Tonight, in honor of Friday the 13th, it’s Scary Movie Night at Clearleft.

A few nights ago, as we were discussing potential films for Scary Movie Night, Jeremy asked me what the scariest movie I had ever seen was. That kind of stumped me, in part because I’m not really a horror movie aficionado, and in part because I find it difficult to determine what exactly constitutes “scary.” There are so many different types of scary: gory scary, suspenseful scary, unsettling scary… There are the scary movies that make you gasp and jump as you’re watching them but which don’t leave a lasting impression on you, and then there are the scary movies in which nothing overtly horrific happens but which really get under your skin nonetheless.

It’s this latter type of scary movie that I find scariest. Blood and guts don’t upset me nearly as much as creeping dread, and the movies which make me want to keep the light on at night aren’t generally the ones where people are having body parts lopped off, but the ones where you don’t know quite what’s going on, so everything seems threatening.

With that in mind, here is a short list of some of The Scariest Movies I Have Seen.

Poltergeist: Snicker if you want to, but this movie flat out terrified me as a kid, and even today it’s one of my all-time favorite scary movies. There is no real gore, and it’s occasionally cheesy, but this tale of the perfect Spielbergian suburban family plagued by malevolent ghosts in their home still never fails to make me jumpy when I watch it.

Ringu: The original Japanese Ring movie is easily one of the scariest films I’ve ever seen. The atmosphere is chilling from start to finish, the footage of the cursed videotape is deeply unsettling, and that climbing-out-of-the-TV climax is unsurpassed. The sequel, Ringu 2, took a turn for the seriously silly, but there were still at least two scenes in it which creeped me right out. The American remake was nicely gloomy but largely unnecessary; for true frights, watch the original.

Blair Witch Project: So you either love it or you hate it, you think it’s the scariest thing you’ve ever seen or you think it’s the most boring thing you’ve ever seen. Though it loses its impact on multiple viewings, the first time I saw it I found it really quite creepy. The last ten minutes are particularly harrowing and make good use of the whole “this is an actual video” conceit (and The Last Broadcast deserves a mention here for employing the same conceit a year before the Blair Witch Project and for also being quite scary). For a long time after seeing this film, the easiest way for Jeremy to freak me out was to simply stand facing a wall, and even now when I see little artsy/craftsy straw dolls, I tend to shiver a bit.

REC: This Spanish horror film is yet another movie to use the handheld camera conceit to good advantage. Set almost entirely in a sealed-up apartment building, the movie has an intensely claustrophobic atmosphere, and the continuous suspense is punctuated with moments of violence and chaos and culminates in a scene of true terror which really makes you want to turn on all the lights. Again, it’s been remade in America, and again, I’m not sure why. Are Anglophone moviegoers really that incapable of reading subtitles?

The Shining: The Shining is such an iconic film that it’s difficult to forget the endless homages, parodies and “Here’s Johnny!” posters on dorm room walls and just look at it for what it is: a brilliant work of psychological horror with some seriously scary moments and a pervasive feeling of dread. Isolation, paranoia, madness, creepy little kids, and elevators full of blood—what’s not to like?

That’s all I can think of off the top of my head. Interestingly, there are a few constants in my list, namely, creepy little kids and plots revolving around television/films/recordings. I’m not sure what that says about my psyche—that I’m afraid of children and TVs? In any case, thinking about scary films has gotten me psyched up for Scary Movie Night now. I wonder what’s in store for us tonight…