the exorcist

[sonicyouth]

i watched this last night for only the second time, i saw it a few years ago and was pretty unimpressed. many claim it is the scariest film of all time, what do you think?

as far as creating tension and atmosphere, i've seen loads of films which do it far more effectively. in fact, m night shyalaman's signs made me feel far more tense and jumpy than the exorcist ever did.

you'd have thought that watching a film like the exorcist at 2am, in the pitch black and listening to it with headphones would make the experience all the more terrifying but it didn't at all. alright, it's scary, it's visceral and brutal and the theme of demon possession is one that is terrifying in itself but if the exorcist is the scariest film of all time then i'm clearly one hard motherfucker.

on a related note, anyone seen the exorcist: the beginning?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0204313/

[Bob's Orange]

I saw it last year. I was disappointed. That said, when it was first released it may have been scary. Not now though!

[oxford_fan]

horror films such as this are so exclusive to when they're made that its not really fair to judge them in modern terms i think. i didnt find the shining scary but i was too busy playing with boobs to notice the horror to be fair.

[sonicyouth]

good point of.

back in the 70's the exorcist would have been much scarier as religion was far more important and people weren't as desensitised as us lot are nowadays.

[STFC Village]

The scariest movie i have ever seen is Event Horizon.

[Luci]

I wasn't keen on the Vanishing or Silence of the Lambs, real scary.

Tha Vanishing isnt particularly bloody but the burying her alive bit scared me!

[lumpimynci]

Like virtually everybody under the age of 40 I'd seen about 2 dozen spoofs of the film by everybody from French and Saunders to that bloke out of the Airplane films before I ever saw the original.

It kind of spoilt it for me. It's really difficult to take the line "your mother sucks cocks in hell" seriously when all you can think is "your mother's a biology teacher in Cheshire"