A still from Never Let Me Go. Photograph: Entertainment Pictures/Alamy View image in fullscreen A still from Never Let Me Go. Photograph: Entertainment Pictures/Alamy Film ‘It still preys on my mind’: readers on their scariest non-horror movies After Guardian writers picked their choices for Halloween , readers have responded with films that send chills down their spines – from Never Let Me Go to The Truman Show
Prefer the Guardian on Google A Short Film About Killing The murder of the taxi driver is utterly excruciating and the hanging at the end equally so. Both are shown in full, in close up and in real time. The condemned man’s last cigarette is smoked in full. The unease (to put it mildly) of the audience was palpable. Wiscot
Not horror but horribly tense. I was convinced when he went into the sea at night that he wasn’t going to come out. A personal response from me, but I found it almost unbearable to watch. annarachel
Read more The Manchurian Candidate The brain washing sequence scared the living daylights out of me: never could watch Angela Lansbury in any thing after that without a shiver going down my spine! JobsworthWilkins
Lilya 4-Ever for me, a harrowing journey through a young girl’s experience of being seduced and then sex-trafficked. It’s excellent, but grim – oh, so grim – and it left me feeling hollowed out afterwards and disgusted with the human race. AdamK
View image in fullscreen Still from Melancholia. Photograph: Magnolia Pictures/Allstar Melancholia The existential dread of an extinction level event – so lyrically and beautifully evoked. It embodies the desolate inevitability of the end of all things. RishiSambora
Its portrayal of mountain village clan feuds, superstition and the mass delusion that might enable a charismatic individual to dehumanise others, with mass-murderous consequences, was very scary. Even more frightening was that the film was roughly inspired by a real-life massacre, in Bilge in 2009. appealforsanity
It’s one of the best horror-non-horrors ever made. The premise is pure terror. Your friends, family, job are all lies. You have no secrets. Every moment of your life, every lesson you thought you learnt in private is seen, recorded, witnessed forever. Your deepest paranoia is real. Yes, even the sky is fake. The Truman show was so ahead of its time with the horrors of digital life. Scary as fuck! materofvirii
I was six when Watership Down came out, and saw it in the cinema (Birkenhead Odeon, no less, scary in itself in 1978). I don’t think anything has ever had a greater long-term effect on me than the images of the rabbits crushed together in plugged and gassed burrows, blood-red eyes and gasping desperately for air. That evil Woundwood rabbit wasn’t much better; that night I wouldn’t go upstairs to bed in case the fucker was hiding in my wardrobe. Wrighthanes
The most frightening, nightmare inducing film for me will always be Watership Down. First saw it in the cinema aged around nine, it has some very memorable scenes. Flowerpotty
View image in fullscreen A still from Wake in Fright. Photograph: Everett Collection Inc/Alamy Wake in Fright An Australian movie about a young teacher who gets stranded in an outback town while trying to get home for the holidays. Gradually the dark side of the town and of a certain type of Australian culture is revealed, until it ends in utter bleakness. Not a horror movie, but horrifying. The sort of movie that sticks with you. Good acting too. Rabbi…