Must be "horror". Yeah, I'm using Fight Club rules for emphasis. We're talking about something actually scary. If you want to go non-traditional by arguing that The Lego Movie is a terrifying depiction of Lovecraftian horror, you need to be able to back it up with serious discussion about why is actually scares you, not just academic posturing.
The Lego Movie
IS a depiction of Lovecraftian Horror. The scene where he falls off the table is largely similar to the premise of
From Beyond,
The Render of the Veils,
Lord of Illusion,
Double Cosmos,
Periphery,
Assemblage Point,
The Touch-Stone,
Five Characters in Search of an Exit,
In The Mouth of Madness,
The Circular Ruins,
The After Hours,
The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag, and the opening of
The Great God Pan. It didn't scare me since I saw it as an adult, but given that I was scared when I first saw the witch from The Little Mermaid and the industrial accidents in Willy Wonka it probably would have scared me if I saw it as a kid.
Edit:
But the only horror movies that scare me now as an adult are the ones where one of the heroes gets framed for the killings; ie.
Evil Dead 2,
Nightmare On Elm Street,
Final Destination, etc (edit: And also occasionally by things that strike exactly the right mix of surrealism and existential dread, as is achieved in many episodes of
The Twilight Zone, and (more rarely) in the works of Junji Ito, Jorge Borges, and Clark Ashton Smith)
Dracula (1931): The Bela Lugosi classic is almost a century old. It might seem quaint by today's standards, but it's a good movie and Lugosi set the gold standard for cinema vampires. If you've never seen it, I encourage you to give it a chance.
Plus it doesn't have that moronic reincarnation romance subplot that got tacked onto all the later adaptations
Halloween
I'll admit I'm not the biggest fan of "slasher" movies. They're a little bit basic, as horror goes. But this movie is absolute perfection of the art form. From the soundtrack to the shot composition to the editing, this is a masterclass in horror film making
I found this one tedious. It was just Michael lurking discretely in the background for 90% of the film like some kind of horror version of Where's Waldo. Then there's a couple of blink and you'll miss it murders. And then Michael walks away after getting a clip emptied into him, despite the movie not giving any indication that he's in any way paranormal. At the very least it was not up to the standard of John Carpenter's other work such as
The Thing,
In The Mouth of Madness,
Prince of Darkness, and
Big Trouble In Little China
Evil Dead - I think this might be the reason I dont like body horror
Do you mean Evil Dead 1 or Evil Dead 4? (or Evil Dead 5, which is the main body horror one)
Frankenstein (1931): Another classic that's nearly it's 100th anniversary. It's a good movie with some iconic scenes and Boris Karloff defined the look of Frankenstein for the last 90 years. Quaint by our standards, but a nice movie.
Was the professor supposed to be the scariest character in the film? He's the only one that came off to me as potentially dangerous. Victor was harmless, and of the two deaths caused by the monster one was a slapstick accident and the other was unambiguous self-defense
EDIT:
Anyway, favorite horror films
Coraline - Does the villain from this film make anyone else think of obnoxious pet owners? With the whole fake mother thing going on?
Return of the Living Dead - Not as scary as Night of the Living Dead but more interesting and apparently the source of the concept of zombies eating brains
Evil Dead 1 - I like movies about posession
Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn - This is one of the vew movies that actually scares me. Although Ash being framed scares me more than the demons do
Evil Dead 3: Army of Darkness - Mostly a comedy but the body horror bit with the tiny clones is legit. Also it's the first Evil Dead movie I ever saw
Evil Dead 4 The hand-ripping scene is intensely creepy. Way creepier than the equivalent scene in Evil Dead 2
The Exorcist - Again, I like posession movies
In The Mouth of Madness - Well executed. Interesting concept
Prince of Darkness - John Carpenter and Victor Wong are a winning combination
Hellraiser (2022) - Better pacing and production value than Hellraiser 1, and arguably
Hellraiser 2 - Better pacing than Hellraiser 1. Good worldbuilding
The Mummy (1999) - This isn't really a proper horror film, but it's significantly scarier than the original. And significantly more interestig
The Shining A Classic
Poltergeist
The Whisperer In Darkness - A genuinely good adaptation of the book
Ghostbusters 1 - Egon is what an INT based wizard should look like
Ghostbusters 3 - Didn't have the same problems as 2 or that bizarre reboot that had nothing to do with the series
Virtual Nightmare - This is sort of like a creepy, non-action-based version of
The Matrix. Technically more of a thriller or a suspense movie than horror per se.
Cube, Saw, and
Friday the 13th Part 1 are honorable mentions for their genuinely hateable villains (edit: I mean the crazy cop dude from Cube, not the overarching offscreen villains who actually built the Cube)
Favorites that probably don't count for these purposes due to being campy or primarily comedy rather than horror
*Live Freaky, Die Freaky - Campy. Comedy. Technically true-crime rather than horror. A stop-motion animated musical based on the Manson Family
*The Rocky Horror Picture Show - Arguably primarily a comedy
*30 Nights of Paranormal Activity With the Devil Inside the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - Campy comedy
*
FDR: American Badass - Campy comedy where FDR fights a conspiracy of fascist werewolvez
*Little Nicky - Comedy about demons and satan-worshipping metalheads
*Underfist Halloween Bash - Made for TV comedy based on
The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy
*Rendezvous With RagNaRok - Bizarre campy story about aliens and robots and conspiracies made by the shock rock band GWAR
*Space Zombie Bingo - Bizarre, intentionally campy comedy about space alien robot zombies. Repeatedly makes refrences to
Plan 9 From Outer Space
*Brain Drainer - Intentionally campy comedy about an evil rock from space that drains people's intelligence and switches people's minds. They try to put it into a politician because he doesn't have a mind, but that just allows it to completely take over his body.
*Working Stiffs - Intentionally campy comedy about a temp firm that kills people and turns them into zombies so they won't have to pay them
*Vampires Suck - C0medy spoofing the Twilight saga
*Scary Movie 1-4 - Comedy
*Voodoo Apocalypse - Bizarre campy comedy about guys investigating some villain who's turning people into zombies
*Dracula Dead and Loving It - Comedy remake of Dracula with Mel Brooks and Leslie Nielson
*
Young Frankenstein - Primarily intended as a comedy, even though it is arguably scarier than the original, the original having set such a low bar
*High Anxiety - Comedy. Technically suspense-comedy rather than horror-comedy. Mel Brooks' parody of the works of Alfred Hitchcock
*Plan 9 From Outer Space - Extremely campy
*The Bloody Pit of Horror aka
The Crimson Executioner - Campy italian horror film. Guy stalks and kills a bunch of models while dressed as the local bogeyman. A little bit like a Scooby Doo villain who graduated to actual murder (this came out decades before
Velma)
EDIT:
Did anyone else think the movie
The Driller Killer was lame? I've never seen another horror film where the killer spends the entire movie moping. They should have called it "Bored to Death"