David Cronenberg names three of the scariest movies of all time
Not content with being one of cinema’s foremost purveyors of gruesome body horror, David Cronenberg has even given rise to a dynasty that seeks to turn stomachs while asking big thematic questions of its audience.
His son Brandon has followed in his father’s footsteps by directing Antiviral, Possessor, and Infinity Pool, three features that would have been described as Cronenbergian regardless of the fact the person who scripted and shot them was quite literally the second generation of the family to dive headfirst into the horrific.
Movie night in the Cronenberg household probably wasn’t the same as it was for most other parents and children who gather around the television to watch something they can all enjoy together. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the Scanners, Videodrome, and The Fly helmer is somebody who finds themselves consumed by the macabre in their every waking moment.
“My imagination is not full of horrors at all. This is the misunderstanding of what my movies are. First of all, I think all my movies are funny,” he clarified to The Guardian. “Not everything in them is funny, but they are full of humour. And second, it’s not really my imagination.”
Continuing, Cronenberg espoused how “anybody looking at the news on the internet or in a newspaper” is going to find new horrors every day. “Compared with that, my imagination is a wonderful playground,” he continued. “So I don’t feel that my imagination is a place of horror at all”.
With that in mind, selecting a beloved Disney animated classic as one of the most frightening films ever made makes perfect sense, at least relative to Cronenberg’s worldview. “Bambi is a terrifying film for a kid because Bambi’s mother is killed,” he posed. “When you’re a child, that’s a terrifying thing. So does that qualify?”
Beyond that, he looked towards Blue Lagoon – presumably the 1923 or 1949 iteration, and not the one with Brooke Shields – as further evidence to underline his point. “There’s a movie called Blue Lagoon, which was really scary for me as a kid. It’s kids on a boat, the boat sinks, the parents drown, the kids are alone on the island with a drunken sailor,” he explained. “There’s a scene in a cave with a snake and a skeleton and all that stuff, and that was a scary movie for me. Probably for an adult not so scary.”
For something that did scare him as an adult, though, “Don’t Look Now, Nic Roeg’s film with Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland.” Frightening the living daylights out of somebody like Cronenberg can’t be an easy feat, but it’s one the seminal chiller managed with aplomb.
“That really got to me,” he conceded. “That was very effective filmmaking, its anticipation of death was so palpable.” Not the most obvious triple-bill, then, but still capable of sending a shiver down Cronenberg’s spine in their own individual way.
David Cronenberg’s favourite scary movies:
- Bambi
- Blue Lagoon
- Don’t Look Now
