My first "too scary" movie was the 1999 cinematic masterpiece The Mummy starring Brendan Fraser. For those unfamiliar: not very scary at all, but I was probably eight when I saw it.
My siblings and I would fight over who got to sleep with the cat - in the movie the mummy is scared away by cats. Anybody who owns a cat knows this is a pointless argument, and the cat sleeps with who it wants.
I begged to see Poltergeist when it came out in 1982, I was 11. One of my main arguments was that it was only rated PG, ET came out the same year and it was rated PG; the PG-13 rating didn't exist yet.
I did not sleep in my room for 3 months after that and when I finally was able to go back all my stuffed animals had to be out of the room.
I have never found another movie again that scared me so much and I have seen more horror movies than I could count.
If you haven't seen this movie, and you have any tolerance for scary movies, stop reading and go watch this movie
Let's make a high stress movie in one of the scariest environments possible.
"Okay but what if the main character has legit psychological trauma that we watch" I mean sure.
"And what if we add some of the freakiest and most unexpected jump scares before they get to the scary part?". Okay..
"And what if this naturally scary environment also had monsters?". What sort of writer are you?
"And what if we didn't introduce the actors to the monsters until we were actually filming the scene, so their reactions are as legitimate as possible?" That would certainly be horrifying
"And what if the monsters were humanoid, and the humans were monstrous?" You seem to have some experience being a monstrous human.
"And what if we made multiple endings, each of them equally ambiguous about the main characters future?" Are you a monster? You are a monster aren't you.
Descent and its sequel (though cursed by virtue of being a sequel) were great. In general, women-led horror movies are awesome when done right, like having women in characters who self actualize instead being used as a filler or sideshow.
Some others include Ginger Snaps (and its second movie), Alien (don’t like the sequels), Scream, and Piggy (2022). Evil Dead as a franchise does not have a female lead (I am not that familiar with this franchise), but Evil Dead Rise was executed really well, and worked on many levels.
Sometimes it works out, though!
From a very early age, my parents let me watch increasingly scary stuff thinking I'd eventually hit a limit on what I could handle, but I feel like even as a youngster I was pretty aware that it was not real. Never got nightmares or anything like that. Horror movies and scary sci-fi movies were always my favorites and I still love them to this day.
For me it was gremlins, I was like 8. The end scene with the one that pops out of the fountain, that shit scared the living fuck outta me.
Also being forced to go see Lost Boys with my sister at 10 years old while sick with the flu, because my parents had a date and didn't want to reschedule or some shit. That movie wasn't THAT scary, but when you already feel like absolute shit........
I was already a teenager, but The Blair Witch Project made me quite scared of the forest after dark. Didn't help that we lived right next to a completely overgrown property (it essentially was a forest... a whole family of foxes lived in there) with an old unused house in the middle of it.
Anyway... the psychological horror of that movie was intense. Jump scares I can get over, but the perceived fear of the actors and that ending in the cellar burned itself into my brain.
There were two that really left me scarred in retrospect.
There was this weird 70s or early 80s movie and this scene with these doll things coming to life in this small quarters.. like a genie bottle or some alien ship.. I think there was like satin and shit.. and the doll things had these sharp teeth and started biting this woman trapped in there.. and they all swarm her and overcome her.. 35 yrs later.. if anyone knows the name.... Please help?
The Accused.. saw that way too early.
Oh, and the song Hungry Eyes...
That reminds me that my most terrifying movie scene as a kid wasn't actually an scary movie.
It was a movie with a scene were the toilet talks or acts as he is going to eat the kid, can't quite remember the details. The trauma was serious I couldn't go to the bathroom to take a shit without feeling weird, terrified that it would bite my ass and all that, I tried to avoid going as long as possible....
I can't seem to find the movie or the scene, all I see is a scene from Look Who Is Talking but that's not it. I did see it like later on life and I think it was like in a public bathroom and maybe the kid kind of had a daydream.... But honestly no clue, I couldn't find it.
Split second is the horror movie I saw way too early in my life. I can't remember the circumstances but I may have been 4-5 seeing a particularly scary scene in the basement of my grandparents house.
Descent would have fucked me up, the claustrophobia messed with me seeing it as an adult.
Whoa. This movie fucked me up as a grown-ass adult. Poor kid must have had nightmares for a whole year after that.
I remember staying in guest housing on a military base when my dad was changing stations when I was 12. 2 weeks with absolutely nothing to do, but the front desk had free dvd rentals so I would watch multiple movies a day. One day I randomly selected Saw 2. I watched the opening scene with the scalpel and the eye through closed fingers. Finished the movie though.
Horror fans: Haha this traumatized me for years, wanna watch?
When my youngest sister was about 7 (18 years between us), all of the adults were watching this movie in the living room while the kids were playing outside and in the rooms with outdoor access. She came into the living room to talk to my parents about something and got terrified by the movie. She was balling and screaming while covering her ears as she continuously ran in and out of the living room while staring at the screen. She was stuck in some terror loop. Finally, my other sister just picked her up and carried her elsewhere because nobody else could stop laughing. Poor kid. She's alright now, super smart, responsible, and well adjusted. I'm sure your kid is alright.
The Dark Crystal is a good scary movie for kids. The movie that got me scared as a kid was a Ernest Scared Stupid. I can't explain why, that movie scared the shit out of me. After that it was watching The Relic.
I dunno what OP's daughter was watching that wasn't 'scary enough' but going straight to The Descent was a terrible idea.
Geez. I have a friend who took his 10 yo son, and a friend to Bad Santa. This fits well with that miss-adventure.
I saw Alien and Aliens back to back when I was 4. It was so terrifying, but so cool.
if you want to seal the bad parenthood in, complete it with a night of REC
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I was a weird kid. My God parent's son showed me Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the first 3 Friday the 13th movies when I was, like 7 or 8, I think? I don't remember being scared. I do remember being grossed out at a scene from TCM where a dude was pulling maggots off his head, torching them with a lighter and then eating them, tho.
But then Pet Cemetery scared the shit out of me and gave me nightmares for weeks when I saw it at 10 or 11. Not because of the supernatural shit; but because of the flashback scene of the sick sister. The way she looked and how she puked. That's real shit. That can happen to me. An undead kid trying to kill me can't. That's not scary.
I was also very afraid of the tornado in Wizard of Oz as a child. Because tornados are real!
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