
I first really grasped this concept when I was running a game/adventure of "Dark Matter," which is a d20 Modern RPG Campaign Setting. The adventure is titled, "Exit 23."
In "Exit 23," the player characters are trapped in a truck stop gas station when an unnatural blizzard sets in during the middle of summer. The white out from the blizzard prevented the characters from safely traveling outside. Unfortunately for them, it trapped them in the gas station where there was a hideous monstrosity called a winter demon that was killing people off one by one over the course of the night.
At one point, the player characters had to go and secure the store front, which was entirely made out of plate glass.The wind was howling outside, the creature was on the prowl, and they were scared beep-less as they went into the room. I sat there patiently as the players carefully guided their characters around the store, avoiding being directly in front of the window until the very last moment because they believed that the winter demon was going to ambush them when they walked by it.
When something fell in the room, the players had their characters run to safety, upon which time the players let go of the breaths they were holding.
They were scared, and yet all they were doing was investigating a room. There was no attack, no monster, no scene of carnage, and yet it was a moment of high tension for the players.
The winter demon never was going to attack them in that room, but they BELIEVED that it was going to be there and that it was going to rip them to shreds with it's razor sharp claws. It was the potential threat of the encounter that created tension and fear in the players.
It's this type of fear inducing high tension that the video game 'Slender' really managed to create with it's heartbeat like minimalist score that played while you hunt for the eight pages that hint at what is stalking you in the woods. That, combined with the fact that your eyes play tricks on you and after a while, the trees in the background look like Slenderman, and you start jumping at every little shadow that plays in the beam of your dying flashlight.
3. Variability
Tension is also created when there is the possibility of running into Slender man, which is a random encounter that is constantly changing during game play. You never run into Slenderman in the same place more than once. This variability makes people nervous and jumpy.
Being able to create random events where Slender man may or may not appear is how the game keeps players on their toes, and raises their heart rates. It makes them on edge, it makes them FEEL FEAR and jump at anything that resembles the entity, such as trees or shadows. By establishing a heightened state of fear in the player, every little thing becomes a sign that the monster is stalking you, and every little sound could be Slender man, standing right behind you.
By creating random times and places where Slender man appears in the game, and having him occasionally teleport to be directly behind a player so that when they turn around he's right there and it's game over, the game created a deep unsettling sense of paranoia in the player that left a lot of people jumping at shadows while playing it. This sense of fear and tension caused by variability goes hand-in-hand with a feeling of isolation and vulnerability.
2. Vulnerability
It's not the amount of monsters you throw at a player. It's not the size of the monster that is scary. It's not making them bullet sinks that barely even react when they are shot that makes them scary. It's not awesome looking graphics that makes a video game scary. It's the perceived THREAT of a single entity that creates the most fear in players.
How does one establish that something is a threat? By making people feel vulnerable.
This is done by taking away the awesome guns and the unlimited ammo and the ability to being able to play an Übermensch super soldier character. Take away the awesome armor. Take away the ability to shrug off the weight of one thousand corpses. Take all of it away and give them nothing but a flashlight or a Zippo lighter and a dinky pocket knife.
Give players nothing but simple things that they could find in their own homes. Hell, just give them a rock and some duct tape.
The point is, the less prepared and armed a character is for the encounter with the monster, the more vulnerable the player feels, and it's this sense of vulnerability that made survival horror games so scary in the first place.
Make people play as someone who is as weak and vulnerable as they are, make them play a character that represents the common man, such as Harry Mason in "Silent Hill", or make them play as themselves, as "Slender" does.
Then, and only then, will you be able to scare the bejeezus out of someone with your video game.
1. Being Alone is the Scariest Part
Encountering a single monster is scarier than having hordes of them thrown at you. But, it's the absence of people that is even scarier. Fear of isolation, of being alone, is a common one, so exploit it to the best of your ability.
One of the best ways to make the player feel alone and isolated is to allow them to explore an abandoned landscape.
Exploration is a Key part of Survival Horror. All of the best horror games, the scariest ones, allow a player to explore a setting to try to uncover clues about what is happening. The first three games of the "Silent Hill" series did this exceptionally well by allowing you to wander through the fog veiled town to search for items and information, while being chased by one to two monsters at a time, with the random trio of monsters occurring only occasionally. There were a few people to run into in these games, but they were few and far between, and they were trapped in the evil town as well.
"Slender" establishes the fact that you are alone in the woods with the sounds of your own feet crunching through the leaves on the forest floor, accompanied by the sounds of crickets, and the beating heart in the score, which your mind interprets as the sound of your own heart beating, which in turn raises your heart rate, and increases the fear that you feel.
There isn't a soul to be found. You are alone, in the dark woods, with an enigmatic monster man lurking in the shadows, following you as you pick up the clues in the form of eight pages. Of course, collecting all of the clues in "Slender" is how you win the game. It's a simple video game goal, and yet, it's the most terrifying to complete.
If Capcom and EA can follow the winning formula of a scary horror video game, then and only then will they make a new game that manages to scare people, which will in turn allow them to sell more games, and quite possibly create a successful new entry to their respective game franchises. If not, well, we'll have more disasters like "Resident Evil 6" and "Dead Space 3" on our hands. And that would make me, and a heck of a lot of other horror gamers very, very sad indeed.
For more information about what makes horror video games so scary, check out "Scary Game Findings: A Study Of Horror Games And Their Players" by Gamasutra's Joel Windels. It's really fascinating stuff.
Long before I loved horror movies, I loved reading horror novels.
I thought that I would start with a list of the top three horror book series that scared the crap out of me when I was a little kid, and I loved it.
3. Point Horror
Point Horror is the Young Adult horror book series that launched R.L. Stine's career. His book, "Blind Date" was the book that also helped make the series popular. Other notable authors that contributed to this horror book series include Christopher Pike with "Collect Call," A. Bates who wrote "Party Line," and "Richie Tankersley Cusick, who wrote the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" book series and "Trick or Treat."
My two favorite books from the Point Horror series includes "Call Waiting" by R.L. Stine and "April Fools" by Richie Tankersly Cusick.
2. Bunnicula
"Bunnicula" is a children's book series by James and Deborah Howe. The stories are told from the perspectives of the Monroe family's pets, Harold the dog and Chester, the cat. If you can't guess, Harold is the more rational one and Chester is a paranoid scaredy cat. When their owners welcome a new strangely colored bunny with white fur and black patch on it that looks like a cape, strange things start to happen to the vegetables in the home. Turns out that Bunnicula is a vampire bunny who sucks the juice out of veggies.
What I really loved about this series is that there was a spooky mystery to be solved by Harold and Chester, with the usual hijinks ensuing that you would assume a cat and a dog to get involved with when attempting to prove that a pet rabbit is a vampire.
This is one of my most cherished children's book series and just writing about it is a huge nostalgia bomb for me. I read the first three books of the series, "Bunnicula," "Howliday Inn," and "The Celery Stalks at Midnight," so many times that the book coves became severely bent and worn. This is a condition that I call well loved, my S.O. Shane Strange calls it book murder. He's probably right.
1. Scary Stories To Tell In the Dark
When I was in fourth grade, I was introduced to "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" by Alvin Schwartz. The book was the first in a series of anthologies. The anthologies consisted of urban legends and ghost stories from traditional folk lore that were collected by Alvin Schwartz and then retold for his books. There were three books in total in the series, which were then collected into one volume a little later on.
The stories that I liked the most from the first volume are "The Viper," "The Big Toe," "The Bride," and "The Ghost with the Bloody Fingers," with the latter two being the scariest stories in the book.
Most of the stories themselves were a little goofy and mostly of the "spooky" variety. It was the illustrations by Stephen Gammell that were the real scary parts of the books.
This one in particular I found to be as creepy as hell when I was a little kid.
Unfortunately, a few years ago they decided to change the art in the books when they were up for a reprint by Harper Collins, so if you have any copies of the originals, hold onto them, as they're worth a lot more to collectors nowadays than they used to be.
I wonder if the people who decided to change the art because it was "too scary" were also the same people who decided to put the parental warning on the DVDs of the original episodes of "Sesame Street?"
"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.
"An American Werewolf in London" has one of the most realistic appearing werewolf transformation sequences that I have ever seen. The movie was made in a time when CG effects were very expensive, and practical effects were king. While some companies now solely rely on CG as a crutch for their movie monsters, I find that those that still do it old school tend to have monsters that are far more real looking and convincing than their digital counterparts.
It's easy to see that the CG transformation lacks the weight and terror that the practical effects bring to the table. There's several reasons for that, from pacing issues to lack a of convincing sound effects. Most of which were handled quite well by "An American Werewolf in London."
The special effects for An American Werewolf were created by Rick Baker. The sequence shown above was so good, that he received an Oscar for it.
The animatronics used to create the two minute long agonizing werewolf transformation scene were quite elaborate. There were several animatronic heads made for the facial changes of the shot. While the skin and fur are now long gone, it's easy to see how they made the forehead and cheek bones protrude, and more importantly, how they made the lycanthrope jaw extension look so good.
The sections of the cheeks and forehead move by pushing air through syringes.
The animatronics consists of a fiberglass shell, foam and wolf hair. The teeth in the jaw are larger than the actor's teeth, but smaller than the final teeth of the werewolf, which I believe is one of the things that lends to the scene's realism.
When taking into consideration that Baker was 30 years old and worked with a crew with an average age of 19, many of whom never worked on a film before, I think they did a fantastic job.
But it's not just the visual effects that make this scene scary, it's the sound effects as well. This storyboard from the movie shows us that these sounds were desired from the very beginning of the movie design.
The sounds of bones crunching, hair growing, the feet elongating and the spine popping are so well timed, that it makes the scene all the more believable. Truly, it's a work of art that has yet to be outdone.
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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