By Brandon Engel
Halloween has arrived! The only holiday dedicated to all that is horrifying and hedonistic. If you’re like me, and you’re at the age when trick-or-treating is no longer socially acceptable, it’s just as much fun to stay home and scare the pants off yourself by watching a few horror movies. To accomplish this most effectively, I’d recommend a film that focuses on “home invasions” (which are exactly what the name implies) as a key plot device. Films like these are often hailed as the most frightening films in the horror genre, and for good reason. Here are our top five home invasion horror movie picks for a terrifying Halloween movie night. We’ll leave the lights on for you.
5. Black Christmas
First on our list is Black Christmas, a 1974 flick that helped set precedence for today’s “slasher” genre films. Set in Quebec around Christmas time, the film focuses on a gang of attractive sorority sisters who are stalked and killed off one by one by a murderer whose identity is never revealed. The screenplay, which was supposedly based on an actual string of murders in Quebec, emphasizes a creepy atmosphere over kill count to deliver the chills. Solid acting from Olivia Hussey and Margot Kidder give the gory plot and added air of class. And as with When a Stranger Calls, Black Christmas was remade in the mid-2000’s to subpar results.
4. When a Stranger Calls
Next is the 1979 horror classic When a Stranger Calls. Inspired by the urban legend “The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs”, it was a very financially successful film, grossing nearly $22 million at the box office, although it was met with mixed reception from critics. The story follows Jill Johnson (played by Carol Kane), a teenager babysitting a wealthy doctor’s children. Jill has put the children to bed when she receives an anonymous call asking if she checked on them recently. Uncomfortable but undeterred, Jill waits until the caller has bothered her repeatedly before summoning the cops. Once they arrive it’s discovered that the children she was babysitting were killed hours earlier by a madman hiding inside the house. The film was remade in 2006 with Camilla Belle playing Jill. Even in today’s hyper-surveilled society of public security cameras, wireless home security systems automating our houses, and facial recognition software, this film is guaranteed to make you nervous the next time the phone rings.
3. Funny Games
Next is 2007’s Funny Games by Michael Haneke, an English-language remake of his 1997 Austrian film of the same name. Haneke has stated that Funny Games is a criticism of the violent, lascivious bloodlust often displayed in Hollywood’s blockbusters. His critique is evident in the film — which tests the viewer’s own complacent voyeurism. Ann Farber (played by Naomi Watts), her husband George (Tim Roth), and their son and dog head to their lake house. Shortly after arriving, they meet two young psychopaths who decide to hold hostage and torment them in a series of “funny” (and deadly) games. Their motives are never truly established.
2. Wait Until Dark
1968’s Wait Until Dark, despite not being a “true” horror films, presents plenty of terrifying thrills. It features a disabled protagonist who manages to survive the scary situation she finds herself in. Susy Hendrix (Audrey Hepburn), a woman blinded by a car accident, is left alone in her apartment and terrorized by three men who are in search of a cocaine-filled doll that her husband had accidentally obtained. The scariest moment of the film is the climax, when the whole apartment slowly descends into darkness.
1. Halloween
Finally, the number one spot on our list goes to John Carpenter’s classic 1978 film Halloween. Halloween is hailed as one of the most terrifying movies in existence, and it doesn’t rely on excessive violence or gore to provide that effect. The film features Michael Myers (Nick Castle), one of the most iconic horror film antagonists, and is also Jamie Lee Curtis’s acting debut, where she plays the heroine, Laurie Strode. What makes the film so disturbing is Myers himself, his backstory and how the film makes clear in the beginning and throughout that Myers is a person worthy of being called “Evil Incarnate.”
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