It’s the end of the year – time to take stock of your achievements, and count how many nights of fruitful sleep you’ve had. Let’s take a look a t the movies which have given us sleepless nights or endless nightmares in 2014.
“Afterimages” struck such fear in our hearts simply because the settings were all too close to us – Singapore. The best (or worst, depending on how you look at it) scares are those that take place in familiar, intimate settings, because it could very well happen to us. By virtue of its Singaporean locales, “Afterimages” has us wondering about the fate of all the suicides we read about in the newspapers, and the number of restless spirits lurking in swimming pools.
Most horrifying scene: When Yasmin (Adeline Pang) decides that she has to remove the golden needles of eternal youth embedded in her face, and proceeds to use a knife to slice open her cheek and extract the needles. After her horrible disfigurement, she discovers she didn’t have to do that.
While there were no supernatural elements in “The Purge: Anarchy,” the shocks and violence were quick and plentiful. The sheer suddenness of the attacks, combined by the gritty extremes of the injuries sustained left us all squirming in our seats as the heroes progressed to their goal. Post-cinema musings had us wondering what the world would be like if murders were legal for one day a year – and the carnage that would ensure.
Most horrifying scene: When our heroes seek refuge at Tanya’s apartment, home to a family waiting out the Purge, and Tanya’s passive aggressive sister goes berserk and guns down her family members in front of our heroes.
3)The Babadook
Was that a knock, and did you inadvertently let the Babadook in? This film had us jumping at the sound of anything resembling a “Ba” sound and eyeing children’s books with suspicion. Even now, we still wonder – was the Babadook an actual monster haunting them, or was it all an imaginary construct from the psychologically damaged widow in the story?
Most horrifying scene: When the widow (Amelia) goes to sleep, not having realised that she let the Babadook in earlier, and notices the bedroom door slowly swinging open. The Babadook enters, cloaked in shadows, and moves with an unearthly speed to attack Amelia, giving us our first full glimpse at the monster.
Dolls are creepy enough as they are, especially the more lifelike ones. “Annabelle” pushes that innate phobia to the extreme with a haunted doll. Annabelle never moves, if you recall, yet all those long and lengthy close-ups of the doll had us cringing. If you stare at Annabelle for too long, will she turn to stare back at you?
Most horrifying scene: When the ghost of Annabelle’s former owner, a small and seemingly harmless girl, runs towards the protagonist and in the blink of an eye morphs into a screaming adult woman frothing at the mouth.
1)Ju-On 3: The Beginning of the End
Remember that croaking sound Toshio made as it came near you, the sound of its bones stretching beyond mortal limits? “Ju-On 3” took that and added a whole lot of nasty visuals to keep us awake at night. Blurry videos, warped creatures, sudden appearances, and unnatural movements were staples of the Ju-On series, and “Ju-On 3” petrified us with Toshio’s disgustingly frightful origins.
Most horrifying scene: After being chased by Ju-On and his mother, the heroine (Yui) wakes up in her room to find that it was all a dream. She goes to the kitchen for breakfast, only to find the twisted corpse of her boyfriend lumbering to her, while Ju-On watches innocently in the background.
What was the scariest horror movie of 2014 for you?
This post was also published on Yahoo Singapore.
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