By Dylan Sciacca | Reporter
With Halloween only a few days away, scary films are returning to TVs and getting people into the spooky season. There are many horror movies available, but the top films are debated.
To help students find the best horror movies to watch this Halloween, two film and digital media professors have expert insights into which movies are the the scariest and most worth watching.
Dan Beard and Maverick Moore, senior lecturers for the film and digital media department, enjoyed movies from the 2010s era, but Moore also enjoyed some of the older classic films.
Moore’s recommendations centered around a theme of authenticity. He recommends “The Exorcism of Emily Rose” and “The Blair Witch Project,” two movies that he said feel authentically frightening.
“There’s something about [‘The Exorcism of Emily Rose’] that makes it feel less embellished, maybe even more factual, and that makes it all the more scary to me,” Moore said. “… [‘The Blair Witch Project’] doesn’t feel exaggerated or embellished. I think there is something about that and the feeling of it seeming like it’s real, thats frightening,” Moore said.
“The Exorcism of Emily” is about a priest who is on trial for trying to perform an exorcism on a girl, and it goes wrong, and “The Blair Witch Project” is a found footage film about kids that are looking for a town tale and get lost in the forest and something begins to stalk them.
The third film Moore chose was a documentary called “The Nightmare.” It is about sleep paralysis, and it goes over testimonies from people that have had sleep paralysis and goes through their experiences.
“One of the themes of the documentary is that if you become familiar with these incidences, then you’re prone to it yourself, and so I find that scary,” Moore said.
Moore also recommends was the “Nightmare on Elm Street.” This movie is about teenagers falling prey to Freddy Krueger, a disfigured midnight mangler who preys on the teenagers in their dreams, which kills them in reality. Moore said the film is creative.
“It is scary that the big bad Freddy Krueger can get you in your sleep,” Moore said. “It feels like we are all susceptible to this monster.”
The last film he chose was “The Witch.” This movie follows a Puritan family living in isolation on the edge of a New England forest in the 1630s. When strange and frightening events begin to happen, the family starts to suspect that supernatural forces are at work, leading to growing paranoia and distrust among them. Moore said he found this movie especially fascinating because of how much research went into the film.
“The directors had a lot of intention for it being as authentic as possible,” Moore said. “I think that the authenticity he intended to imbed in his film is also what I find scary about it.”
Beard’s list was diverse, with his first film being “Babadook.” In this film, a troubled widow discovers that her son is telling the truth about a monster that entered their home through the pages of a children’s book.
“It is very artsy,” Beard said. “It is creative in its way of creating a monster and a good analogy for mental health.”
The next film he chose was The original “Scream,” which follows high school student Sidney Prescott and her friends as they become targets of a masked killer known as Ghostface in their small California town. As the murders continue, the group tries to figure out who the killer is while the movie plays with common horror movie rules and cliches. Beard chose this because of how many movies there are in the series to binge-watch and how classic it is.
“What people like about the ‘Scream,’ I encourage them to go watch the original from where we got that from,” Beard said.
Beard also suggests is “Hell House LLC,“ which follows a group of friends who turn an abandoned hotel into a haunted house attraction for Halloween. After several people die during the opening night, a documentary crew investigates what happened and uncovers disturbing footage suggesting something supernatural was inside the hotel. He said he enjoys the found footage style of film.
“I am kind of a documentary guy, so the fact that it’s kind of this found footage documentary makes it, to me, more realistic and more scary,” Beard said.
The fourth movie Beard recommends is “Train to Busan,” which follows a father and his young daughter as they board a train from Seoul to Busan, South Korea, just as a zombie outbreak spreads across the country. As infected passengers begin attacking others on the train, the survivors must fight to stay alive while trying to reach safety. He said the movie is an interesting story about sacrifice and about changing.
“It is interesting about changing not just into a zombie but actually your character too,” Beard said. “And it is scary as well, fast zombies are always scary.”
For his final film choice, Beard chose the “Insidious” franchise, which follows a family whose young son falls into an unexplained coma, leading them to discover that his condition may be connected to supernatural forces. As strange events begin happening in their home, the family seeks help from paranormal investigators who uncover a terrifying connection between the boy and the spirit world.
“Just the set design and how they create that world is just really cool, and the people there are just terrifying,” Beard said.
