Top 10 Horror Movies I'm Too Scared to Watch

Wednesday 15 October 2014


When it comes to horror movies, I am a total baby. Yeah. I'm even nervous about watching films like Gremlins, which my mum constantly tries to assure me is a kids film (it's not), and I have to check the parents guide for almost everything. Ever since I was little, a film has stuck in my head for days or even weeks after watching it so if I've got something scary stuck in my head until I watch something else, my mind is going to be screwed up.

From my constant trawling of movie websites and content advisories, I've managed to come up with a list of horror movies that I just know I'm too scared to watch. I've even included examples from the IMDb guides for these films, just to further illustrate my point!

gif by fyspringfield
If there are ghosts involved, you just know that all kinds of shit's about to go down. I thought that Anna Dressed in Blood was pretty gory at times, but Poltergeist sounds even scarier, because it isn't just all blood and guts. I actually feel more uneasy when I can't see the scary thing and I hate jump scared, mainly because I feel really embarrassed after literally jumping out of my seat. Also there's kids in this film. I hate seeing kids and old people get hurt in films (I'm that weirdo who doesn't get sad when an animal that has nothing to do with the rest of the story died).
A man imagines himself ripping off his face. We see him pull bloody chunks off his face off and drop them into a sink. Very bloody and disturbing, though very brief. - IMDb Parents Guide
When I read the IMDb content guide for this film out of pure curiosity, it didn't sound all that scary. The Human Centipede just sounds plain gross. The second film was even banned for a short while in the UK until the director had no choice but to cut it. You just know from the outset that those people are going to die because (and this is about to get really gross) the human body cannot survive on shit.  Really. There's an actual scientific explanation as to why but I'm pretty sure we're all feeling queasy right now. I'm not incredibly squeamish, but I would probably not want to eat for days after watching this film.
The plot revolves around several people are abducted to be unwilling participants in an horrific and disturbing "medical" experiment of an insane doctor. Their mouths are stitched to another person's anus. The front person is fed, and then they defecate into the next person's mouth, to feed them. - IMDb Parents Guide
gif by fyspringfield
The human body is cool. The human body can also be incredibly gross. I just barely managed to get through that scene in District 9 where Wickis is slowly turning into an alien and looses his fingernails (little things like that really make me squirm), so entire films dedicated to showing bodies going through weird things like dismemberment and torture and even just being plain unnatural are just a whole no-go area for me. Some don't sound as gruesome as others, but I just know that I'd spend an entire running time with my sleeves in front of my face. Or even my fingers in my ears because sometimes when you can't see it a scene is more gruesome (there's a scene in Scarface where a guy is getting a chainsaw through his ass and even though you can't see it, it sounds awful).
The whole movie has a creepy sense of paranoia throughout, and then things get very graphic and disturbing at the end during the "orgy" sequence that sees people "feeding" off a man. Some people also mutate; heads become hands, arms are seen as legs, heads are seen where butts are, that sort of thing. DEFINITELY not for the easily freaked out. - IMDb Parents Guide for Society
French cinema really doesn't give a fuck about limits or censorship. I once watched a French movie that started (technically the end) with a dude in a S&M club getting his head caved in with a fire extinguisher, and then has a rape scene that lasts for nine minutes. With Martyrs, simply reading the content guide made my skin crawl and my fingers curl. Any mentions of ripping or skin peeling off is anything to make me feel ill. Ick. And plus nearly every single act of violence in this film is against women. Non merci.
A woman's face and skull are crushed off screen, with the after effects shown briefly in a quick graphic shot.

A women gets her throat cut.

A woman has a giant metal contraption stapled into her skull, the staples are pulled out of her skull and the metal contraption is pulled off. We see skin get peeled off.

A woman tries to kill herself by cutting her arms, he cuts extremely deep into her wrists and there is lots of blood.

A woman is shot in the forehead.

We see the aftermath of someone skinned alive in graphic detail. - IMDb Parents Guide
So. Much. Gore. In this series people have things attached to their heads, they cut their limbs off, they are keys inside internal organs, and the one that really pushes me away is that the dude from Linkin Park gets glued to a car seat and has to pull himself off of it, which rips his skin off in the process.

gif by fyspringfield
Nonononononononono. No way Joesph. I just don't fare well with torture.
A young man is glued to the seat of a car (blood is seen on his arms and back), a young woman is bound and gagged underneath the propped-up car, a young man is bound at the hands and feet and tied to a wall in front of the car and another young man is chained to the back of the car (we see a large, bloody hook attached to the chain going through his mouth and lower jaw and arms): the first young man rips the skin off his arms (blood pours from the peeled-off skin and onto him and the car where he is seated), he pulls the flesh from his back (we see the bloody tissue and muscle under his skin), the car drops, the speeding wheel appears to cut the young woman in half (we see her body separated and bloody), the car pulls the jaw and arms of the young man chained to the bumper completely off (blood flies through the air and the two disembodied arms follow the car), the car races forward, crashing into and through the young man chained to the wall in front of the car, and it careens through a junkyard and crashes into another car, sending the young man glued to the seat through the window (his lifeless body seen on the bloody and glass-covered hood). - IMDb Parents Guide for Saw 3D
Tree rape. I have no words other than tree rape. No. Fucking. Way. The rest of the gore sounds bad enough, but that rape scene sounds just like too much.

gif by pamivy
A woman is graphically raped by possessed tree branches, the vines rip off her shirt, and you briefly see her breasts, the branches spread her legs and another branch is thrust into the crotch area. - IMDb Parents Guide
Do you know who directed this film (which is also known as Dead Alive)? Peter Jackson. Yes, that Peter Jackson who directed the Lord of the Rings series. When I was reading a goriest movies list I came across this film, which was branded as one of the goriest movies ever. And while this film is a horror-comedy, I'm still wary of it because from what I've read, the gore outshines the humour. That's why it's still taking me a while to get around to watching Shawn of the Dead (that and the fact that I don't like zombies). The content guide for this film is so long, I had to narrow it down to the part of it that is written in red.

Dead Alive, albeit played mostly for laughs, is horrifically gory. It's more then enough to turn you off of eating for the next week. It's often been regarded as the, or one of the, most gory films ever made, and it earns the title. The film makes no attempt to hide the violence in any way, it's in your face and always in clear view.

A man walks into a room completely soaked with blood, filled with zombies ripping humans to shreds, gore spraying everywhere. He pulls out a lawnmower and proceeds to walks through the crowd of zombies. Limbs, gore, and gallons of blood spray in every direction. It is stated (and it is true) that 5 gallons of fake blood was pumped per second in this scene. - IMDb Parents Guide
I get pretty nervous about scary films that are described as being 'realistic' because to me that can translate to being pretty horrific. Sometimes the most OTT things can be ridiculous compared to more realistic films. And this is another film where all the violence happens off-screen which just makes me feel so uneasy. Plus Leatherface is definitely a face that would be sticking around my memory for quite a while, thanks to his mask made of human skin. Yuck. Chances are the remakes are even more graphic so I probably won't be watching those either. And one of them is in 3D.
One of the very first images of the film shows a corpse mounted on top of a fence post. We see it clearly at first and then the camera pulls back to reveal that it is holding the head of a second corpse. - IMDb Parents Guide
Sometimes even aliens can't convince me to watch something scary. I only very recently plucked up the courage to watch both Alien and Predator, but by just reading the content guide, I have a pretty good feeling that I won't be watching The Thing any time soon. Especially since it just constantly mentions how gory the movie is. I do well with a bit of blood every now and then, but complete and total gore. No thank you. I still squirm when I see that poor guy with a bomb inside his stomach in The Dark Knight.
A man gets his arms bitten off by an alien, and his wrists squirt large amounts of gore. The head of the alien then stretches itself off the body. We see greenish muscle and blood being ripped apart from the body.

A severed alien head oozes green slime and grows legs and eyes and then proceeds to crawl away.

A man is shot square in the forehead. Seen from a distance.

Several men have their thumbs cut and the blood put into dishes for testing. The cutting is shown and there is very a large amount of blood that oozes out. This happens twice. Some people may be grossed out by this.

A man transforms into an alien; his head inflates and stretches, and eventually splits in half whilst blood spurts out and engulfs his head.

An alien thrashes a man around by the neck, and repeatedly bites down on his head. Blood sloshes everywhere. The man is then thrown into a shelf, where we see he is completely mutilated. - IMDb Parents Guide
My reasons for not ever wanting to watch The Exorcist lies much deeper than it being branded as 'the scariest movie ever'. Regan MacNeil's face is commonly used in screamers (those stupid posts where it's simply a picture of a scary face and a really loud scream) and the first time I ever saw one of those I couldn't sleep for days because my brain started playing tricks on me and I was seeing it everywhere. I'm that easily influenced by things that I see. So the fact that there's a constant subliminal image of the demon that flashes up on the screen just makes me say no way every single time. I will probably not ever watch this film, no matter how many people tell me that it's not that scary because I'm scared of everything.
The young girl at one point masturbates very violently with a crucifix, resulting in self-mutilation (sound effects that would usually be reserved for a blade puncturing flesh are dubbed in) a great deal of blood about the girl's crotch, which splashes onto her clothes, hands and face; her mother's face is later smeared in the blood after the girl shoves her mother's face down into her crotch, growling, "lick me!" She then throws her mother across the room onto a wooden floor, and the woman screams in agony. The possessed girl, who is facing away from the mother, suddenly turns her head 180 degrees around to face her mother and asks her, "Do you know what she did, your c**ting daughter?" Very graphic and disturbing. The movie got its controversial reputation as the scariest movie ever made because of this scene ! - IMDb Parents Guide
  • Teeth - Not only does the premise sound dumb (a vagina with razor sharp teeth, wtf), I'd probably be scared of my own body after this one.
  • Most things with zombies in - Yeah, I'm probably the only person who's not too keen on zombies mainly because they freak me out so much. They just look so fucking scary.
  • Found footage movies - No. No no no no no no no no no no no no no. No. If I can't see it that makes it even scarier. I won't even watch Apollo 18 and that's about aliens.
  • Nightmare on Elm Street - Bye, bye sleep.
Are there any horror movies you're too scared to watch?

3 comments

  1. 10. Movies with ghost SCARE me.
    9. So disgusting. I just.. can't. It sometimes makes me wonder how sick people are when they can come up with movie ideas like this :p
    7. Someone skinned alive? Good lord. No thanks.
    6. I had to sit through these to watch with a group of friends and I was SO sick afterwards. I couldn't sleep for two days :')
    5. Tree.. rape..
    3. This movie gave me nightmares for weeks, I swear this is true. It's based on true events and I just can't imagine that..

    ReplyDelete
  2. I usually stay far far way from scary movies and I can definitely understand why you avoid these! I never heard of the Parent's guide, it certainly seems like a great idea to check movies on there first.
    Things I can't stand in movies are everything involving the human, animals or alien bodies or things inside the body, there's a scene in Star Trek Voyager were they perform surgery on an alien and I was freaking out the whole time.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Haha ohhhhh horror movies. I've seen two Paranormal Activity movies and those were scary as hell. They weren't even particularly gory but there was something about the cameras...and the too-quiet nights...and the way it was all filmed...it just seemed too real and it freaked. Me. Out.

    Poltergeist actually isn't such a bad movie! Honestly? It's a little cheesy. There were some things that freaked me out but it wasn't too too bad. :P

    Right now I have a Paranormal Activity movie (I forget which) and The Conjuring to watch as my "Halloween scares." I tend to chase them with funny feel good movies, though, like Halloween Town or Hocus Pocus. It gets your mind off of the bad stuff!

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for leaving a comment! I read every single one I receive and make sure to return as many as possible ❤️ If you want me to participate in a tag feel free to tag me (no awards, though, please)!

© Exploring by Starlight. Design by FCD.