Mia McKenna-Bruce in How to Have Sex. Photograph: Landmark Media/Alamy View image in fullscreen Mia McKenna-Bruce in How to Have Sex. Photograph: Landmark Media/Alamy Film ‘I left shellshocked’: writers on their scariest non-horror movies For Halloween, Guardian writers have picked the most efficiently terrifying films outside of the horror genre from How to Have Sex to The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Prefer the Guardian on Google Burning View image in fullscreen Photograph: Pine House Film/Allstar Hiding in plain sight throughout Lee Chang-dong’s deliciously enigmatic Burning, in which a spirited young woman (Jeon Jong-seo) disappears, and a wealthy playboy (Steven Yeun) gives serial killer vibes, is a disaffected male rage. That’s perhaps the most commonplace horror of our times, whether on the internet or politics, and you feel the tremors of it steadily breaking the surface in Yoo Ah-in’s performance. He plays Jong-su, an aspiring writer, quietly frustrated with his lot in life. Jong-su works odd jobs and tends to his incarcerated father’s dilapidated farm, growing more desperate to grasp some sense of control over the world around him, which is where the scary part comes in. Lee is the master dramatist who with Burning tilts violently into thriller territory, navigating elements from Taxi Driver, The Vanishing and Michael Haneke’s Caché, using the language of horror movies to conjure up a creeping anxiety and dread that erupts into pure existential fear. Radheyan Simonpillai
Read more Burning is available to watch on Mubi and Tubi in the US, to rent digitally in the UK, and on Netflix in Australia
View image in fullscreen Photograph: Walt Disney The scariest non-horror movie for me is Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The scene where Quasimodo is bound to a pillory where the townspeople throw food and jeer at him because of his appearance and disability will for ever be seared into my brain since I first watched it as a six-year-old child. To this day, I still believe that I was far too young to witness that particular depth of human cruelty even though it’s very real. Not to mention that the story deals with xenophobia and bigotry towards the Romany people and sexual predation from a religious leader that takes the basic idea of good versus evil to a whole new level. The Hunchback of Notre Dame reminds me that you don’t need jumpscares and gore to frighten someone. Sometimes, the real monsters are human beings with a bit of social standing over someone else due to money, beauty, authority or all of the above. Morgan Jerkins
The Hunchback of Notre Dame is available on Disney+
View image in fullscreen Photograph: Allstar Picture Library Ltd/Alamy An insane loner motivated by his all-consuming misogyny perches beside his bedroom window, methodically shooting women on the street below. He writes of his compulsion to kill in a series of letters to police and begs the authorities to hurry up and catch him. This grimly prescient noir from 1952 feels all too familiar for modern viewers who are numb to stories of gun violence and incel culture. It’s a disturbingly acute portrait of urban alienation and the destructive nature of obsession, released more than two decades before Taxi Driver epitomized those themes. Equally haunting is The Sniper’s backstory. Director Edward Dmytryk was one of the blacklisted Hollywood Ten who refused to testify in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee. He later reversed course after a six-m…