100 Greatest Horror Movies Of All Time
37. The Vanishing (1988)
In 1993, Kiefer Sutherland starred in a horror film by George Sluizer about a man whose girlfriend mysteriously disappears while he's on holiday. It's awful and just about unwatchable and Sutherland and Jeff Bridges should be ashamed of themselves. Particularly since the film it remade - this 1988 Dutch offering - is in fact a bit of a masterpiece.
In the original, the Sutherland role is played by Gene Bervoets, whose girlfriend, Saskia (Johanna ter Steege) vanishes. Intriguingly this isn't really a whodunnit in the traditional sense as it introduces us to the perpetrator early on and he's nothing like what you'd expect in these circumstances.
It's a slow-burning, horrific thing to watch that doesn't bother with gimmick scares, but which burrows little nefarious thoughts into your skull like bore-holes and simply doesn't relent.
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36. A Quiet Place
Cinema needed a movie like this. Something that meta-textually addresses the popcorn munching, the packets being opened and the conversations that mar the majority of moviegoing experiences.
Naturally, the in-movie Quiet Place isn’t about anything of the sort, but its sound design is painfully muted; the setup of the world being that a race of death-bringing creatures slaughter anyone for uttering anything louder than a whisper.
From just the first sequence, it’s a stark reminder of how much movie audio and our own auditory senses contribute to a notion of place and comfort.
A Quiet Place’s greatest strength is never giving you full context for the state of the world. Its incomprehensible, incalculable horror is far more effective when you don’t know exactly what it’s capable of, but DO know how to stay alive.
By the time the credits roll and you can finally breathe again; no doubt becoming conscious of just how much you were tensing up the entire runtime, THAT is when A Quiet Place’s true genius settles in.
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35. Jaws
Given the somewhat improbable presence of that OTHER big fish movie on this list, it's only right that Steven Spielberg's mold-setting aquatic horror makes it into the top half.
Jaws was and is the flag-bearer for both Hollywood's fascination with killer sharks and for blockbusters and its longevity is all the more impressive for the fact that the production was an absolute sh*t-show. The shark didn't work, the sea made filming impossible and Spielberg basically had to make it all up as he went along.
Thankfully, he had a brilliant cast, a genius premise and the rest is spiky-mouthed history. The biggest testament to its success is that strange sense of uncalm you probably still feel whenever you're in water and have no idea what's beneath you. Even when you're in the bath.
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