THE TOP 5 IN HORROR

Chris Knight’s top 5 horror movies for the hopelessly faint of heart. They’re scary, but they offer something beyond jump scares. 1 The Shining: Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 adaptation (very loose) of Stephen King’s novel is 21/2 hours of existential dread, with gorgeous cinematography and a wicked performance by Jack Nicholson. Worth watching as a lesson in obsessive filmmaking; and for obsessive fan theories, check out Rodney Ascher’s 2 doc Room 237. Dawn of the Dead: From 1978, George A. Romero’s second zombie picture — he started with Night of the Living Dead in ’68 — imagines a group of zombie-outbreak survivors who take refuge in a mall. Scary, but also a clever takedown of consumerism. 3

Under the Skin: This 2014 alien-invasion thriller got under my skin. Adapting a fascinating novel by Michel Faber, director Jonathan Glazer casts Scarlett Johansson as a friendly, not-quite-right driver plying Scottish motorways for 4 human victims. Eerie. It Follows: David Robert Mitchell’s 2015 feature has an arresting premise. Maika Monroe stars as a young woman being followed by a demon. It isn’t fast, but it can disguise itself, and it never stops. It can be transferred to someone else like an STD, but if it kills that person it’ ll start after her again. Diabolically 5 clever. Pontypool: Canada’s Bruce McDonald made this 2008 horror in which a zombie-type outbreak is spread by language. And it all takes place in a remote radio station, giving new meaning to the term “dead air.” Stephen McHattie, whose features suggest he was born to star in films like this, plays a grizzled DJ.