Since I mentioned earlier that I will possibly watch a scary movie later tonight to keep me awake during the wee hours of the night, I thought it would be a good time for…

Seven movies that scared the absolute CRAP out of me:

1. The Ring. I swear to God, no other movie has ever terrified me quite as much as that one. I don’t even know why, it just did. The girl, the well, all of it. I was a ball of nerves the whole time – I still feel all the little hairs on the back of my neck stick straight up when I think about the “impossible shot”, when the woman being filmed is looking straight into the mirror and yet you can’t see the camera. If you’ve seen the movie you know which part I mean. For some unknown reason that just scare the bejeezus out of me. I always swore I would NEVER watch this again, it was that bad. (I slept with the light on, honestly. Also, I have a TV at the foot of the bed, and if you’ve seen the movie you know why that unsettled me like crazy.)
2. The Ring 2. Probably predictable, right? The thing is, the sequel was nowhere near as scary as the original but I was so traumatized by the first one that I was on edge the entire second movie waiting for something to scare the living hell out of me. Gah.
3. The Grudge. What I loved about this movie is that it was really scary while I was watching it (the MOTHER, OMG!) but once it was over I had no residual fears and fell asleep about 30 seconds after getting into bed. Whew. (I think it’s clear from the first three on this list that Japanese horror movies make the best stories, even in North American remakes!)
4. The Evil Dead. If I watch it now, I laugh a lot. In all honesty it was a terribly low-budget movie with cheesy effects and questionable acting. When I first saw it though, I was only about 14 years old so it absolutely terrified me. I did always like the way they’d show a bare bulb hanging from a ceiling only to have it spattered in blood seconds later from some carnage off-screen. Nice.
5. A Nightmare on Elm Street. This is another movie that can’t really scare me now, but it was the first horror movie that I ever saw and holy hell, I was a wreck after it was over. The fact that I knew there were sequels and there was a cliffhanger ending of sorts made it so that there was no relief when the movie wrapped up – I knew Freddy Kreuger wasn’t done yet, and I still had to go to sleep at some point that night. Yikes! One, two, Freddy’s coming for you…
6. The Strangers. This was just unbelievably frightening mostly because it wasn’t about monsters or the undead or anything like that – it was just real people terrorizing a couple. I am so glad I didn’t watch it alone!
7. Haunting in Connecticut

. Based on a true story, totally creepy, and a few really good “jump out of your seat” moments. It was one of the scariest demonic possession movies I’ve ever watched, far moreso than The Exorcist was for me.

So yeah, one of those movies would probably serve me well if I feel overly tired in the middle of the night. Then again, I DO want to sleep eventually!