100 Greatest Horror Movies Of All Time
52. Don’t Look Now
Nicholas Roeg's terrifying Don't Look Now is almost overlooked these days because it's too good. It's an artful portrait of the horror movie slow-build, which culminates with the audience walking away fully certain that they aren't going to sleep comfortably for a good while. And it's all about the climax, which transforms a good film into a great one.
Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie are excellent as the film's leads, who escape to Italy to recover from the tragic death of their daughter and are the central focus of Roeg's agenda to unsettle you at every turn. He pulls his puppet strings by keeping his viewers entirely on edge, through atmospherics and general weirdness that seems to present as a ghost story but ends with a twist so deliriously good that it transforms the whole film.
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51. Rosemary's Baby
What is it with the Devil and wanting to impregnate good, normal people? We've seen it countless times in cinema and there's a very real suggestion that we're all deeply preoccupied with the idea of the Horned One bumping uglies.
Either way, when the results of that fascination are as good - and as affecting - as Rosemary's Baby, let's all just let the demonic love gun do its thing. Polanski's haunting film was a pre-cursor to many classics, including The Omen and The Exoricst, but there's also something in Mia Farrow's performance that set the standard for other similar characters (notably Shelley Duvall's Wendy in The Shining). It's creepy, poignant and it lasts in the memory, which is often all you can ask for in a horror.
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50. V/H/S 2
Where sequels can ruin the magic of a first movie, V/H/S 2 is an exception to that rule. Building on the anthology format of the first film to bring about a collection of bizarre first person scenarios, from alien invasions to zombie outbreaks, the V/H/S franchise offers a unique experience of blending horror and perspective.
It’s only in this second iteration of the idea that it really boils down to something special, ramping up the narratives, intrigue, and production value from the first cult classic into a strange journey through the weird and wonderful.
[AM]