Yeah, but whenever the clown was off-screen it was just awful. 

The book is amazing, it really deserved better.

EDIT: At Sparkster.
EDIT EDIT: A Warning to the Curious is superb.

I'm not really up to speed with a lot of modern horror (mainly because I can't find the time to catch up as the wife hates them) but I do love the genre. Anyway, I love a list:

Night of the Living Dead
Fond memories of watching late night 'horrors' on Channel 4 with my mum when I was 11/12, including Ed Woods awful epics and some great 50's classics like 'The brain from the planet arous'.  All great fun until they showed the OG Romero Classic and the film that started the genre and established the canon. I remember thinking it started as a typical so bad it's good film of the type, but soon realising that it was actually building a real, authentic and believable world around its conceit. By the time the dead have laid seige to the farm house and the little girl has troweled her mum to death in the basement mu obsession with the living dead was complete. Still stands up today as an object lesson in atmosphere, tension and sub textual story telling and, man, that ending.

The Thing
If any film stands out as my defining experience of ultra-terror, it's this one. From the very opening scene it drips tension - Carpenters score (and indeed all of his scores in his major works) is incredible and the practical FX have never been beaten for sheer inventiveness and flinching ewww-factor. The chomping rib cage, the dog split, the stretching head spider, the hand through the face - all utterly iconic and unforgettable on first viewing. All great in and of themselves but they're coupled with some of the greatest set pieces in horror history for the blood test to the sheer panic of the first attack.  I watched this film when I was about 15 and even now, just seeing the DVD cover and hearing the synth bars of the theme makes the hairs stand up on my neck. 

The Blair Witch Project
I went to the cinema to see this after stumbling upon the viral web marketing on the internet, back when the internet was mostly new to me.  I was so convinced but the fictional world that the various fake blogs and sites had built around the film that I was ready to believe that the whole thing was true. The experience of the film itself was so utterly terrifying that I've only ever seen it twice, the second time on VHS shortly after it came out for rental. I watched it on a bright sunny afternoon whilst off work and found it so utterly compelling and disturbing second time around that I've not watched it since. The final image of the film is burned 
 into my brain so much so that even sitting typing this I have goose bumps and I'm very aware of the wind in the trees outside.

28 Days Later
One of Dannty Boyles best films and one of the all time great apocalypse films. Again, an utterly convincing set up and world in which truly disturbing and grim things happen. Some spectacular images, some unflinching and brutal violence, a wonderful soundtrack and a great cast make this one that whilst I  enjoy revisiting it, always makes me anxious.

That's the first few, I'll post more later.

No that's right, the ending is pretty naff actually. 

But all the childhood, 1950's stuff is so great I tend to ignore its failings.

EDIT: FFS

I also loved it up until the end.  Especially the wanking.

Edit: AT LARRY.

Blair Witch Project
The Exorcist
The Omen
Poltergeist
Vital
Event Horizon
Jaws
Alien
Jacob's Ladder
The Shining

Those would be my 10, many being mentioned before. 
Blair Witch gets the top spot as it is the only film I have seen that genuinely freaked the shit out of me.
Vital is probably my least horror of the bunch but it's so damn unsettling it gets in there.

I also have soft spots for horrors that came so close but fucked it up somehow, as in Phantoms and Creep. I was very tempted to put Absentia in that list but it's a bit new.
Phantasm 2 was a close shout but it's almost too much fun to be considered a horror

It was more of a personal recollection. I'll never forget that forum meet.

But yeah, you're right.

I'm going to read IT again. 

I went to a private screening of Jaws last week.  It's possibly the only film that I'd give a [10].

Good luck with that.

Haute Tension is a great shout. I don't really watch scary films anymore so haven't seen any in ages.

Are the Rec sequels any good?

I don't really get scared by films these days.  Don't watch a lot of horror mind you as the missus can't handle it.

I was terrified of Halloween as a kid though.  Saw it when I was 11.  Gave me a fear of the dark that was still cropping up nearly 20 years later.

Part of me wants to watch it again because I know it'll be dated and shit to get it out my system but at the same time I'd like to preserve the one film that terrified me.

tigerswiftly wrote:

Oh, shit.  Paranormal Activity 3 in an almost empty cinema in Korea nearly broke me. The ending sections in particular with the...

Spoiler:

witches in the dark room omfg omfg

That was an absolute disaster of a film.

3) nightmare on elm street
2) poltergeist
1) Blair witch

I've not watched a horror film in about 15 years. I don't understand the point of them.

Is that human centipede thing a horror? I mean wtf?

Silence of the lambs is quite good too

Emile Heskey's Candyman...

He was a nightmare in a home game.
Say his name three times, and he'll fall over...

I'm genuinely baffled that The Shining is getting so much love.  Like some other parts of Kubrik's work, there's too much laughably awful stuff spoiling the good stuff to lift the whole experience above average.

It's that thing about it only having to be the thinnest spread of shit through a sandwich that still makes it a shit sandwich.

tigerswiftly wrote:

Chief wrote:

tigerswiftly wrote:

Oh, shit.  Paranormal Activity 3 in an almost empty cinema in Korea nearly broke me. The ending sections in particular with the...

Spoiler:

witches in the dark room omfg omfg

That was an absolute disaster of a film.

It wasn't good, but at least there were one or two reasonable (if cheap as can be) jump scares. Paranormal Activity 4? Now that was unbelievably poor.

I haven't even bothered with 4. Somebody in a suit seems convinced that it can be stretched into a franchise, despite it turning to shit by the third film.