What movie did you see too young that still haunts you to this day?
What movie did you see too young that still haunts you to this day?
237 comments
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There's a shitty horror flick called The Hand from the early eighties. Michael Caine is in it, hamming it for the paycheck I suppose but still kinda cool even if the movie is pretty bad. Anyway, there's a terrible effects shot of the titular crawling hand pushing its way through the plumbing in a shower, and I still sometimes have nightmares of that scene decades later. 5 year old me was not ready.
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So...yeah, I was watching Tales from the Crypt when I was like 9.
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it's 5 years to late for a sane person.
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A Nightmare on Elm Street.
I was 8, my Mom said I wasn't allowed to watch it. I watched it at a friend's house.
I was so sure that night that Freddy was going to grab me through the bed like he did to Johnny Depp that I went to my Mom in her room and admitted to her that I watched it then promptly vomited on her due to the accumulated fear.
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Kids, the movie from the mid 90s where a New York teen is trying to bang virgins and spreading HIV. Freaked me out.
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Grave of the Fireflies. I was around 24 years old.
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Same, but I still recommend the movie to everyone. It haunts in all the right ways.
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"Akira" when I was 10-ish. Wanted to check what this anime thing was about, was not prepared for nuclear blasts, and people becoming giant body-horror amoebas. Still, it was a good intro into anime, along with Dominion Tank Police (another hilariously not-for-10-year-olds number). And set the bar way too high for most other ones I watched later.
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Arachnophobia
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Edward Scissorhands.
Don't know why. And I didn't even see it for that long, but something about the makeup, music, general ambiance, the scene when he's offered normal hands, it affected my child self profoundly. To this day, I can't watch the movie without feeling very anxious. My partner has tried to watch it with me a couple of times and I just can't.
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This is gunna sound stupid, but "Tales from the Hood." At the end of that movie, where you learned all the guys are already dead, in hell and the guy telling the stories is satan just scared the absolute shit outta me.
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i must have missed that somehow and it sounds fantastic based on what i can remember from it.
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American History X. Curb stomping was a lot for 13 year old me to process.
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Final destination
Saw
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Bridge to terrabithia
Wasn't really to young but didn't know what to expect and got emotionally crushed by accident. Just heard it was a good movie and put it on one evening.
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The book really messed up my class.
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Tons of horror movies.
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My friend found a bunch of vhs tapes that his dad hid, and we would watch them together. We were both around 8 or 9, and we watched various porn tapes, and stuff like Heavy Metal and other R rated stuff. The stuff that really gave a lasting impression in my mind's eye though was a collection of actual deaths caught on tape called "Faces of Death" and a movie called "Pink Flamingos". Ill always remember aligators ripping a paraglider apart, and the chicken scene from pink flamingos. I rematched it when I was older and it didn't seem as bad as I remembered, but it's not a great scene to have stuck in your head...
Now I specialize in making horror illustrations lol.
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Event Horizon. I saw the first half as part of the second half of a double feature at the drive-in theater with my family. I think Men in Black was the first feature. I was 9 when I saw that topless dead woman scene. It's such an underrated movie.
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The Exorcist. I was about 8 years old. It was on tv one Saturday night. At church the next morning I had a bunch of questions and needed some consoling.
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Nothing But Trouble
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Not exactly a movie, but a cartoon series.
It was that episode of Power Puff Girls where they went to a dystopic future and everything was a hellscape dominated by Him. That episode made me think about my mortality and future regrets.
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"future regrets" is such a trippy phrase
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Threads, not a good movie for 5 year olds.
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I saw that for the first time last year, and I can tell you that it's bloody disturbing to a 44 year old too.
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The trailer for Aliens was my introduction to the notion that maybe monsters could get through locked doors!
As an adult, it's one of my all-time favourites.
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A hokey 80s movie called "The Guardian". Its not scary at all but there was a tree with a face on it, and it hit me at the right age and scared the bejesus out of me for some reason. I don't think I understood the plot at the time, just scary tree face.
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E. T.
I don't care that it was rated P. G., they killed my friend and I was just as sad as Elliot. The tubes and the quarantine were absolutely terrifying to me as a child and even seeing clips nowadays gives sends a shiver down my spine. Just sadness and fear.
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The Mangler. It's a B horror movie and some of the graphics, which I won't spoil, were more than my 7 year old brain could reconcile.
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Saving private Ryan at ten years old.
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Jurassic Park 3 when I was 9 for a friend's birthday. I had nightmares about dinosaurs for weeks. I'm not really haunted by it any more but the scene where the skeleton in the parachute swings out of the tree is seared into my brain.
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Sleepers. I was raised watching horror and other movies which I probably should not have (early favorites included A Nightmare on Elm Street and Robocop), but the only one which was too much was seeing Sleepers when I was ten or eleven. Too realistic, I guess.
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The Naked Lunch. I was probably 10 years old? I didn't understand any of the plot, I was weirded the fuck out and the giant bugs made me sick to my stomach.
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2 Movies really.
- Bette Davis in the Nanny. I haven't liked the bath since.
- Death Wish. Wasn't suitable for an adolescent. I'm still traumatized by the home invasion / rape scene. Hey, that was Hope Lange from the Ghost & Mrs Muir!
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Creep Show, the segment with the Antarctic wolf creature scared the shit outta me. It still creeps me out to this day for some reason.
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The first Ghost busters movie
I saw scenes of it at six years old and some of them were really scary if you are too young. For weeks I had nightmares about chairs grabbing me with demon arms or demon dogs trying to eat me.
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For me it was The Amytiville Horror (1979). I still can't look out of a window at night and not think of seeing eyes. I didn't see the film until I was about 11, so mid 80s.
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The ring, when I was 11. I was scared for years
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That movie scared the hell out of me when I was in High School. I crashed someone else's date to see it.
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In scrolled so far to find this and fuck yeah that messed me up, was way too young and my sister terrorized me with it
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I saw it around the same age and can still remember seeing that dead girl's swirly face in the closet. Overall I didn't think it was too scary overall but that scene has always stuck with me. I was exposed to a lot of this type of stuff as a kid with siblings 8-10 years older than me and can remember watching Tales from the Crypt several years before this, so horror has never really frightened me apart from the first 85% of Hereditary.
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Terminator 2. I saw it when I was 6 or 7 when it came out on vhs. I didn’t want to watch kids movies ever again after that. It was fucking awesome. As far as scarring me, none, people in my elementary school were watching Faces of Death.
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Arachnophobia
It doesn't actually still haunt me (I'm the family spider hunter) but I did get nightmares for a while from that one.
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I had the same experience with that movie! By the way, please try not to kill spiders...
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Event Horizon when I was 10. I think that recalibrated what the entire concept of fear was in my mind.
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Oh man I said the same thing. The topless dead woman nightmare scene is seared into my memory.
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Same for me, maybe I was a bit older but it scared the bejesus out of me and got me into reading scifi
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American News
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They showed us 4 Rooms at summer camp when it had just come out on VHS. I was 13 but pretty sheltered and that movie was kind of nuts.
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I saw Full Metal Jacket when I was 12. That one took a while to get over.
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I saw that around that age too. The scene with the sniper still haunts me.
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The scarab scene in The Mummy
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Yes holy shit that haunted me for YEARS
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The mummy is the only movie I can think of to ever give me a nightmare. And it was that damn scarab scene.
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silence of the lambs at like 8. still one if my all time faves but I definitely could've waited a few more years to get into it lol
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Event Horizon
i can still vividly picture moments from that movie decades later
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One of my dad's favorite movies. We would run through the den on the way to kitchen whenever he had it on. Definitely gave me nightmares at age 10 and for years afterwards.
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Hell yeah brother
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Great film, other than the weird trope of "they speak Latin in hell for some unexplained reason", which always bugs me
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I was too young when I first saw this too. (I was in my 20s)
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I'm 50 and I'm still too young. That movie gives me the heebie jeebies every time, though Laurence Fishburne is the most cool-headed, logical character in any horror movie I've ever seen.
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Fire in the sky. Alien abduction still freak me out
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Jurassic Park, I was 8. Saw it at the cinema and was hiding behind the seats. It still hits a bit hard.
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Moontrap
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That Tom Hanks movie where he's stranded on an island after a plane crash when I was 6.
I saw it a day before taking my first plane ride and going over sea.
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Wilson!
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Castaway
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Yeah, that one
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The world premiere of the Michael Jackson’s Thriller video scared the fucking shit out of me. I ran out of the room screaming when MJ turned to his date and had yellow demon cat eyes. Man fuck that.
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This is what I was going to say too!
I'm not sure if it was the premiere, but I do remember being called to come and see it - so it must have been some sort of event, or else they wouldn't have called me in specially.
Anyway, yeah, those eyes at the end. The rest didn't bother me at all, but those eyes haunted me for years.
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Green Inferno. I’m a huge horror fan and am not bothered by gore, but man that cannibalism was so graphic I can’t shake the images.
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My Girl. I have a fear of bees because of that movie.
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The Never Ending Story. I was 28. Still shaken a couple decades later.
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The film ends about 1/3 into the book. And the book gets dark
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I am actually trying to read a water damaged copy of the book, lent to me by a friend who named her son Atreyu.
The internet and grad school have combined in an attempt to destroy my ability to read a paper book.
Maybe a story that never ends is too big a challenge in my quest to regain that ability?
Nah, I love dark shit and I can’t wait to get to the part where he meets the nihilistic tortise with allergies. I am really curious to see what the film makers were working with from the book.
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I saw this the first time I actually got high, I was probably 15 or 16. I don't think I've laughed that hard since, I was absolutely not prepared for Falcor going in.
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Not exactly a movie, but my older sisters had me watch the original IT mini-series when I was very young and I had clown nightmares for years after.
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Oddly, I think this series is why i have arachnaphobia. Clowns I'm good with though for some reason.
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If you know about how Pennywise works, this is really funny.
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The Truman show
So much existential dread
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Pee-wee's Big Adventure. Damn you, Large Marge!
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I disagree. More children's movies need a good horror scene. Builds character.
The boat scene from Willy Wonka is another good one.
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willy wonka is a materpiece
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Star Trek: First Contact scared me shitless as a kid. They made a fucking Star Trek horror film. As an adult, I'd say 8/10 movie.
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Im not even sure how many times I've watched First Contact. One of my favorite episodes is the one where Worf devolves into an actual werewolf.
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Sorry, but you're wrong. That movie is in fact a solid 10/10.
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Aliens. Must have been 12 or so. A boring sunday and my friend's mom drove us to the cinema. (In Germany the movie was rated 16) but we didn't bounce off at the desk. I was not exactly horrified, but so ... thrilled. After that I dived a bit too deep into the H.R.Giger universe, I guess.
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Aliens is the James Cameron sequel which is a bit more action than horror. Did you mean Alien or Aliens?
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Well I wasn't too young, but Requiem For A Dream still haunts me as one of the most depressing movies ever made, it's just...really sad and disturbing. I think I saw it when I was 18.
Even Grave Of The Fireflies was more uplifting than that.
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Most depressing movie for sure. So hard to watch. I get a dark feeling even thinking about some of those scenes and character arcs
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This is the first title that I thought of when reading the thread
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"Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte". In my defense, I was about 6 years old when I saw it.
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Contributing a DVD rip of that got me power user status on a private tracker once upon a time.
Haven't been there in a long time, but good memories.🍿
Great movie too.
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Saw Bone Tomahawk in my late 30s. Wasn't old enough to handle that yet, apparently
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One of my friends recommended this, and I had to turn it off a few minutes in. That movie is insane.
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I slept over at a friend's house, and we watched The Shining when I was 12. Still haunts me to this day, and I've never re-watched it since.
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I have no clue what the movie was. All I know is that my grandmother was watching it while I was in the same room. I remember being too bored to pay attention at 4 years old or so. Except when I looked over at the screen and saw a man put a gun to his head he pull the trigger. The music went silent after and we got an areal shot of the blood spreading. It left such an impression it’s one of my earliest memories.
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The Fly
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Same here. 🤮😵💫
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hahah same ! must have been 5 or so. I distinctly remember a woman entering the appartment/lab and Goldblum going "hi, whatsername" while all glued to the ceiling like a proto-fly. These two seconds have been chasing me for thirty years.
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I was in college when I watched that for the first time and I still think I was too young.
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A.I. Artificial Intelligence by Steven Spielberg. Not sure if I was too young, but the emotions still haunt me to this day.
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Mini correction, that was a Stanley Kubrick film, Spielberg finished it when Kubrick died... The last 15 minutes are all Spielberg, really ruined the movie, had 3 spots where the movie said have ended but Spielberg does happy endings, Kubrick would have ended it much differently
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The Brave Little Toaster.
Yeah, I know. But the AC unit dying freaked me out.
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I was 4 and my grandma was visiting and was supposed to look after me while my parents went out. They gave her the VHS of the first Terminator. I snuck into the living room and watched a bunch of it without her noticing. Afterwards, all the toy robots had to be taken out of my room because ‘the man with the red eye took his eye out’. My parents were then able to put one and one together.
Nowadays one of my favorite movies, tbh.
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The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover
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Underworld
I was like 8. Scared the shit out of me
Also, girls in leather
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Sometimes I wonder if seeing the Masked Magician as a child was a stepping stone to my interest in women. I've rewatched clips of it as an adult. Why was it so horny? As a kid I remember cool magic tricks. But like... Why the industrial BDSM looking sets and constant comments about the women's bodies? I guess that was just more "normal" then. But then again maybe it wasn't, I remember hearing that Penn has a problem with that guy because he's a creep? Who fucking knows.
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My parents had the Killer Klowns from Outer Space VHS and I was too scared to watch it as a kid. It wasn't until my mid 20s I actually got to watch it and realize its very much a comedy and not scary at all.
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Birds.. 30+ years later I'm still always a bit creeped out by them, especially sea gulls.
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Mate?
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My dad was flicking through the movie channels and saw that "Pulp Fiction" was on, decided to watch it because he "heard it was pretty good".
It was already well underway, and I had the joy of watching the entire basement scene (iykyk) at 12 years old, beside my dad. Not sure why he didn't turn it off sooner 🤷🏻
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I bet you were pretty fucking far from OK eh?
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Watership Down as a really young kid.
Schindler's List as a young teen.
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Schindler's list at 7 years old
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Yeah you win 😬
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Grave of the fireflies
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I watched this one, pretty haunting, there is only one in my opinion (only counting movjes that I have watched) that comes close and thats Come and See, a soviet film set in Belarus during german ocupation
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Come and See is so brutal.
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Ouch
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I was like 6 when i saw some of The Ring. It fucked me up for a long time.
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Jaws.
Titanic.
I now fear most bodies of water.
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Jaws is a lesson about the shark’s house
:D
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I hadn't seen that one--funny. Seriously, though, Jaws is about human greed/unethical behavior and relationships. I consider it a drama more than a creature feature.
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Just seeing pictures of Freddy Krueger in the TV timetable magazine (whatever do you call those?) scarred me for life and had me imagining him under my bed.
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Tv Guide
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As a too young kid I saw the scene of him grabbing the boy and pulling him inside the bed and then blood sprayed out of the bed. And uh.. 40 years later it still affects me. Yeah, don't show that stuff to kids, people! It does affect them even though they'll never talk about it!
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Oh and The Shining at the time (11 y/o home alone) really messed me up as well.
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The Shining
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The Road
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Never seen or read it, but am in the middle of Blood Meridian from the same author... Yeah, I get it.
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I've read the book first and that ruined a good portion of the following week. The basement scene still haunts me today. Honestly I don't dare to touch the movie now ...
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I don't think anyone is ever old enough for that movie. That scene with the people in the basement still haunts me.
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The Thing
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Salem's Lot.
It was forbidden, but on TV, so I'd flip channels to watch it in 30 second clips. It was far more terrifying that way, as I found out later in life; watched all the way through, it was a fairly mediocre film.
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I think I was ten when a friend and I asked his big sister if we could watch with her. We could, but I still think A Nightmare on Elm Street was a bit too much for me back then.
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Cats Eye
The Shining
Pet Sematary
Pumpkinhead
Poltergeist
my parents didn't make an effort to shield me. I was too young for school when I first saw any of these movies
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The Deer Hunter
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Saw Robocop when I was six. Murphy getting his arm blown to bits haunted me for years.... Until I saw Red Foreman years later, then I was ok
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Same. Emil getting doused in toxic waste still haunts me.
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I was 17 when I saw the shotgun-to-the-hand scene and it freaked me the fuck out.
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Watership Down.
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Same. I must have watched it when I was in early primary school. Still hold the image of bloodied rabbits tearing and clawing at each other. WTF was that about?
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Poltergeist
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Reptilicus
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Gremlins
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Lol, my parents for some completely out of character reason I'll never understand took me to see Gremlins 2 when I was 8. This was not a request from me, Im pretty sure I had never heard of Grenlins before. I loved it, but I'm not sure it didn't traumatize me.
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The weirdest thing, I didn't find out that this and Poltergeist weren't kids movies until highschool. It's been a bit of a wild ride since because I keep running into movies that aren't as pg as I remember.
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I recently showed this movie to someone and I didn’t remember it being that scary/gory! This is some crazy PG movie lol
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Pretty sure Gremlins caused the creation of a new certification in the US. Too many complaints about it being PG.
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You know those movies as a young kid that you watch over and over? This was mine. From like 7 to 12 I would have these recurring dreams of a school with a flag in front and then going the stairs into a basement. I wondered where the hell it was coming from, then I watched the intro to the movie again in my 20s.
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The Day After
I ain't been nuked yet, but you never know...
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come and see, i think that main actor might also have got haunted by it
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Life of Brian
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The last unicorn. That red bull gave me the creeps for months
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Same, but I kept watching the movie again anyway.
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Gandahar
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evil space penis
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Total Recall freaked me out pretty good and I saw it when I was like 32
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Idk what it was called but there was a movie where a group of people got trapped in a flooded underpass that I watched at 7 or so that gave me recurring nightmares for years.
Also I saw Munich in theaters when I was 13 because my mom thought it would be an informative historical film and we ended up having to sneak out (I’ve only left a movie once since then! Some terrible christmas comedy).
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That sounds like Daylight with Sly. Always forget that one exists.
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Was the movie Daylight (1996)?
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I think that might be it!
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The Omen.
'It's all for you, Damien.'
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Thank you for unlocking this horrifying memory for me. Great albeit disturbing movie and scene.
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It
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Saw the thing when i was like 9-10. Fucked me up
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Yeah, that was a very little sleep for a few days after kinda movie.
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Fire in the Sky. Still haven’t rewatched it decades later.
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Idk the movie but it was late 80s or early 90s, there was a guy with his head in a TV screen, which was on and had the image of a woman's mouth eating the head. Fucked me up for years as a kid because I had no context.
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Update:
It's not Eraserhead(Lynch), but I'm pretty sure the movie you were talking about is Videodrome(Cronenberg, 1983).
Equally unsettling film. I only watched Videodrome for the first time, last year at a Sunday double with The Thing.
Videodrome is an 80s TV critique, best to be in the right headspace if you plan on watching it.
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Eraserhead vibes.
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Jurrassic Park
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Glad to see I’m not alone. I seen the movie when I was about 4 and had nightmares of raptors for two decades.
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Wow. Did see it as 6 year old. I was scared for long time going in tthe forest. Sadly we lived in the forest.
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Poltergeist 2 - specifically the braces scene, I was terrified of getting them. Oddly enough, I was fine with the first one.
That super creepy Alice in Wonderland version from around the same time that I always forget the name of.
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I don't know the name and it was only one scene I saw passing by, something about giant spiders, and one dude was getting into the car to escape and a spider was inside waiting. It probably was in the second half of the 90s and it was on TV, so probably released in late 80s or early 90s. And I don't think it's arachnophobia, at least I haven't seen any scene that reminds me of my memory.
I've had phobia to spiders ever since.
If we consider watching the full movie, it did haunt me for so long and I still remember it with dread, critters. Fucking hate those puppets they used.
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The Giant Spider Invasion, maybe? It was on MST3K, but I think it was pretty successful on initial release too.
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If not arachnophobia, then perhaps starship troopers?
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No, it wasn't starship troopers, I love that movie. It was a kinda realistic monster-horror movie, in other words based in current time planet earth. The only unrealistic thing was the size of the spiders as far as I know.
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Candyman. Candyman. Candy...
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YES
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Aliens 3
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Poltergeist, I was like 6
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Fire In The Sky
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silent screaming
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Doctor Who.
are you my mummy?
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Hellraiser and the original Dune. Claymation looks so fake now, but it didn’t back then.
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Kazaam starring Shaquille O'Neal.
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Spaceballs
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...why?
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Not entirely sure. "Haunts" is a little generous tbh, just kinda weird and fever-dreamy for a very young me.
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The Exorcist
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I got taken to see The Sixth Sense when I was like 10 lol
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Scary movie
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Grizzly. Couldn't sleep the night I saw that one
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Kingdom of the Spiders
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The Thin Red Line
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Saturday Night Fever. At the theater. With both my parents. Not even in middle school, by a few years.
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The tanning booth scene from Final Destination really messed me up for a while.
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Not exactly a movie, but my older brother and his friends had the Budd Dwyer video and I remembered watching with them. So much blood.
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Prophecy - that bear.
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'Bambi" (her mother gets shot) and "Old Yeller" (boy shoots his dog). No one could traumatize a little kid like Walt Disney, and he did it by showing real life situations. I've been a veg-head for almost 60 years, and I've always thought it was because I was subconsciously haunted by those two movies.
237 comments
I wasn't too young but I am Legend left me depressed for days. I even read the book because I needed to process it. I still have flashbacks to will Smith talking along with Shrek. I should probably go watch it again now that I'm older and see if it hits differently. It was not the zombies but the deep deep loneliness that got me.