So I went and saw "The Ring 2" last night. I'm not sure why, considering I didn't much care for the first one (nor did I care much for the second one, but we'll get to that). Perhaps it's part of my quest to find a GOOD scary movie, which I am beginning to believe is akin to searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack. Or maybe I just can't be scared, I don't know. I did nearly shit my pants the other day when playing Doom 3, just as Solomon had advised me would happen and I think it's because I have an inherent fear of zombies (and rightfully so! did you SEE 28 Days Later???). But these frights are short lived. I want a movie that's going to haunt me long term and I promise you, The Ring 2 is NOT it. You may be frightened of seeping, flooding water ruining your carpets or pasty-faced children, but not much else. The only good thing about the movie is.... The Tape. Other than that ... *hohum*

So my never-ending quest forages on. It's funny... when I was a kid I would never watch scary movies.. and this was in the 80's when Freddy and Jason were at their peak and making it so kids never wanted to sleep or go camping ever again. I think I saw the first Nightmare on Elm Street when I was 10 and called it quits after that. The movies are pretty laughable if you watch them now, but back then it seemed quite real and I was terrified. So now that I am older and wiser I am in search of a movie that scares, and I simply don't scare easily now. Rarely do I jump in the theatre when the cat runs out or there is a bang of any sort, designed to keep you on the edge. It's not the cheap scares or bloody slasher films that get to me... it's the ones that mentally fuck you that do it for me.

There are two things I can name that definitely scared me. The most memorable was Bob from the tv show Twin Peaks. Bob was the bad guy and in the scene when he was finally revealed coming out from behind the girl's dresser... I completely freaked out, and in a way I can't explain. For some reason I stood right up when I saw him... like I was readying to sprint for the door?? I have no idea why I stood up, it was just a knee-jerk reaction. But more notably.... when I saw him I was so very scared that tears actually welled up in my eyes. I almost cried! Wha?? I didn't understand it myself, but there I was pointing at the screen in horror and on the brink of tears and saying to my (then) boyfriend "Look! LOOK!!!". As you can tell, this has had the desired haunting-for-years-later effect I'm going for. It's an image I cannot get out of my mind all these years later. Why was he so scary? What was it about him that triggered such a reaction? I'll never know, but just searching for images of him to link in this post caused me to get all wiggy.... the tears! THE TEARS I tell you!! Remarkably I even had a t-shirt with this picture of him on it, back in the day!

But the last movie I can think of that has had a long lasting impact on me was The Blair Witch Project. This was a movie that you either loved or hated, and I was among those who was terrified by it. Never have I been part of a movie audience that was dead silent and craning their ears to hear what the characters in the movie were hearing. Was that a branch cracking off in the distance? Children laughing? What was that??? The people in the movie didn't know, and neither did we. But we held our breath when the characters did and we listened when they did. We wanted them to run, to get out of there. Like them we could only see as far as their flashlight shone, and we were terrified of what was beyond the light. And the ending! My god... it actually made me well up with tears much like the Bob incident. THAT is the sign of a good fright. }:-) It was scary because it seemed real (unlike, say, Freddy and Jason).

We'll pretend that Blair Witch 2 never happened, because it shouldn't have. Why must movie makers ruin a good movie by making sequels?? (btw, in the trivia section of the IMDb info page on The Blair Witch Project, Toronto gets a mention: "Some theatergoers experienced nausea from the handheld camera movements and actually had to leave to vomit. In some Toronto theatres, ushers asked patrons who where prone to motion sickness to sit in the aisle seat and to try not to "throw up on other people.")

So yeah, none of this happened with me while watching The Ring 2 last night. In fact, halfway through I was silently begging for it to be over. Afterwards my friend and I both mentioned how were considering actually leaving the movie, and had we known that the other was thinking it we actually might have. *snore* Oh well, there goes another 2 hours of my life I'll never get back.

Now I wanna hear from you guys..... what's a movie that scared you? The classics (ie: Poltergeist, Exorcist)? But what about something recently? Anything in the past 5 - 10 years? (and this can definitely include thrillers like Se7en, which scared the pants off me) Tzaddi has suggested Code 46... anyone else seen it?