If you’re in need of a good fright, look no further. Samuel Zimmerman has shared the scariest movies that live in his brain. Photo / 123RF
If you’re in need of a good fright, look no further. Samuel Zimmerman has shared the scariest movies that live in his brain. Photo / 123RF
Samuel Zimmerman lives for fear. Here are the movies that scare him the most.
If you’re in need of a good fright, look no further. We called up Samuel Zimmerman, who curates the bespoke horror streaming service Shudder, in hopes of finding the most terrifying movies ever made. He didn’t disappoint.
This is not a ranked list, he stresses. “I think it would be hard for me to say, objectively, these are the scariest movies,” he says. “But if you asked, ‘What are the scariest movies to you?’ then these are the ones that live in my brain.”
This is a completely irreplicable film, despite many trying over the years. Its story [three film students investigating a murderous local legend] taps into deeply primal fears: being lost, being spied on, preyed upon, hunted. Some horror movies don’t show you everything - such as the monster, etc. - with the argument that the viewer’s imagination is more powerful than anything on-screen. Has any movie done it better?
The scariest moment in this movie is when the characters run from their tent and one repeatedly screams, “What the f*** is that?” as they run into full, pitch-black darkness. In that moment, either version - whether she’s actually seeing something or losing her mind - is equally distressing. No matter what she’s experiencing, it’s really upsetting.
Screaming and running into the void. That’s what the movie feels like: Staring into a void.
Available for rent on most major streaming services.
2. Lake Mungo (2008) / Pulse (2001)
Lake Mungo and Pulse are two sides of the same coin for me. These are movies are entirely about the dread of confronting imminent death, of confronting your own death.
Lake Mungo [a faux documentary about a family coming to terms with their 16-year-old daughter and sister drowning and the likely supernatural events that subsequently occur] is very one-to-one, you and yourself, marching toward death. Pulse [about ghosts invading the living world via the internet] is more about societal loneliness and societal collapse. One’s micro, one’s macro, but they both elicit the same crushing dread.
They make me feel sad and scared. It’s frightening but exhilarating at the same time to feel and reckon with those things.
Lake Mungo is available on Amazon Prime and Tubi. Pulse is available for rent on most major streaming services.
3. Angst (1983) / The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
Angst is this wildly upsetting home invasion film about a killer who gets out of an asylum, and you’re chained to this man as he immediately returns to a violent and vicious lifestyle. Both the killer in Angst and Leatherface, the murderer in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, are so reprehensible. Humans leaving humanity behind.
Leatherface, the murderer in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
These are incredible pieces of chaos that make you feel unsafe watching them, because these are very human monsters, and there’s something crueler to that than, say, a supernatural monster. You watch them and you feel as if you wouldn’t be able to get away - and that maybe you can’t even get away from the experience you have while watching them. You just can’t turn them off. It feels as if the creators have unleashed something that they’re not even responsible for.
Angst is available on Tubi. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is available on Amazon Prime and Tubi.
4. Terrified (2017)
Terrified is a potpourri of absolutely horrible things happening.
It’s just purely scary, in that really great, funhouse way. It’s so freaky and so many different kinds of freaky.
There is supernatural splatter, and there is this very upsetting, long creature, which functions as a great ghostly figure, a thing that should not be. And there’s dread of a small child who’s been resurrected and moves very slowly and basically haunts a space [The movie is about a Buenos Aires neighbourhood dealing with a variety of supernatural events].
Demián Rugna, the Argentine filmmaker who later teamed up with Shudder for the terrific When Evil Lurks (2023), is a master of suspense and horror, and he really sells every piece of grotesquerie in this movie. You can feel the movie darkly grinning at you, like it’s taking pleasure from how freaked out you are at every new reveal.
It’s one of the great turn-all-the-lights-off kind of movies. And it was the first really major step of announcing Demián as a generational talent in horror.
Available on Shudder.
5. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992)
I lived near multiple video stores as a child, during the waning days of both Blockbuster and independent video stories. One day, I went into one of the video stores and saw Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me on the shelf. Not being old enough to fully understand the context, I thought, “Oh, this is what that ‘Twin Peaks’ thing is”. So this was my first exposure to Twin Peaks, and I was left to make sense of it by myself.
Perhaps it belongs in some of the conversations with Lake Mungo and Pulse. I don’t know why I’m so drawn to this, but it’s a very personal reckoning with your own mortality and your own death. And as in those movies, there’s a deep sadness in it.
You know going in that this is the last week of Laura Palmer’s life.
It captures a ferocity that the show only slightly gets into. It really feels like every darkness that show was hinting at is fully unleashed. It’s relentless. And also really beautiful.
In this one, Laura is the character who gets to work through the facing of her mortality, which I always find stunning and tearful in a lot of ways.
And then there are just images in the movie that are freaky as all hell.
Available on Max.
6. The Ring (2002) / Ring (1998)
The Ring is the remake of the original Japanese film, Ring.
They’re both incredible. Ring, the Japanese original film [about a cursed video; anyone who watches it dies seven days later], and The Ring, the remake, sit side by side in my mind.
The moment when the little girl’s ghost comes out of the television is so iconic. It’s something you haven’t seen before. It’s uncanny, deeply strange, breaking the rules of what you thought was possible.
I have such an affinity for things centred on cursed media: stories of tapes you shouldn’t watch or records you shouldn’t listen to. The idea that something is living in those pieces of media that can move beyond the bounds of a screen or a speaker is really fun. It’s a metatextual quality that isn’t adding humour or knowledge. It’s actually making things scarier.
I also love that there’s no solving it. The solution they find is really to just pass on the continued cycle of oncoming death, which is something we all have to live with.
Ring available on Shudder and Tubi.
7. Ghostwatch (1992)
Much as Orson Welles aired War of the Worlds on the radio as if it were an actual newscast, Ghostwatch was originally presented on the BBC as a live broadcast featuring journalists trying to find paranormal activity. What seems like harmless fun at first turns sinister as terrifying and unexplainable events begin happening.
The story is that tons of people thought there was an actual investigation and that things were actually going wrong and worriedly (or angrily) called the BBC. There’s a pre-widespread internet quality where you don’t know how much of that story is actually true. How many people actually thought it was real? I love that there’s this mythic quality about it.
I love introducing it to people. People enjoy giggling at some of its dated qualities, some of the cultural artEfacts. But I find that halfway through, that snickering stops because the movie is so effective at being scary. It creates such an oppressive atmosphere. It kind of stops you in your tracks.
To create that sense of atmosphere, despite in parts playing like a goof, that’s almost a magic trick.
Available on Shudder.
8. The Wailing (2016) / The Medium (2021)
These are connected in my mind because Na Hong-jin, who wrote and directed The Wailing, was a co-writer and producer on The Medium. They’re both sort of about religious wonder but also investigating the forces outside of us that are controlling us via possession, moving us around either in joy or in cruelty.
They both make you feel a little worn out in your soul. It’s such a great feeling.
The Wailing is available on Netflix. The Medium available on Shudder.
These are the most perfect funhouse movies in the world. They’re so relentless. They excel in shock and jolt and nightmare imagery.
It’s primal. You’re always going to second-guess something in the dark. In your life, the lights go out, you’re somewhere alone at night, and you can’t escape the feelings and questions that you have. The Rec movies put you in the middle of that feeling with ferocious, supernatural beasts.
Watching them back-to-back is the way to go. You should make a night of it.
Rec and Rec 2 are available for rent on most major streaming services.
