Scary? You call that scary?

[dreamshark]

A lot of people seem to think that Psycho is a scary movie. While it has some suspenseful moments, and the shower scene is very dramatic in an arty and stylized way, I don't find it frightening at all.  thorintatge had Psycho out from Netflix last week, which is why that topic of conversation came up around our house (he wasn't terribly impressed with Psycho either).

Last night Richard and I saw Coraline at Southdale - now that's a scary movie!  It's also very beautiful and haunting and technically masterful - definitely worth seeing. But if you're thinking of taking the kids, think again. It's rated PG, but if ever a movie deserved a PG-13 rating, this one does. Anybody who takes a 6-year-old to this movie should be prepared for living with a child with a lifelong terror of 4-hole black buttons.

Comments

[jbru.livejournal.com]

Part of Psycho's quotient of frightening had to do with it's time of release. So if you'd seen it when it originally came out, you'd likely find it more frightening than you do now.

I agree that Coraline is plenty scary, though. I think it gets a lot of slack in the ratings department for being animated.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

"Part of Psycho's quotient of frightening had to do with it's time of release. So if you'd seen it when it originally came out, you'd likely find it more frightening than you do now."

You'd think so, wouldn't you? But I've seen Psycho show up over and over on modern lists of "scariest movies" compiled by people who weren't even born when it was first released. Go figure.

Can you think of a Hitchcock movie that was genuinely scary? The only one I can think of was "The Birds," which pretty much went for the least common denominator when it comes to fear (lots of angry creatures attacking you with sharp pointy objects). Mostly I think the scariest thing about Hitchcock movies was what they told you about the inside of the man's mind. Not a nice place, especially for women. Ick.