10 Strangest Horror Movies Of All Time

9. Tenebrae (1982)

€œSomebody who should be dead is alive, or somebody who should be alive is already dead€€ Literally a film of two halves, Dario Argento€™s seminal Tenebrae (Latin for €˜shadows€™) is a film about metafictional killers finding inspiration in one another, and proceeding to terrorise Rome with straight razor and axe, amongst other things. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkUpGi2N8wo Horror writer Peter Neal travels to Italy from America to promote his latest, a book called Tenebrae. Upon his arrival, someone contacts Neal to inform him that the novel has inspired him to go on a killing spree. Gradually, the supporting cast are violently trimmed, until the climax reveals the twist and changes the way you view the movie you€™ve just seen. It€™s a film obsessed with duality and mirroring, in which practically every scene is framed, shot and blocked to add subtext and depth to the narrative. It€™s a self-reflexive commentary on Argento€™s own reputation as a maker of violent films €“ in the opening scene, the killer€™s hands holding a copy of Neal€™s novel are Argento€™s hands. It€™s a cold and hallucinatory movie that implicates the audience in each of the stylised murders, breaking the fourth wall not through shameless mugging to camera, but by projecting the viewer into the film to stand and helplessly watch the killer work. Tenebrae is all of those things, and a stylish, compact giallo thriller from an artist at the height of his powers.