“The Snowtown Murders” (2011)
The main thing preventing Justin Kurzel‘s brutal and macabre early calling card being classified as an undeniable straight-up horror is also the thing that makes it most horrific: “The Snowtown Murders” (or just “Snowtown,” as it was originally known) was based on a real story. It follows notorious Australian serial killer John Bunting (Daniel Henshall) and the highly dysfunctional family he invaded and essentially bewitched, especially the troubled son of the family (Lucas Pittaway) who’d been the victim of incestuous molestation for years, into becoming his accomplices on a murder spree. As unremittingly, oppressively grim as it is (it caused a lot of walkouts during its Cannes premiere) it feels excruciatingly real — testament to the grisly authenticity of Kurzel’s granular embrace of these desperate, squalid lives. And that anyone at all managed to sit through its torture scenes, which seem to be the only times the deliberately disjointed, fragmentary storytelling settles into a rhythm, is probably largely due to the electrifying performance from a mercurially charismatic Henshall as Bunting — twinkling with charm one moment, butchering a stranger with incredibly savagery for some perceived transgression the next.
“Les Diaboliques” (1955)
An unfeasibly creepy masterpiece from genre master Henri-Georges Clouzot is part Gothic horror, but also part psychological thriller, murder mystery, insanity film, and about 10 other genres all individually perfected here. In a draughty mansion that is used as a school, sadistic headmaster Michel (Paul Meurisse), makes life miserable for his fragile wife Christina (Véra Clouzot) and his brassy mistress Nicole (Simone Signoret) — in an oh-so-French twist, Christina knows about Nicole and Michel’s affair, and in fact the women are close friends. The labyrinthine plot is a pleasure: The women decide to rid themselves (and this world) of the cruel and controlling Michel, but soon discover the sheer impracticality of killing someone — the mess, the panic, the heaviness of man’s dead body. And then it takes a turn for the really spooky as Michel seems to reappear, most terrifyingly in a the scareist damn photograph this side of the framed picture of the ballroom at the The Overlook Hotel. The way it all shakes out (very satisfyingly and very darkly, by the way) delegitimizes its claim to be horror per se, but that doesn’t mean it’s not one of the scariest films you’ll ever see. As opposed to the Sharon Stone remake, which is just one of the worst.
“Jaws” (1975)
Ah, the old “is ‘Jaws’ a horror?” debate. When drawing up our 1970s list, “Jaws” was included, then disallowed, then included and disallowed again several times over. But while many people seem to now classify it as a horror purely based on how scary it is, and how effective it was in making every subsequent generation of sea swimmers irrationally terrified of the statistically improbable possibility of a shark attack, really that’s all it proves: “Jaws” is terrifying. It’s terrifying based on (exaggerated) real-world rules, on more or less plausible occurrences, and of course on simply the finest, tautest thriller filmmaking possibly ever. Famously based on the Peter Benchley bestseller (on which it improves immeasurably), famously launching the entire concept of the summer blockbuster and establishing the career of Steven Spielberg, and famously starring Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, an indelible Robert Shaw, and a malfunctioning animatronic shark, it’s pretty much a perfect film: a fluid, endlessly rewatchable masterpiece whose power to shock and thrill has not dimmed even four decades later after half its script has passed into the pop=culture lexicon. In fact, it’s the perfect one-film rebuff to the point made in the article quoted above: If you refuse to watch films that will scare you, it means you don’t get to watch “Jaws.” And can you imagine what sort of impoverished life that would be?
These are just some of the not-quite-horrors that do just as good a job of horrifying us as actual horrors, and we know you’ll have your own. Do tell.