Lights, Camera, Action!

While some of the greatest horror films are based on being a psychological thriller (see my last review, on Misery), another thing that makes some horror films great is the shock-value of it. And, I don’t mean a twist ending. I mean moments where purely the subject matter can scare you.

The Exorcist (1973)

Before I begin, I am aware of the fact that there are people who will wonder how this isn’t on the very top of my list. With a movie that needed to have ambulances placed outside the theatres, and had some of the watchers having heart attacks or even dying from the pure shock of this movie, it’s certainly hard to keep it off of a list of top horror films, but, me not being extremely religious, or Christian for that matter, the prospect of a person getting possessed by a demon simply doesn’t freak me out as much as it would freak out other people.

Anyways, onto the trailer:

This movie is listed as the scariest movie of all time, and, I might even go so far to agree with that, but, in my opinion, it doesn’t take JUST scares to make a horror movie. But, when it comes to scares, this movie has them!

As I stated earlier on, this is the story of a young girl (played by Linda Blair) who gets posessed by a demon, and the exorcism that eventually follows over the second half of the movie.

But, in my personal opinion, the best acting role in this movie doesn’t come from Blair, whose role in her “posessed” state resulted in an Oscar nomination, and even was potentially going to win said Oscar, until it was revealed that the voice of the possessed demon was NOT, in fact, Blair’s voice, but was that of actress Mercedes McCambridge. I believe that the best acting in this movie comes from Ellen Burstyn, who plays the mother of Blair’s character. She really puts emotion into her role, and shows that even in movies like this, it’s possible for a character to be real and emotional.

This movie certainly provides scares for the audience that watches it, and, this certainly holds up even 30 years after its original release. The only truly unfortunate aspect (and I’ll speak about this more when I write about my favorite horror film) is that even the creepiest and scariest scenes are fairly well known by people, thus making it not as shocking as it may have been during its release. None the less, it still holds up as one of the scariest movies of all time today!

Keep on watching!

R.S.

This entry was posted on October 26, 2009 at 10:24 pm and is filed under Reviews, Top Five. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.