Horror is a personal experience

We all have our personal fears. Filmmakers know this and find ways to exploit those fears, in the best cases artistically. In the worst cases, the films they foist on us are either just violent and gross or merely boring.

Moviefone has been doing a rudown of what it considers the “31 best horror movies of all time.” Click here to get the list.

Feel free to take issue. The fact that “Evil Dead 2,” a truly funny horror comedy, ranks at No. 19 and Sam Raimi’s original “Evil Dead,” a creepy exercise in sleep prevention, ranks nowhere is enough for me to offer up a small smirk.

I have a different take on horror. Following are 10 films that I found particularly unsettling when I first saw them, though I admit they may not work for everyone else.

I would add this: Just thinking of specific scenes contained in a couple of these sends chills up my back:

1, “Funny Games”
2, “Audition”
3, “The Ring”
4, “”The Blair Witch Project”
5, “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”
6, “The Exorcist”
7, “Alien”
8, “The Woman in Black”
9, “The Vanishing”
10, “Burnt Offerings”

Feel free to smirk away. Or to add your own contributions.

Below: Max Von Sydow and Linda Blair starred in the original “The Exorcist,” a film that - so the reports at the time went - had film fans either puking or stumbling from the theater in fear.

Associated Press