10 Horror Movies Too Scary To Watch Again
2. Whistle And I'll Come To You (1968)
Made for TV as the first of the BBC's Ghost Stories for Christmas (an annual Christmas Eve tradition), Whistle And I'll Come To You remains one of the scariest ghost stories ever put to screen. That's quite an achievement for a film with a grand payoff that is, essentially, a bed sheet.
Jonathan Miller's monochrome nightmare is an adaptation of M. R. James' Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come To You, My Lad, which tells the story of a level-headed, philosophising scholar who finds an antique whistle on a Norfolk beach and is forced to come to terms with the existence of the supernatural. Miller takes a ghost story that should not translate well at all from page to screen, and succeeds in producing something just as, if not more horrifying than its source material. It's a story about what happens when a rational thinker is confronted by something that exceeds the limit of human comprehension - no other supernatural horror film has explored this anywhere near as well.
Miller's use of sound, and sometimes lack of it, is deeply unsettling. We are also treated to what is arguably the all-time scariest dream sequence. The finale is simply nightmare-inducing. The reduction of Michael Hordern's logical academic to a mumbling, wide-eyed, thumb-sucking mess is perfect, and not unlike the reaction of the viewer. This scene plays on basic childhood fears that we have all experienced sleeping alone in a dark, unfamiliar room, when our brains would concoct nightmarish figures out of shadows and dressing gowns hung on the back of bedroom doors. Watched alone at night, Whistle and I'll Come To You is far scarier than any supernatural horror movie made since.
Lost Hearts and The Signalman are two later installments that are almost as frightening and are well worth checking out, if good old-fashioned, classic ghost stories are what scares you.