CS Weekly Archive > The Big Picture > 10/30/09

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Smarter people than us have pointed out that comedy and horror have a lot in common. Both often prove to be critic proof because they connect with audiences on an instinctual level: a movie can be riddled with horrible dialogue, poor plotting, convoluted structure, and hammy performances, but if it makes you laugh, it makes you laugh. If it scares you, it scares you.   And while horror has gotten a—often justifiably—bad rap as a wasteland filled with slasher flicks and torture porn, there are plenty of examples of the genre that don't force quality storytelling into the back seat behind rampant gore and cheap tricks. As we here at CS Weekly bust out our costumes and fill our candy bowls, we took a little time to look back at the scary flicks that scared us most—and that just happened to be excellent movies to boot.

Angel Heart (1987)
Screenplay by Alan Parker (also directed)
Based on the book by William Hjortsberg
 
Equal parts detective thriller and supernatural horror, Angel Heart is a film that starts dark and then spirals into a deep shade of oil-black.  Private Detective Harry Angel (Mickey Rourke) is hired by an ultra-creepy Robert De Niro, playing a businessman named Louis Cyphre, to find famous lost crooner Johnny Favorite.  Turns out Mr. Favorite failed to live up to the terms of a contract he had with Cyphre.  By the time the search is over, Angel will discover a lot more than a singer gone missing.  The film is a particularly moody and atmospheric work that parallels its procedural story by examining the sinister depths of one man's tortured soul.  The sense of dread grows with Harry's every step as the plot points are neither expected nor (perhaps most impressively) inorganic.  Everything happens for a reason, and that's what makes the movie so frightening.  Unlike so many modern-day horror films, it all makes sense (terrible and horrifying sense, sure, but sense nonetheless).  Angel Heart is a thinking-person's thriller with a final twist that never ceases to stir up a chill, no matter if you know it's coming or not.
- Ari Eisner 

The Descent (2005)
Written by Neil Marshall (also directed)
 
As a kid, I mostly avoided horror films like the plague, because I was either too scared to watch the good ones or had no interest in seeing the same repetitive plots recycled in the bad ones. That's why Neil Marshall's The Descent was such a pleasant surprise. Sure, the idea of freakish, cave-dwelling creatures isn't exactly the most original in the world, but it's what comes before the creatures appear that sets the film apart. Marshall puts the heroines in a tough scenario—stuck hundreds of feet below ground in an uncharted cave system with no way out—that would scare the crap out of anyone. And then he waits. Instead of unleashing the creatures at the 30-minute mark, he lets the girls simmer in what is a boiling pot of tension as they crawl through tunnels and cling to dangling ropes, all the while slowly turning against each other so that they're as much to be feared as the creatures themselves. It's a testament to the script that the first half of the movie is just as intense and dramatic as the second half, and it's one of the few horror films that actually left me wanting more.
- Nick Randall 

The Exorcist (1973)
Screenplay by William Peter Blatty
Based on his novel
 
Typically in horror films the victims have done something to bring on their misfortune. Whether they had sex while a kid was drowning or bought a haunted house or just opened that door when they really shouldn't have, there's a reason they find themselves in this predicament. That all changed with the 1973 release of The Exorcist, with William Peter Blatty adapting his novel for the screen. The sight of 12-year-old Regen MacNeil (Linda Blair) masturbating with a crucifix or turning her head 360 degrees is made all the more disturbing by the fact she's an innocent. At one point, Father Karras (Jason Miller) asks what we're all thinking: "Why her? Why this girl?"  To which Father Merrin (Max Von Sydow) provides the chilling response: "I think the point is to make us despair. To see ourselves as...animal and ugly. To make us reject the possibility that God could love us." It's a chilling concept, and as the audience watches Regan's suffering, we share in her helplessness. It's simply unfair and, worst of all, there's no logic to why she was chosen. Truly terrifying.
- Jenelle Riley

The Omen (1976)
Screenplay by David Seltzer
 
To be honest, everything terrified me as a kid, but in college, my friend John took me under his wing and introduced me to all the things I'd missed, including that wonderful '70s icon, The Omen.  Rupert and Katherine Thorne (Gregory Peck and Lee Remick) discover the truth about their adopted son, Damien (Harvey Stephens), in a film that's nerve-wracking in its minimalist approach to horror.  David Seltzer's script is about a subtle, lurking terror—the kind that's all the worse because the characters quietly dismiss it and ignore the implications that the audience grasp from the start.  Heck, one of the biggest scares in this film comes in a scene of pure exposition.  Through the course of the first act, a photographer named Jennings (David Warner) comes to realize his camera somehow gives a glimpse into the future of Damien's victims.  It's eerie enough when he discusses it with Rupert, but I still shiver when Jennings explains that he accidentally took a picture of himself in a mirror—and the audience discovers he has a vested interest of his own in stopping Damien.  It's a spine-chilling moment made even more powerful because it's the tag for such a passive scene, when Rupert finally realizes there's a juggernaut of death looming over him and his new friend.
- Peter Clines

 
Paranormal Activity (2009)
Written by Oren Peli (also directed)
 
Eddie Murphy used to have a bit about The Amityville Horror, wherein he was confused why white people stay in a house that is literally telling them to leave. In his estimation, a black family would hear the same ghostly whisper—"Get out!"—and oblige it posthaste. The success of Paranormal Activity, and here I speak not of commercial success but rather success as an artistic endeavor, lies principally in its familiarity with that which came before. Oren Peli obviously knows horror: what makes it work, and more importantly what makes it not work. His screenplay for Paranormal Activity hits all the familiar notes we require of a haunted house thriller, but it also takes the opportunity to subvert the tired clichés so many others are content to just recycle. The "I'd better check this out" scene is a particular favorite,  and if you're not going to leave the house, you'd better have a damn good reason not to leave. Sure enough, Peli supplies a reason damn good enough for us to believe. Well, relatively believe—this is horror, after all. And yet, that's not right for me to say. The characters are utterly believable and modern, from their attitudes to their reactions. Peli knows he has to keep certain medieval concepts around, like demonologists and Ouija boards, but it's difficult to not laugh at such notions in the age of the internet. So, of course, the film does laugh at them. And then it gets online.
- Adam Stovall

The Ring (2002)
Screenplay by Ehren Kruger
Based on Ringu by Hiroshi Takahashi and the novel The Ring by Kôji Suzuki
 
I'm not a fan of slasher flicks, I'll never understand the appeal of torture porn, and I think the various Halloweens and Friday the 13ths are more amusing than scary...so why did The Ring terrify me to my soul? Probably because Ehren Kruger's script contained none of what I consider to be the usual tropes of horror. I had no idea what was going to happen, nor was I entirely sure what I had just seen; I only knew that I felt profoundly discomfited. The visuals were upsetting for reasons that are hard to pinpoint. They were close enough to reality that some primal part of me was offended and disturbed by their "wrongness": the buzzing fly that shouldn't be there; a horse so freaked out that it commits suicide by leaping off a ferry; the idea that seeing particular images on tape might actually kill you. I swear my heart stopped beating when the black-haired girl crawled out of the television. It was shocking and stunning at the same time, and I realized I kind of like being petrified, if only for a moment.
- Sarah Skilton

The Descent courtesy Lionsgate Home Entertainment
The Omen courtesy Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment

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