Movies that go bump in the night
As Sky Cinema’s Halloween Collection debuts, Empire’s CHRIS Hewitt and HELEN O’HARA discuss the scariest movies of all time
It’s that time of year again. halloween looms, and with it evil walks abroad. Well, let it walk abroad. You can stay safe and sound inside, watching one of the many great horror films on sky Cinema’s halloween Collection. But which is the greatest? It’s time to tackle the most terrifying question of them all…
Chris: so, helen... halloween’s just around the corner, and so my thoughts are turning towards scary fillums, as we say back in Northern Ireland. and in particular, the scariest film or fillum of all time. and as halloween’s nearly upon us, I can’t ignore the claims of John Carpenter’s movie that takes place on that day. so, is the original
Halloween the scariest film of all time?
Helen: Well, I should preface by saying that for a horror fan I am a total wuss. I get scared even when I have seen a film a million times and know that it’s just a cat, so readers should therefore take my assessment of a film’s scariness with a pinch of salt if they are made of sterner stuff. that said, I think we can all agree, as a species, that
Halloween is terrifying in the extreme. scariest ever? I’m not so sure. But all those point-of-view shots that put you in the killer’s shoes? the way they make you, the audience, almost complicit in his crimes? that is deeply disturbing stuff.
Chris: absolutely. I enjoyed the David Gordon Green sequel/remake, but there’s something about the classic composition and framing of the Carpenter movie (in conjunction with his genius cinematographer, Dean Cundey) that continues to chill the blood. It wasn’t the first slasher movie, but it is widely seen as the movie that kickstarted the genre, and led to all kinds of masked maniacs. I have a soft spot for Jason Voorhees and the outlandishness of a number of the Friday The 13th
movies, but michael myers remains the greatest horror movie bad guy for me. there’s something
about the implacability of his particular brand of evil — he’s essentially the shark from Jaws recast in human form. Unstoppable, unknowable, and with the blackest eyes. The devil’s eyes. But you’re right, I’m still not sure if I’d say that Halloween is the scariest film of all time. Another contender could be another Carpenter: The Thing.
Helen: I adore The Thing. It has some of the most effective gore I have ever had the misfortune to see — that cardiac arrest scene! — and that great, charismatic Kurt Russell performance. I feel like it should also get bonus points for having a bad guy that’s so amorphous: while those Rob Bottin effects are incredible, there is no single defining image of the Thing — by definition! And yet this Carpenter doesn’t need that iconography. Instead we have that classic horror combination of terrifying beast you can’t defeat and hostile outside environment you can’t survive, so that escape is impossible and the claustrophobia is overwhelming. That’s a remarkably effective device: think of another contender: The Shining. Chris: Ah, The Shining. I love that film. I admire that film. It’s one of the great haunted house (or, in this case, hotel) stories. And yet, sometimes I feel it’s the work of a director — Stanley Kubrick, of course — who was interested in the genre mainly from a technical perspective. So it’s not quite in the upper echelons for me. It’s no Event Horizon. And I realise how weird that is as a sentence. Helen: Hello, security? I need you to remove a demented madman from the building. I’m not always a huge Kubrick fangirl, but even I can see that this is a story more about the enemy within than the ghosts without, and the slow degeneration of a man into madness. You could lose all the supernatural elements and still have something terrifying, and again there’s that tension where there is no escape and no safe refuge — not even behind a locked bathroom door. And okay, Stephen King didn’t love it, but Steven Spielberg does (look at Ready Player One) so I’m sticking with this. Chris: I’m not saying The Shining isn’t a great horror film. It is. I’m not in the King camp here. All I’m saying is that it doesn’t have an eyeless, naked Sam Neill bellowing, “DO YOU SEE?” Look, I’ve been on the Event Horizon train since it came out in 1997 and took up residence inside my head to the point where I had dreams, or nightmares if you will, about it for two weeks. I’m delighted to see that, despite being a flop at the time, it’s undergoing something of a renaissance. And it ticks a lot of my horror boxes — despite being, shall we say, undecided about the whole God thing, movies with a supernatural or devilish bent hit me in the scary sweet spot, whether it’s The Omen or more modern fare like Annabelle or The Nun. Ain’t nothing stopping a possessed doll or a demonic nun, Helen.
Helen: You’re telling me: I went to a convent school. The Nun’s a genuinely horrifying creation, I think, even if it does turn out to be a demon rather than a real nun. That white face and shadowed eyes make her look very J-horror to me: think of Sadako in The Ring and all of the similarly dark, dank pretenders to its crown. The common thread is that I don’t want any of these characters crawling out of my TV and coming after me, thanks very much. In fact I feel a sudden urge to make a cup of hot chocolate and watch something extremely comforting. I’ll be over here watching Christopher Robin if you need me.
Chris: A man surrounded by talking stuffed animals? Forget Halloween, or The Exorcist, or my beloved Evil Dead II — I think Christopher Robin just might be the scariest film of all time.
THE SKY CINEMA HALLOWEEN COLLECTION IS AVAILABLE FROM 3 OCTOBER, WHILE THE TERROR OF ALL HALLOWS EVE PREMIERES ON 31 OCTOBER. AVAILABLE NOW ON DEMAND. TO HEAR CHRIS AND HELEN TALK MORE SCARY FILMS WITH ALEX ZANE AND DAVE BERRY, CHECK OUT THE HALLOWEEN EMPIRE PODCAST, IN ASSOCIATION WITH SKY CINEMA, FROM 3 OCTOBER