5 Most haunted and horrifying movies to watch

Renowned directors worldwide always comment on how it is very difficult to make two genres of films, namely horror and comedies. Horror movies are difficult to make because the plot needs to appeal to the audience in such a way that it is nerve-racking, unsettling, and disturbing, as well as instilling fear in them just by audio-visual means whether they watch it on a phone or big screen.

The ability to capture that is very difficult, and despite the technology being advanced over a period of time with good VFX effects, we are still not able to achieve good horror movies lately. The focus is more on creature horror, whereas even today, people love to go back to the classics, which instilled fear in them because of the idea that made the movie unsettling in the first place. People still go back to the movies from the 20th century as they experimented with the scripts.

However, in the past few years, there have been movies that are experimenting with new concepts, ideas, myths, and legends. From Candyman to the Host, if you are a horror movie buff and tired of the suggestions across the Internet or want some hidden gems, come to this list and find the most disturbing, horrifying, and haunted movies to watch.

May:

If you’re someone with a strong heart who can tolerate psychological thrillers with an element of horror that is eerily disturbing- May is the movie for you. Released in 2002, it is one of the best movies that talks about mental health and related issues. The main character, named May, suffers from a mental disorder that has not been disclosed, but she has a tendency to be different and away from people. It can be considered a way of being antisocial, but she enjoys her own company.

However, it does not imply that May does not want to go out and make friends. People do not want to be friends with her because of her off-beat behavior of using blades and sometimes making strange statements or being very aloof. She starts engaging with dolls and toys, which make her feel happy, and they are her best friends. However, she realizes that she wants much more than that: a human form that would be there for her. Similar to the movie, Megan May goes a step further. Because Megan was a robot there, May decided to cut the body parts of people, which she thought were best, stitch them together, and form her own human doll, which she thought would come to life so that she could have her own friend.

This is where things start going downhill because of the people murders she might have committed. The human doll is just the beginning of a dark, spun web of chaos. It corresponds with how her mental state deteriorates further. This movie is not available to everyone due to the way it has disturbed people, but it can be accessed on Amazon Prime Video-United States on a rental basis.

Exorcism of Emily Rose:

Emily Rose is a very famous case from the United States of America, where the legal framework decided to take religion, paranormal activities, and psychiatric signs into play. Emily Rose was a young girl going to college, having her life-sister, boyfriend, and a lovely house with her parents. She goes to college and starts having seizures in which her body contorts and has cracking noises, her voice becomes deep, and she becomes out of control. Many people try to help her but fail.

When an exorcist has been called to perform an exorcism on her, the father from the church tries his best, but in the process, Emily Rose loses her life. A court case has been done and, through evidence and religious institutions of Christianity, tried to prove that this was a paranormal experiment gone wrong and not anything else.

However, the other side tries to find logic and say that she was suffering from a psychiatric disorder and that if she had been given the right form of treatment, she would have been fine. While the symptoms do look like that of schizophrenia, or even bipolar disorder, manic disorders, we cannot be sure of this as there is no evidence and record of that. Shot in a format that is very slow, unsettling, scary, and creepy, the innocence of the girl is taken away from her by more than 20 demons that were possessing her. Towards the end, you will be shocked because they have attached real clips of the exorcism.  The movie is available to stream on Apple TV.

Sinister:

Children are known to be the pivot of innocence, piousness, and purity, and whatever they say is the truth. What if a monster decides to turn these children into murderers? Brutal monsters who murder their family, make videotapes, store them, show them to the next child who comes into the house, hypnotize them, and form a cult? Sinister, with its two parts, is a journey that makes one mind boggled. The main character is scary-looking, but what becomes difficult to digest is how the children are dragging the parents and pushing them to such painful deaths right in front of their eyes.

The innocence has been taken away at the cost of a man who wants to cross his world and enter the real world. He’s called the King of that world he dwells in. It is very scary because of the sudden jump scares it gives you in between and the way it pushes you off your couch or can also make you think beyond the movie. It follows the story of a family, usually not that well-to-do, who buys the house because it is cheap, moves into it, and usually has an aspiring author or an artist, someone looking for inspiration, and comes across these tapes. What starts as a normal tape extends into sinister, as the name suggests.

See how the climax is really interesting because the child is going to murder the father when the father has just seen the clip of what is going to happen to him. It is like, you know, but you’re still unaware because who would want to die at the hands of their own child? Available to stream on Amazon Prime in selective countries.

Grave Encounters:

If you’re looking for any found footage movies in more of a documentary format, go for Grave Encounters. It sees a group of friends going and discovering a house that is meant to be haunted. When they enter, it seems all normal. That is when they start capturing moments on the camera where grave things are happening, chairs are flying, and a woman is shown hanging. Such things continue until the people get stuck in the basement and have to kill their own selves. But step by step. They have to cut their body parts by following some procedures and be eaten by rats until they die.

It pushes one to believe that it is true, whereas there is no evidence of whether it is truly authentic or not. But part two is more interesting because a group of friends goes to check whether these people who actually went were real or not, and they meet the same fate; hence, it can be true. But the way the found footage works is such that it wants you to keep watching and is not very boring like the other found footage films. Usually, it is a different genre and is not much explored as it is difficult to set the frame in which your audience is hooked to the screen as it is not your usual horror. However, this found footage film is one of the best and a good starting point if you want to venture into this. Available on Apple TV.

Unfriended Dark Web:

Since the pandemic made us believe in the power of the virtual world, video calls became a reality to connect with people. A movie shot during the pandemic just by using MacBook and virtual video calls- Unfriended is one of the best works of a director who has tried to capture how it feels to be at home. Along with adding a lot of thrill to it, what starts off with a few friends having a casual video call converts into something ominous when one of the friends discloses that he has a laptop that was not being used and was at his workplace. He got it home tried to clean it up, and his girlfriend is deaf and dumb.

So he’s trying to prepare a platform by which he can communicate with her more quickly because she’s angry with him as he hasn’t done anything for the anniversary. He’s trying to make it up to her. She’s also on the video call, and all the friends, while talking, start observing that this particular laptop the friend has is very different and has very unusual software in it, and once activated, it starts to challenge them because they’re stuck in the world of Dark Web. Watch to see how these friends get out of it or if they are at all alive.  Available to stream on Netflix.

If you think these movies were disturbing enough, wait until we are back with part two with more suggestions to turn your spooky night around.