Spooktacular Horror Films | The HyperJump Podcast
This post is a lightly-edited transcript of the HyperJumpScare Podcast: Spooktacular Horror Films, hosted by our Creative Director, Cameron M. Johnson, which you can watch at this link here. As such, it may read more like a stream of conversation than a formal article. Subscribe to us on YouTube for more similar content!
Horror is one of my favorite genres, and it is probably the kind of film I watch more than any other. The best horror films do more than frighten us: they can be beautiful, emotionally powerful works of cinema that stay with us long after the credits roll. For Halloween, I wanted to share seven horror films that have made a particularly strong impression on me, each for a different reason.
This is an unranked list rather than a definitive ranking of the genre. There are plenty of classics worth recommending, from the many versions of Nosferatu to Halloween, Friday the 13th, Psycho, and The Shining. Instead of trying to cover the whole history of horror, I am focusing on films that I have a personal connection to, and that represent different sides of what horror can do.
It is spooky season, and today I'm going to be talking about one of my favorite genres of movies. These are the movies that give us chills, send shivers down our spines, get us jumping up out of our seats. And for many filmmakers, it is the genre that gets their foot, or at least the skeletal remains of their foot, in the door of the scariest thing in the world: the film industry.
Of course, I'm talking about horror films. And today, I'm going to be telling you about seven of the spookiest, scariest horror films that I have ever seen. These are films that have had a huge impact on me.
Obviously, because I find them scary, but also because I think they are fantastic pieces of art/cinema as well. These are absolute spooky cinema of the highest order. I've picked seven films that run the gamut, as we can say, or run the pumpkin perhaps of the different kinds of horror film that are out there, and there are many many horror films that I enjoy.
For this podcast, I'm going to go with seven films that I have personal connections to. And so these are seven horror films that I find to be the most spooktacular. And in the spirit of Halloween, this is going to be the scariest thing of all: an unranked list.
The first film that we are going to delve into today is an all-out classic. It is, in my opinion, one of the greatest horror films of all time. It's a film that I've seen a couple times, including once in this very small indie cinema in Ireland with my good friend Sam. Shout out to Sam Burke, a fantastic Irish filmmaker.
The Exorcist
Now, this is probably going to be the most famous film that appears on this list. It's an absolute classic. When it was released back in 1973, it was hugely popular and controversial at the same time. On the one hand, there were many countries and organizations that wanted to ban the film for its subversive content, but also it was hugely financially successful, probably because of the big campaign trying to shut the film down, and it ended up being nominated even for multiple Oscars including Best Picture.
The Exorcist is directed by William Friedkin and it famously stars Ellen Burstyn and Linda Blair in two phenomenal, also Oscar-nominated performances, as a mother and daughter duo. As many of us will know, the film is basically about the daughter, played by Blair, who becomes possessed by a demonic spirit, and priests, played by Jason Miller and Max von Sydow (Skyrim reference) are enlisted to exorcise the spirit out of this little girl who has been possessed.
The film largely follows the perspective of the mother trying to deal with her daughter being taken over by this demonic spirit. And it's perhaps most notable for the very very extreme, intense, and oftentimes hilarious performance by Linda Blair as the little girl who goes through many different stages of being possessed. She is violent. She is angry. She swears. She convulses all over the room. And of course, there's incredible special effects.
If you haven't seen it, I don't want to spoil it too much, but it's one of those films that even though now it's 53 years old, if you can believe, it still stands up as incredibly powerful, entertaining cinema. And that's partly due to the incredible cinematography and production design of the film.
Compared to most other horror films that get made, this film has a much bigger, more incredible scope. In fact, the opening sequence of the film doesn't even take place in the suburban setting that most of the film is associated with. We actually open the film in an archaeological dig that is happening in Northern Iraq. And that kind of sets the tone for the lore, the mysterious spirit that will eventually possess this little girl.
Of course, the film has some interesting themes about faith, family, overcoming darkness, which are huge themes in horror cinema that we see over and over again, but this is one of the films that captures it most beautifully. There are incredible almost action set pieces, as well as some truly creepy, scary moments, that are created largely because of the incredible emotional performances by its lead actors.
If we're talking about some of the best acting in a horror movie, this has definitely got to be up there as one of the best, if not the best examples in the history of Hollywood. It's a film that is oozing with atmosphere. It is the blueprint for a suburban horror film, and it's a film that never gets old, even if it might get under your skin. This is The Exorcist. Definitely check it out if you're a contemporary horror movie fan and want to dive into the history of horror films. In my opinion, of all of the classic horror films from before I was born, this is probably the best one. Check it out.
Under the Skin
Speaking of Under the Skin, this list would not be complete if it wasn't for me mentioning the great Jonathan Glazer. He has appeared on two of my other lists so far, my commercials list and my music videos list, and now he appears on the horror list as well with his incredible, masterful 2014 film Under the Skin.
This is a gorgeous but also terrifying slow burner horror film. It stars Scarlett Johansson as an extraterrestrial lady who, let's say, lures certain men into situation and ensures that they are not allowed out of those situations again. This is an incredibly creepy, eerie tone piece that has lots of seemingly dream sequence kind of scenes in it that make you feel like you're in another world.
It's a film about being uncomfortable in our own skin, as the title may suggest. It's a film about the unknown, about the fear of what's out there. But it's also a film that's in some very dark ways about intimacy and love and connecting with people, just in a twisted, alien way. It really makes you consider a lot of the experiences that we have in our lives.
What makes Under the Skin so special, along with Scarlett Johansson's incredible alien performance and Jonathan Glazer's signature moody direction, is this incredible one-of-a-kind, possibly GOAT-level musical score orchestrated by Mica Levi. This is one of the greatest science fiction symphonies that you'll ever hear. It creates these eerie tones and there's some creepy violins that in here and out and synths come into play and it creates this odd mysterious atmosphere of you never know what's going to be shuddering into your frame again.
It's all framed in the backdrop of these gorgeous, but also a little bit dark and gray, Scottish seaside landscapes that create a sense of the world and the physical that contrasts greatly with the extraterrestrial mood of the film. If you're looking for a film that is masterful in terms of ambiencece and is in a way horror poetry, there is nothing quite like Under the Skin. It's one of the most unique cinematic experiences you'll ever have.
The story takes some weird turns, and it's not exactly a film that ties everything up quite nicely, if that's what you're looking for. But if you want something that takes you on a little bit of a uncomfortable journey and allows you to kind of catharsize certain emotions through experiencing the discomfort of others, which I think is one of the most powerful things that horror films can do, Under the Skin is genuinely beautiful for that.
This is a film about loneliness, about intimacy, about the desire for connection, and it takes control of that in some very literal but also figurative ways that you can only really understand if you've properly seen the film. But it's a film about how sometimes we find ourselves in uncomfortable situations purely because we are looking to be comfortable. And it's a fascinating and unforgettable experience for that.
Arrival of the Train
In 1896, perhaps the creepiest, spookiest, scariest, most terrifying film of all time was released as the train arrived at the station. Did not expect that. That is terrifying.
Why Do We Like Horror Films?
I once read that the reason why we like horror films as viewers, or at least some of us do, is that horror films allow us to be taken to the absolute edge of fear and panic and terror, but then find ourselves surviving those things. We experience situations that, in real life, we obviously wouldn't survive. Whether that's, things like kidnapping, torture, possession, being chased, or, murder and all these dark things, we find ourselves being close and feeling the emotions of the characters that are experiencing those things. But then once we realize we're just watching a film, there's that sense of relief like, ah, it's not real.
There is science behind why humans kind of have that emotional reaction to horror, which I find fascinating, because I've always been a fan of horror films. And even though I do get scared by certain things (for me, body horror and medical horror is probably the most unsettling and disturbing, sometimes I can't physically watch films if they're medical in nature because I will pass out. But that applies that applies to like medical shows as well, not just horror films that have medical themes), but other kinds of horror films that are about, like whether it's a slasher film or a monster movie or or so on, they do scare me, but they scare me in a way that is almost satisfying once the film is over, or at least once the scary scene is over, because you get that adrenaline rush of like, whoa, that was scary, but I'm still here.
Then I think there's also that kind of thing that goes through our minds of okay, like what would I do in this scary situation? How would I solve that? And of course with like cheesy slasher movies where it's a bunch of different people that are getting picked off one by one by a fella with a knife or whatever it is, we're always watching the film and being like, "Oh, that person's an idiot. They should do this and they would survive or if only they did this, they wouldn't have been in this situation." And I think that kind of, almost, arrogance on our part is another one of the reasons that horror films can be so exciting.
But there are other kinds of horror films that are powerful and interesting because they allow us to explore emotions that maybe we haven't had chance to explore in our day-to-day lives. either because they're so subconscious we don't even realize they are affecting us, or because they seem so unique to us that we are almost scared, vulnerable to share these fears, and next is a film that I think has that power and has had that power for a lot of people is my favorite horror film of the 2020s so far - and those are big words, because this has been an incredible decade for horror so far with Nosferatu, with Midsommar, with Weapons, with Obsession, with Backrooms. We've had loads of great horror films, and the new Resident Evil film recently was fantastic as well.
I Saw the TV Glow
But my favorite horror film of the decade so far is the incredible, irreplaceable, one-of-a-kind I Saw the TV Glow. This is a 2024 psychological horror film directed by the great Jane Schoenbrun. This film is about two teenagers who interact with a TV show that they are obsessed with, and as you can imagine, their obsession with this TV show starts to become so powerful that they blend fiction with reality, and it's not clear what is real anymore.
We start to see visions of this creepy moonlike figure, Mr. Melancholy. This is a gorgeous, post-vaporwave analog horror film about the way that nostalgia for the media that we connected to as children shapes how we perceive ourselves as we grow older. It's a film about fantasies and how we try and find our true selves in fictional worlds when it becomes hard to be our real selves in the real world. And of course, it's a film about growing up, about connecting with others, or at least doing your best to do so, as well as the relationship that we have with media.
One of the most interesting themes that the film explores for me is the way that we create such personalized memories of the shows and movies that we fall in love with as kids, that kind of warp and distort those shows into being something way more than perhaps they actually were. There's an incredible scene in the film where one of the main characters played by Justice Smith watches his favorite show from childhood again, and it's nowhere near as crazy as he remembers it. And it's this incredible revelatory moment in the film.
One of the great things about I Saw the TV Glow is how it develops as this kind of Lynchian nightmare of what is and isn't real. Constantly surrounding the characters with these cozy, but also very high intensity, neon lights that create this kind of over-the-top 80s/90s neon vibe, combining that with the clips from the actual fake TV show which is called The Pink Opaque. It's a very beautiful, kind of somewhat Buffy the Vampire Slayer-esque show.
It's also got this incredible soundtrack that has a lot of the best indie artists of the day. It's composed primarily by Alex G, but it also has Phoebe Bridges for instance. And the most iconic track from the film is by Yeule, who I was lucky enough to see in Dublin. I went to see them in concert, and they were one of the coolest acts that I've ever seen live. Just so beautiful in the vocals and the lyrics as well, but with this really haunting, glitchy sense of 21st century media overload that is also very powerful from this particular film.
It's a film that has an incredible ending, but also has many twists throughout. It's a film that, like all of the films I'm going to talk about, has impeccable sense of atmosphere and really unique characters. It's a film that combines as as I suppose we said with Under the Skin, this sense of intimacy and comfort with this sense of the unknown.
But what's special about I Saw the TV Glow, what makes it my favorite film, not just horror film, but film in general of the 2020s so far, is this gorgeous exploration that it has of the way that we try to find ourselves in different worlds and fantasies and dreams, and how the self that we accumulate and that we create is a combination of our real lived experience and our relationships, but also the media that we consume and the worlds that we grow up in and that we sometimes go to for salvation perhaps or for comfort when the real world is not perhaps being so pleasant to us or so welcoming.
It's a great, very 21st century exploration of that. in terms of the horror, it's more on the creepy side as opposed to being jump-scary. That is kind of the horror that I lean towards. I prefer atmospheric horror that builds and builds throughout the film, and gives you this general sense of discomfort.
The production value is absolutely insane. There's some really creative practical effects and impeccable lighting in this film. also brilliant cinematography. I mean pretty much everything about it is amazing. But it's about that exploration of personal identity and how we find that through our connection with others and through fictional worlds that makes this a standout film for this man here.
Nope
Jordan Peele film. Now I could also talk about Us and Get Out. Those are also excellent horror films, but I am partial to Nope, largely because I have this hat from back when I used to work at a cinema. I took this hat when they had merch for the film come out, because I was a huge fan of the film.
Nope is a incredible science fiction horror film directed by Jordan Peele, with an incredible cast that includes Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, and Steven Yeun. Nope is about basically this brother and sister duo who own a ranch. Basically the community is being ravaged by this mysterious creature that is like sucking up the horses into the sky and like wrecking houses and killing people and so on.
I don't want to go much further than that because any information I give you about the monster will spoil the film. One of the things that I love the most about Nope is the incredibly unique and clever monster design. Why the monster does what it does and how it does it is a super unique idea that I love, and you need to watch the film just to kind of understand that. But it's one of the things that most excites me about it.
The film is basically about this brother and sister duo, along with a cinematographer friend of theirs who are trying to capture this monster on video, and obviously try and figure out how to defeat it within their ranch to save the town or to save at least their ranch. It's almost like the very Spielbergesque the way that it has a sense of adventure to it. The cinematography is very sweeping, following the action, and there's a great sense of humor to the film.
What I also love about the film is that it has multiple different storylines with different characters. There is this this kind of entertainer played by Steven Young, who has a kind of rodeo show, and he claims to have control over this monster. Of course, he doesn't, but there's this incredible sequence that happens halfway through the film where, again, I don't want to spoil anything because this scene shocked me when I saw it in the cinema, but basically we have a flashback to something really important that happened in the past that actually has nothing to do with the plot of the film, literally, but has a great thematic and metaphorical connection to the overall events of the film.
I love when a film does that, when they have a a scene that is kind of like a microcosm of the themes of the movie. And even though it might not connect to the main plot, that particular scene tells us everything we need to know about what the film is saying. And this particular scene that I'm talking about, which is a horrific, very violent scene that I really don't want to spoil, but it has that for the film.
So again, a film that I can't really say too much about because it's a real spoiler, but if you want a a science fiction horror film that is entertaining, that is daylight horror, which is underrated, I like horror films that are set outdoors in the daytime. We need more of those, and it has incredible performances, robbed of some acting Oscar nominations, especially for Keke Palmer, in my opinion.
Great cinematography, and for me possibly Jordan Peele's best, although I certainly also love Us and Get Out and could easily talk about those films being incredible as well.
It Follows
I actually haven't seen It Follows since it was first released back in I think 2015, but I saw it at a small cinema in Strasborg, France, and it was a film that like I could never forget. Basically It Follows follows a mysterious kind of spirit that is basically an STD. Whenever a character who is possessed by this spirit sleeps with someone, the spirit passes on to the next person basically. And this is revealed very early on in the film.
So, like many horror films, this could be seen as a tongue-in-cheek kind of parable about "staying safe", as it were. But really what makes this film so effective is specifically the incredible cinematography. There are specific shots that even though I haven't seen this film in over 10 years, these shots are ingrained in my brain. There's one particularly iconic shot that happens near the middle of the film.
Enter spoiler zone here. In this shot, there is a possessed person that is walking towards one of the people who's being followed by this spirit. And at the beginning of the shot, she is really really far away from the camera. And then we do a complete 360 rotation and we show the the location. I think it's a school that the character is in. It swings back and then the lady is a little bit closer and then 360 again, then closer and closer and closer and it's a very slow ominous shot and what's coming, as the camera turns around. This this lady is creeping closer and closer to the front of frame. Absolutely terrifying behavior from the people who composed this shot, but it's a shot that I have never been able to forget.
This is a low-budget horror film by David Robert Mitchell, who would go on to direct also Under the Silver Lake and the recent dinosaur film which was called End of Oak Street. But this still is my favorite film by him. It's a really ominous film. Again, I've spoken a lot in this video about how I love horror films that take their time to really get under our skin. It Follows does that specifically with slow, steady camera movements. They really really draw you in to the anxiety that these characters are feeling as they are being followed by this dark spirit. So absolute shout out to It Follows.
The Blair Witch Project
I think I will talk about the marketing campaign separately in a future video, because I think it's one of the coolest marketing campaigns in film history, but this is the great 1999 horror film, The Blair Witch Project.
This is the film that arguably started the found footage trend, which is a trend that I'm a huge enjoyer of. I love it in Marble Hornets, The Backrooms films, Cloverfield, Paranormal Activity, even I suppose you could say films like Unfriended follow this. These are all films that I am an enjoyer of in the horror space. But The Blair Witch Project was the film that started it all.
And in terms of the aura and the creepy story that it tells, it's still for me the GOAT. This is the peak creepypasta movie in a way, and it was made by a group of people who had very little money and resources, and wanted to make a scary movie on a low budget, and they did so incredibly well.
It's about a group of friends who go into the woods to make a documentary about the mysterious Blair Witch, and of course in some various locations in the woods, end up experiencing some scary things that make them feel like maybe the Blair Witch does exist after all.
If you grew up in the same generation as me and you played Slenderman religiously - shout out to my previous Slenderman video from high school - then you will be familiar with the kind of vibes that this has. They're going to numerous locations in the woods and they're finding these bizarre clues that maybe this Blair Witch exists. And it's a brilliant example of film making that's done on an extremely low budget, but that is completely believable and gets under your skin.
Many films have tried to do what The Blair Witch Project did since then, but haven't done it quite as successfully. Other films have of course taken the found footage vibe and done great things with it. But this is still kind of the genesis of the found footage movement and I will always have huge respect for that, because this is a particular kind of film making that I have always enjoyed.
There's something beautiful about the rawness, the analog-icity, let's say, of a film that is on an old camcorder. I myself to this day still love using old school cameras, because I think that the grain and the tape effect and even the little battery symbol that you see in the top right corner has this weird nostalgic home video kind of feel that, when you combine that with horror, gives it this gorgeous sense of feeling alive that is creepy and exciting at the same time.
I think there's a reason why found footage horror is so successful, because it feels relatable. It feels close to us. It feels attainable in a way. And as cameras and what we record films on becomes more complex for the average person, it becomes more high-end, I suppose. And as phones become more common as the tool with which we film, we'll probably have to find new ways of creating found footage that fits for our generation because even something like Unfriended is probably a little bit outdated now in terms of the technology.
That's why I think when people make found footage films these days, they're normally set in the past. because it wouldn't make sense for someone to be filming on a camcorder. But I almost wish that it was still acceptable to do that, because these found footage exploration stories are some of the coolest horror films that get made, and it allows us to explore urban legends and these kind of stories that we we tell each other to keep ourselves entertained, and to bring excitement to perhaps more bland and boring suburban areas.
I think there's a reason as well why most of these stories happen in suburbia ,because you want to create an urban legend to give your town perhaps a character that maybe it doesn't have with the era of non-places that we live in. But anyway, that's a a story for a different video. No less horrific though.
But anyway, analog horror based. The Blair Witch Project? Absolute classic. I rambled a bit, but the gist is I love the rawness, the authenticity, and the sense of this-could-be-real that The Blair Witch Project gives. And of course, we know it's fake now, but there is something that was so powerful when it first came out and was able to convince a lot of people for a bit that it might have been real, that I think speaks to the intent and the vision of the filmmakers who made The Blair Witch Project. So, absolute classic horror film. I think this deserves GOAT-level status along with the likes of The Exorcist, Halloween, The Shining, etc, and I couldn't recommend it more, but even so, it's not quite my absolute favorite horror film of all time. That comes next.
The Descent
And that one, as we delve into the darkness deep within, is the unforgettable The Descent. This is a film that I've watched a few times. I've also read the screenplay of the film; it's a film that I have studied it quite a lot, because I feel like it's the perfect horror film. It is perhaps a little bit more formulaic in the sense of, it follows a more reliable act structure, three-act structure, compared to some of the other films I've talked about like Under the Skin and I Saw the TV Glow, which are a little bit more free form and arthouse.
The Descent is a little bit more standard when it comes to the story. Basically, it's about a group of friends who go on a trip spelunking, cave exploring underground, as a way of bonding with each other and getting over past trauma that they have by doing something exciting together. But of course, as you can imagine, when they are underground in these caves, things go wrong.
I don't want to spoil exactly what happens, but if you've ever played Skyrim and gone into one of the underground Dwemer locations, you've probably encountered similar heebie-jebies that these ladies encounter in The Descent. But it's an absolutely terrifying, claustrophobic film about basically being stuck somewhere and knowing that there is probably no way out.
Yet, there is still that tiny little bit of hope that if you keep moving, if you keep going in another direction, maybe eventually you will escape. Probably not. The odds are not in your favor, but there's a chance. There's hope. And a few iconic shots in the film that represent that sense of hope, literally, in this case, kind of being like a light at the end of the tunnel, because most of the film is very dark, underground, claustrophobic.
You don't see much of what's going on around the ladies because they're literally in caves.Tthat sense of hope is what always made The Descent stick for me as a truly brilliant horror film. It's a film that is physical, it's raw, it's intense. You feel like you're there with these women as they get stuck in this underground cave.
You're like, where are they going to go? What's their next move? As they're climbing, crawling, running, whatever they're doing, underground, you're feeling the physicality of every moment, as not only do they become far possibly farther from safety, and farther from each other, but also they become tired and hungry and thirsty, and increasing levels of trapped underground, and of course there is a threat.
I won't go into detail about what that threat is, but even just as a spelunking gone wrong story, it is incredibly powerful, and as I've said with some of the other films, a lot of great horror kind of juxtaposes that sense of intimacy and, that sense of being here, being physical, being present, being me, and I think dangerous situations brings that out more than anything else. The urgency, the presence of a person, it juxtaposes that with this sense of the unknown and mystery and the world outside of us and there's a really unsettling sense of that kind of disassociation that this that this film explores as well.
It's definitely not a film for someone who is really claustrophobic. This is one of those things where I actually really enjoy films about characters who are in claustrophobic situations or who are trapped in a certain location, for instance, the Fall movies. I'm a sucker for those as well, but if you can handle that kind of thing, I thoroughly recommend The Descent.
It's just a tight, not-a-second-wasted horror/thriller film. Great script, incredibly intense, gorgeous intimate cave cinematography, as it were, and a few moments of truly beautiful symbolism. And for that sense of intensity and that I feel watching the film, because of how urgent and in-the-moment it always feels, it is my favorite horror film of all time. It is the one that gets the most under my skin.
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