#marble hornets was one of my First horror loves and still scares me to this day and i loooove it

[doomednarrative]

@babygirldameron tagged me to list off 8 shows to get to know me, thanks Courtney ~

This ones harder to think of tbh cause I’m more of a gamer these days but! If I had to chose:

Hannibal

Supernatural (ONLY seasons 1-5 tho)

Avataro Sentai Donbrothers

Trollhunters

Mob Psycho 100

Marble Hornets (it counts it has seasons)

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure

Kamen Rider Ryuki

I’m gonna tag @silenthillmutual @adrianicsea @tibby and @onehandkilling for this one :3

[lemonbronze]

i gotta ask what 5 horror movies would u recommend? :0

THANKS FOR THIS QUESTION i had to get out my keyboard so i can respond fully lmao

Ok so I’m gonna recommend a few options from a variety of genres because I tend to like all horror. That said, I also like really weird bizarre artsy horror the best, so some of these recs may not be everyone’s taste (which is fine!)

The Conjuring 2

Yeah… the second one. But you should watch the first one first, keeping in mind that IMHO the second one was WAY better. There were some parts of this one that really got me, and it’s honestly really hard to scare me in a movie.

2. Sinister

If you were around the internet for the early days of Slenderman (I mean the REALLY early days, on SomethingAwful and in the first baby steps of Marble Hornets) then you’ll really love this one. And if you read much creepypasta you’ll love this one too. It plays out just like an early 2000s-2010s internet horror story, but it’s a movie. Not a lot of surprises, but very nice horror.

3. Friday the 13th Part 2

Another second one! If you’re looking for some good old-fashioned slasher camp, this is my favorite. Jason is my guy when it comes to campy cheesy slasher movies, and this is my favorite of his many installments. Not much to say, but it’s a fun watch.

4. As Above So Below

This one is weird and artsy. It has a stupid ending. I still like it! The cinematography is fun and you can tell the whole thing was made on a super tight budget but not in a campy way. It’s a good watch if you like to be scared by claustrophobic scenes.

5. Skinamarink

Ok. Hear me out. I know the online horror fandom is SUPER divided on this movie; it’s one of the most divisive that’s come out lately tbh. But I LOVED IT a LOT. I watched it several months ago and I still think about it often. I want to see it again sometime but my partner couldn’t stand it lmao. This is a found footage style movie that’s much more about the feeling of suspense and what COULD happen rather than what happens. And to me it was scary as absolute fuck. It’s also really low budget and extremely hard to describe but if you like super artsy-fartsy horror then it’s a good one.

I also adore ANY found footage so pretty much if it’s a found footage movie then i recommend it lmao

[princechorus]

So. I have some Thoughs that idk how to really organize..about Magnus Archives and Jonathan Sims. But let me start out by saying. This podcast has very quickly become something very dear to me and very important to me.

Ever since I was little I hated horror. Mostly bc what I saw when I watched horror movies was gore and shock value and jump scares. It scared me. More than just “oh shit that’s scary” but genuinely TERRIFIED ME. The first time I watched Psycho (the original one even not even the remake) I straight up REFUSED to shower. Because I was CONVINCED a killer would come and stab me. I was I think 8 or 9? Maybe 10. It wasn’t the first horrific images I’d been exposed to by any means, or the last, but it was one of the first i Can remember that gave me a genuine phobia.

I avoided horror most of my life despite my friends all loving it and wanting to go see the next scariest movies. They were all into creepypasta as a lot people were between 2010-2014/15 and so of course I read my fair share of stories and watched marble hornets(which i did like and i now realise why) and tried to keep up with them but it was awful. Horror movies,stories,video games, anything they could find was what they wanted to watch/consume and I found myself not able to speak up about not liking them for fear of getting mocked for being childish. (I’m only friends with one of these people now and I’ve since explained to her my stance on horror and shes fine with it)

When I heard about Magnus Archives I was hesitant. I knew it was classified as a Horror Podcast so I steered away from it. Until I actually decided to give it a shot after my partner listened to make sure it wasn’t too much for me (I knew I liked suspense thriller type things but hadn’t really gotten a clear image in my head of what I could and couldn’t handle. Still don’t really but we’ll get to that.) they said it was fairly tame and no worse than other things I’d watched in the past with no issue.

TMA very quickly became my new favorite. I listened so much I got WAY AHEAD of where my partner was (they were on MAG35 when I started from MAG01 and at furthest I was 12 episodes ahead) I found that even the most disturbing ones were no issue for me to listen to.

I had always been upset at my own inability to consume media classified as horror for fear of being triggered into an anxiety attack and wished there was more low level horror that wasn’t just geared towards children and teens. TMA answered that prayer and In The process has forced me to Face My Fear™ and confront why I’m so afraid of certain things and also why I have the reaction to horror that I do. It’s helped me clear up the scale of what I can and can’t handle and honestly I’ve begun to realise it’s not a sliding scale but, like many things in life, it’s a spectrum of certain aspects of horror that I can handle and others that trigger something raw and horrifying in the back of my mind.

In the end, it was hearing in one of the Q&A’s that Jonny used his own fears as inspiration that made me realise why I enjoyed this series so much. It’s been helping me Confront my fears in such a way that I can look at it from the outside and understand it better. And really I just want a chance to shake his hand and say Thank You. Because I really Really needed that and I don’t think I could have realised what I needed without this context.

TL;DR: Thank you, Jonny Sims. For being an amazing writer and creating a beautiful piece of art that has helped me understand my fear and will stay with me forever both in my nightmares and in my heart.

[emeraldembers]

Looloo’s Horror Rec List!

Tagging @eatingcroutons​, @monstermonstre​ as requested <3.

SO. I apologise for how long this list took, but as it turns out, I have watched a slightly silly number of horror movies, and with it being such a varied genre, I didn’t want to accidentally rec a bunch of things people would end up hating or spoil the heck out of them during the reccing process, so. But it’s finished now, and I intend to try and keep it up to date as time goes by and I encounter more horror flicks worth watching. I’m also going to stick a little italicised bit after any movies I remember having potentially squicky/triggery stuff in for people who are okay with horror but not That Kind Of Horror.

Behind a cut because this is Quite A Lot Of Movies My Dudes.

- - -

Movies I’m reccing because they actually scared me:

* Alien

Yo, it’s a classic for a reason, and if I’m doing a rec list of horror movies, I’m determined to address all the movies I’d rec, regardless of the likelihood of everyone having seen it already. Fantastic characters who behave believably, the cold cruelty of both monsters and capitalism, slow builds that pay off, it’s just - it’s so dang good, from start to finish, and all the spoofs and parodies and homages in the world will never fully diminish its success as a genuinely scary movie. CW: Soooooo much imagery suggesting sexual violence.

* The Autopsy of Jane Doe

Brian Cox is a frigging awesome actor, and he and Emile Hirsch absolutely and 100% sell you on the affectionate but strained relationship between father and son in this brilliant little flick that makes you root for the leads so hard. It’s claustrophobic and creepy and made by how the leads actually use common sense for the majority of the movie, and while I will admit the ending wasn’t my favourite, that by no means spoiled the film for me. CW: Animal death, references to human trafficking and sexual violence.

* Hereditary

Oh man. This film is absolutely brutal emotionally, one of the most intense (and imho, accurate) depictions of the pain of mourning I’ve ever seen on screen, and the horror happening around all this pain is just... torture. It’s almost unbearable to watch, but I can’t deny how incredibly well-acted it is, or how frightening it is. For quite a few people the ending doesn’t stick - people feel it over-explains itself - but I personally felt it worked. CW: graphic child death, graphic animal death.

* Jacob’s Ladder

This is such a weird and wonderful creation and I am so, so happy that I found it during the height of my Silent Hill fangirling days. It’s like watching a dream - sometimes quiet and comforting, sometimes loud and terrifying, and the movie just has this magnificent atmosphere of paranoia. It’s unlike any other horror movie I’ve seen in terms of it successfully pulling off the nightmare effect (controversial but true, I’m not a fan of Suspiria, though I appreciate several of the works it inspired). CW: Some imagery suggesting sexual violence.

* Kill List

Please, pretty please watch this without spoilers if you can. The less you know about it going in, the better. It’s a slow build, with the first half of the film playing out more or less like a kitchen sink drama with occasional bursts of explicit violence, but the payoff is worth it imho. CW: Mentions of paedophilia, violence against children.

* The Orphanage

This Spanish language flick is tragic, beautiful, and absolutely bloody terrifying on a first watch. It’s the only film that’s ever made me scream in fright, and is without a doubt the scariest movie I have watched to date: CW: Jaw trauma, child deaths.

* The Thing (1982)

God, I cannot describe how much I loved finally sitting down and watching this movie and realising that for all that I had seen the majority of the transformation and body horror sequences in it, it was still scary. Thanks to the sense of paranoia, and how many times you’re left waiting for something to happen, knowing something is about to happen, on a first watch it’s got some truly chilling moments and it deserves its status as a known classic.

- - -

Movies I’m reccing because they may not have scared me but they sure left a lingering something behind:

* Kairo (also known as Pulse)

Pretend there was never a remake because jfc the ball on that one got dropped harder than Vin Diesel’s voice during puberty. Kairo is utterly and completely bleak and depressing but the bleak and depressing nature of it is what makes the horror in it work. Watching the world in Kairo go quieter and emptier over time is distressing in the strangest of ways, and - fun fact - this film gave me one of the weirdest fears of all time, because now I have nightmares about windows and doors surrounded by red tape. As you do. CW: Suicide depicted explicitly and frequently.

* Lake Mungo

This flick and the Marble Hornets series on youtube are the only things I’ve seen using the found footage format that I felt really got its potential. Plenty of movies have had fun with it, and I’m grateful to The Blair Witch Project for popularising it, but a lot of the time it feels like long periods of nothing then suddenly All Of The Things. This one is a lot subtler about building an increasing sense of dread, and handling the subject matter in a way that feels very, very real for once. It’s fab.

* Let the Right One In

The English language remake, Let Me In, is apparently pretty good? But I haven’t seen it, so I’m going off the original here. And it’s a flaming beautiful film. It’s discomforting and its balance of achingly sweet and tender moments with brutally violent moments is perfect. There’s a bleakness to it that might put some people off, but it’s just gorgeous in my eyes, and I’m very, very fond. CW: Strongly implied paedophilia.

* The Mist

This is a perfect example of how you don’t necessarily have to have the best CGI if you have a great cast. I could never watch it again because it left me so shaken and upset at the end, but some of the imagery in it is just astonishingly haunting, like the best entries of SCP brought to life, and I have to commend it for being one of the classiest adaptations of Stephen King’s work to date. CW: Assisted suicides.

* Session 9

This is a bit of a weird one to put down on a rec list because I personally didn’t enjoy it, but I can’t say that it didn’t leave a lasting impression. There’s a sense of discomfort and wrongness that permeates the film, and it leaves a sort of... almost a slimy coating of creepiness all over you by the time it’s finished. CW: ~Creepy mental hospital~ setting, ableism ahoy.

* The Vvitch

I will admit that in retrospect, I do think this is a little overrated, but only a little, aaaaaand also I may as well admit that there is something about Kate Dickie’s acting that I hate. I have nothing against her as a person! I just don’t personally think she’s a good actress. That being said, everyone else in this movie, especially the children, did a brilliant job. It’s an uneasy watch from the start and only gets more uneasy as it goes on, and I love how straight it played its central concept. What elevates it for me in particular though is the ending, which I openly admit I did not see coming, and was delighted with. CW: Child deaths, strongly implied paedophilia.

- - -

Movies I’m reccing because they were just dang good and didn’t fit into the above categories:

* 28 Days Later

Not to be crude but I wish I could turn this film into body butter just so I could smear it all over me. Flawless cast, an adrenaline rush of a movie that I could watch a hundred times and never tire of, and the climax of the movie is straight up one of my favourite endings ever for its heart in throat intensity. CW: Suicides, threats of sexual violence.

* The Babadook

All Netflix categorisation jokes aside, I genuinely adored this movie. The leads are so well acted and I love their characterisation; it also has one of the best depictions of mental illness in childhood I’ve ever seen (second only to the little girl in Don't Be Afraid of the Dark 2010, whose portrayal of childhood depression resonated with me so strongly I couldn’t finish watching the movie). Also, for frigging once, the portrayal of mental illness is sympathetic, and people suffering from it get shown at their best, not just their worst.

* Coraline

To be honest, a lot of children’s movies are more successful at getting a reaction out of me than “grown-up” movies - All Dogs Go To Heaven’s hell sequence still unsettles me to this day - and Coraline is one of the rarities that plays out almost entirely as straight horror from start to finish. As per all things Laika it’s gorgeously animated, and the progression from eerie to nightmarish as the movie progresses is fantastic. CW: References to children’s deaths.

* Dog Soldiers, Ginger Snaps

It might seem an odd choice to pair these two up, but I couldn’t rec one without the other because to me they’re two sides of the same coin - violent werewolf movies with a wicked sense of humour, one focused on the relationships between men, the other on the relationships between women - and because of both the tone and the subject matter, I think Ginger Snaps makes a better pairing with Dog Soldiers than The Descent.

* Get Out

There’s very little I can say about this film that hasn’t been said already; it’s a film that uses humour like a knife, it’s a masterpiece in building discomfort and tension, and every single actor in it is top notch. It’s impossible not to root for the main character, and if you’re not cheering him on at the end, you may want to get your pulse checked.

* IT (2017)

Now this definitely terrified some of the people I saw this in the cinema with - one man peed himself, a woman fled the viewing, and I overheard people talking about smelling poop in the back of the cinema - but for me it wasn’t particularly scary. What it was, however, was moving, and funny, and had fantastic acting from all of the children involved. I was cheering the kids on constantly, and you could really believe their fear of Pennywise. I loved this so, so much. CW: Child deaths including on screen violence against children, depiction of bullying, heavily implied sexual abuse via parent/child incest.

* Pitch Black

It was a toss-up for a while whether putting this on here would be miscategorising it - is it more of a sci-fi action flick, or a sci-fi survival horror? - but based on the majority of the characters not being Riddick I’m going for survival horror. This is the perfect execution of a simple, brilliant concept, and it’s a delight. Plus, it has sympathetic Muslims in space, and I can’t ignore an excuse to cheer for that.

* [Rec]

This is another movie where I’ve heard good things about the English language adaptation but have only watched the original, and oh man, it’s fun. It’s not a film I consider particularly scary, but it has my hands down favourite protagonists of any found footage horror movie, and I love that the constant use of cameras makes sense in this one because it does start out as a documentary gone wrong. Also, the ending is a classic <3.

- - -

Movies I’m reccing but fully acknowledge their flaws:

* Candyman

Tony Todd is the man, dude, and it wouldn’t be right to make a horror movie rec list without having an absolute classic of his up on it. It’s wonderfully dreamy, packed full of that lovely late 80s/early 90s washed out aesthetic, and has one of the handsomest movie villains out there. 

* The Crazies (2010)

Virus outbreak movies are a dime a dozen, but for all that there’s little new here, it’s still one of the better ones, helped by a good cast playing the core group of survivors. Worth seeing if you’re a Timothy Olyphant and/or Radha Mitchell fan, and I love them both to bits, so.

* Event Horizon

A cult favourite with a ridiculously awesome cast (Sean Pertwee? Jason Isaacs? Laurence Fishburne? And more?), this does go over the top at points, but it is such a fun ride. You can see where games like Dead Space drew their inspiration from; it’s visually stunning, and the main characters are frequently (alas, not always) sensible. Also, regarding who dies/doesn’t die, if you haven’t seen it before, I think you’ll be quite pleasantly surprised? I know I was. CW: Explicit depiction of suicide, brief but explicit glimpses of sexual violence, references to child death.

* The Girl With All the Gifts

If you haven’t played or watched someone play The Last Of Us, this is well worth a watch. With the rise of zombies in recent media, no pun intended, it was inevitable there would also be a rise in how many showed the results of a zombie cure, or of intelligence in zombies. Cordyceps based zombies are rarer in media, and The Last Of Us used them brilliantly, but this is a good, solid film, bleak in some ways but hopeful in others, and I loved it. Also, Gemma Arterton is in it (as is Glenn Close, who is fab as always) and there are very few things I would not do for that woman.

* Grave Encounters

This isn’t a particularly good movie, but it is so much fun to play “spot the gif” with; there’s hardly a scene in it, once the ghostly shenanigans kick off, that hasn’t been put into gif format for use alongside creepypastas and the like all over the net. Girl turning around and face melting into blackness? Masses of hands pushing out through a wall suddenly? It’s just fun to spot them. Not to mention that, once in a while, it is fun to see a movie where the main characters are unironically Those White People In A Horror Movie and as such deserve pretty much everything that happens to them. CW: Ableism, ~scary mental hospital~ trope.

* Let Us Prey

This is a flawed film that could have been a great movie if it had been handled with a subtler touch. Some flashback sequences in it are more gratuitous than they need to be, and the end villain is just bizarrely over the top, but overall I love that it’s almost like a British-Irish take on Silent Hill? Liam Cunningham and Pollyanna McIntosh in particular, as the leads, are wonderful in it and bring a touch of class to something that could otherwise have just been a straight up hot mess. CW: References to child death, references to and flashbacks to sexual violence. Also, going to throw homophobia on here, because god knows I’m tired of the Evil Predatory Gay trope.

* Mandy

Placing this one anywhere on the list feels strange because it’s... this odd mixture of extremely beautiful and dreamlike, but also cult-classic over the top to the point of clearly being deliberately funny about it in places. I don’t quite know how it leaves me feeling on the whole, but I do know I absolutely love it. CW: Description of animal death, drugging, sexual harrassment.

* Silent Hill

This isn’t by any means a good movie, but I’d be lying through my teeth if I claimed it wasn’t one of my favourites regardless. It’s just ridiculously pretty, the music (courtesy of Akira Yamaoka being a genius) is amazing, and I will ship Cybil and Rose to the end of my days. Also, Pyramid Head, guys. Pyramid Head.

* Switchblade Romance (also known as Haute Tension or High Tension)

This French language flick is one of my favourite guilty pleasures. Most extreme horror bores me or leaves me cold, but there was something about this one I enjoyed despite it having plot holes you could drive a truck through; the lead actresses are fantastic, and it has some of my favourite uses of music in a modern horror movie. Please be warned though, this one has some very violent sequences, even in the cut version. CW: Child death, home invasion, continuous threat of sexual violence.

* We Are What We Are

This was a very unevenly paced movie, slow in parts and then jarringly fast in others, and some of the exposition felt clunky, but it’s overall a beautifully made movie and I was so drawn to the love between the siblings in this. I really felt like they were a real family, and was rooting for them so hard. CW: Cannibalism, threat of violence against children.

* The Wicker Man (1973, unless you want to watch the remake for so-bad-it’s-funny shenanigans. I won’t judge)

This is up there with Alien in terms of “even if you haven’t watched this movie, you have watched this movie” courtesy of pop culture referencing it every which way but loose, but it’s so worth a watch. I can’t recommend a particular cut because I’ve seen so many I wouldn’t know where to begin! It’s also kind of fun to enjoy it as a musical in its own way - there are so many songs in it that it’s hard not to sing along after a few viewings - and for all that the ending isn’t a shocker these days, it’s still so much fun to watch.

- - -

And a horror-comedy rec list to wrap things up:

* He Never Died

This is a great example of how you can do great things with a threadbare budget if you have a good idea and the confidence to commit to a concept. It is so, so funny, its humour sometimes dry, sometimes black as tar, and I just adored the main character’s absolute exhaustion with the world. I’m trying to sell this one without spoilers, because it’s another one where going in with as little info as possible is a good idea <3.

* Shaun of the Dead

It’s pretty much just the best ode to zombie movies and their inherent silliness that exists, and Simon Pegg is an adorable mess in it.

* Trick R Treat

My favourite horror anthology film by miles. It’s just fun. Aaaaaand the werewolf girls are hot af, soooooo. This also lets Brian Cox join Laurie Holden and Radha Mitchell on the list of people who managed to show up more than once in recced movies!

* Tucker & Dale vs. Evil

Aside from a few tonal missteps - references to sexual violence in the middle of a horror comedy, even if those references weren’t there as a joke, aren’t ever going to sit well - this film is hilarious, and frequently adorable too. Not to mention, it’s always nice to see a big guy get to be a hero.

- - -

Movies I need to update this list with:

The Lighthouse. CW: Explicit animal death, eye trauma.

Us. CW: Description of animal death, child deaths and self-mutilation.

The Endless. CW: Graphic suicide.

Midsommar. CW: Graphic suicide.