Come play with us Johny, forever and forever. Everyone recognizes those haunting lines from the man hailed as the master of modern day horror, Stephen King. Danny the young boy in question has a special gift, he sees what others don’t. When Danny moves into the huge hotel with his dad as caretaker the past of the place comes alive. The Shining is as much a story about a haunted hotel with a bloody history as it is about a failed patriarch dipped further into a strange psychosis. Though any movie with Jack Nicholson is bound to have a certain edge, it’s the idea of a father turning rogue and turning an axe on his family that’s petrifying.
The Shining has a lot more going for it. There’s Stanley Kubrick’s indomitable style that makes your anticipation grow with every scene, the long corridors and the buckets of blood lashing through them all add to the atmospheric horror that makes The Shining what it is. There have been many Stephen King horror stories that leave a mark but it's the teaming of King’s story and Kubrick’s vision that makes this film a masterpiece.
2) The Orphanage
The sheer atmosphere created in this Spanish magnum opus, Produced by Guiremo Del Torro and directed by Juan Antonio Bayona, is emotional and hair raising at the same time. This is a movie that employs no pop up spooks so often abused in most horror movies. And the story just keeps unraveling itself. The sheer talent that the actress possesses, the pain portrayed in her eyes simply sucks you into the tale until it’s time for the revelation. She spends months looking for her son and pursuing the spirits in the house. But it is only when she wholly allows herself to believe in the other world does the truth reveal itself to her. The horror in The Orphanage lies in the atmosphere created through the children’s garden and the games the spirits play. No movie has made a children’s game seem so haunting and nerve wrecking. Sequences with the medium in the house are simply spine chilling.
But besides everything else one can view this as a Peter Pan story told from Wendy’s point of view. Wendy is a mother so desperately looking for her child that she takes the help of the lost children she once knew and was a part of. This quest eventually leads her to join the lost children. In this peculiar Neverland she is reunited with her son as the lighthouse shines in the background.
1) The Exorcist
On Writing Horror: A Handbook by the Horror Writers AssociationOn Writing Horror: A Handbook by the Horror Writers Association
Buy Now
Again, coincidentally a story that deals with a single-parent child relationship, The Exorcist has a famous actress-mother and her daughter adjusting to their new life. There have been several interpretations of The Exorcist ranging from it being laden with the subtext of child abuse, to the more obvious battle of fate versus science as Megan goes through those grueling medical tests that amount to nothing.
This horror masterpiece is the best to date and manages to scare you even after all these years. While The Exorcist is gripping and scary at the same time it gets under your skin because there’s the thought that the Devil in question chooses its victim at random. And in this case his choice is picking the purest soul, that of an innocent child. By corrupting her he wishes to purely prove that he still exists. And if that doesn’t get to you, the scene with the projectile vomiting is bound to. An inspiration for so many flicks to come, this movie lets you know that the Devil is out there and he can get to your mind.
The Exorcist commands and I have a feeling will continue to command its position at number one for many years to come. There have been a spate of horror films since The Exorcist but none have managed to shock the audiences of its time quiet like this one.
One must say coming up with a top ten list for the oldest genre there is, is a tough task. There are so many movies that have managed to get me that are not part of the list. I remember The Exorcism of Emily Rose, I couldn’t sleep for a week after that one. There’s also The Last Exorcist which besides its unpalatable end was pretty impressive. The Orphan, The tale of two sisters, The Innocents, Skeleton Key (more a thriller than horror), Rosemary’s Baby, they’ve all come to make the horror genre what it is today.