Desensitized horror fans are picking the movies that made them feel like terrified newbies all over again, and we encourage you all to proceed with caution.
“To all the seasoned, long-term horror fans such as myself, who don’t really get scared anymore but sincerely love and appreciate this genre,” Redditor abenz39 began, “what was the last movie you saw that actually bothered and stuck with you?”
The Redditor went on to write that, given their high tolerance for horrifying, they’re looking to “scratch that itch” with a dose of the genuinely disturbing.
This sentiment garnered a lot of support from r/horror – to the tune of over 300 upvotes and nearly 600 comments at the time of this writing. The highest-upvoted comment comes from Itsawlinthereflexes, who selected the 2020 film The Dark and the Wicked along with the 2021 film What Josiah Saw, both for being “subtly dark.”
Other jaded horror fans were satisfyingly scared by those movies:
Hell House LLC is what made Translusas look at “dark corners of [their] apartment differently for the rest of that night,” chiefly because of the clown scenes. The Redditor also shouted out Midsommar, the Ari Aster folk horror flick from 2019.
BaneOfXistance chose a different Ari Aster horror, Hereditary, in addition to Sinister, which was directed by Scott Derrickson of The Black Phone fame. Many other Redditors agree with those selections. CheddarGobblin wrote, “I was 38 when I saw Sinister and I seriously do not scare at all these days but those home movie reels got me so creeped out I had to pause and take off the headphones for a minute.”
We don’t know about you, but we’re gonna watch some of these recommendations to hopefully give us some long-desired scares.