5. Veronica
During a solar eclipse, a girl named Veronica and her friends want to come into contact with Veronica’s father by using a Ouija board, which as we know is never a good idea, something these kids find out as it seems whatever it was they conjured up was an evil demon and it is inside Veronica.
Director Paco Plaza takes the over-used Ouija board plot and creates something refreshing and horrifying. It was so terrifying that once released on Netflix, it was reported that people couldn’t even get through more than half of it, but what do you expect from the mind that brought us “REC,” one of the scariest found footage films? So if you haven’t watched it, or even finished it yet, there’s no better time to test it out than October.
4. Barbarous Mexico
“Barbarous Mexico” is a Mexican anthology film composed of eight short films based on Mexican legends and myths ranging in genres from “red note” to folklore. It features multiple different horrifying shorts each with their own take on certain ideas, some with boogeymen, others with the dead coming back to life.
While some are well-crafted horror or suspense pieces, others raise the bar and create a horrifying scenario that seems all to real and might just be enough to make many turn it off too soon.
3. Inside
Released in 2007 and directed by Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo, this French horror film is a violent and horrifying home invasion film that’s about a scissors-wielding killer tormenting a pregnant woman on Christmas Eve.
The film encompases everything that a horror film should have: horrifying moments mixed with suspense, and a sense of true dread as we must sit and watch as many of the characters are tricked into believing certain things that later become their downfall. The film was praised by horror critics for the actual intensity of the film as well as the brutal violence that is within it.
This film is not for the squeamish and for people who do not like to see a lot of gore, which makes finishing the film tough to do. With so much violence, this film is terrifying, and if you can get through it, it’s one of the best additions to the New Wave French Horror genre.
2. Audition
When a widower named Aoyama wants to begin dating again, he gets one of his producer friends to set up auditions for a fake film production. While the women coming in believe there is actually a part, they are actually being screened to try and find Aoyama the perfect girl.
Though many women come in, he begins to fall for just one girl named Asami. They begin dating and all seems perfect, but as the relationship goes on for longer, Aoyama begins to notice that Asami isn’t what he thought.
Directed by Takashi Miike (who would go onto make films like “Ichi the Killer” and “13 Assassins,” just to give more of a reason to watch this film) and released in 1999, the film may not seem likes it’s one that’s so terrifying you probably will turn it off from the description, but the tension that builds throughout the entire film and what it leads to are terrifying and is easily one of the best climaxes in a film. Words cannot describe how effective this film’s progression is, so it’s up to you to try your best to get through the entire thing and find out on your own.
1. The Exorcist
Directed by William Friedkin and released in 1977, “The Exorcist” is probably one of the most famous horror films of all time, but that doesn’t make it any less horrifying. This is a terrifying tale of a girl who is believed to have an evil entity attached to her when she begins to talk in tongues, and once an expert priest played by Max von Sydow comes in, we begin to see the true evil that this girl has within her.
While the film is known and loved, it still scares, from the transformation of a pleasant little girl into a demon strapped to a bed, the death scenes that happen within it, and the religious pretext in which the film encompasses things that even to this day make people hesitant to watch it.
With a haunted backstory of the creation of the film to its release on the day after Christmas, this film is a classic for a reason: no gimmicks, just straight horror, and if you’re one of those that can finish the film to tell the tale, count yourself lucky, because many to this very day cannot say they have.