What are some horror movies that make good use of atmosphere and tension...

What are some horror movies that make good use of atmosphere and tension, and don't only rely on jump scares and special effects?

Pic related is a favorite and The VVitch was also kind of a nice surprise.

I get really irritated when characters in such movies act so irrational. I get that tiredness, hunger and whatnot psychological effects will impair your judgement but come on. Try to come up with solutions using logic!

How about following the creek for a while. Surely that will get you to some human settlement. Why is this not even a suggestion? I want characters who can logically, even scientifically analyze the situation they are in. Very little of this was in the Cube but what else?

If I was one of the characters I would try to bend the mechanics in the same situation (of course if I could keep my composure), start a fire for example, burn down the forest.

Alien

The first 2/3 of Texas Chainsaw Massacre III is great. Ditto the first 1/3 of the first Jeepers Creepers. Two potentially great movies that go to shit.

watched the Autopsy of Jane Doe recently it had a nice tension and atmosphere but it also had some jump scares ... was rly good tho

>How about following the creek for a while. Surely that will get you to some human settlement. Why is this not even a suggestion?
I guess for the first couple days they are still trying to pretend they know where they're going, but closer to the end I'm not sure why nobody suggests this. In fairness, they have a compass and decide to walk south all day.

To me that's not such a problem that it ruins the movie

Grave encounters does this well while also making a commentary on the tropes you're talking about.
The autopsy of Jane doe is good like this too.
It follows, another good one for tension, but there are some jumpscares, not too cheap though.
The forest if you like blair witch, and Natalie Dormer playing twins, it doesn't fit the rest of your request though.
The ninth gate and Secret window are too god Depp horrors with good atmosphere and no effects.
Don't breathe is all human situation horror with no supernatural elements.
That's all I can think of off the top of my head.

Yeah, I'm sure that'd get you out of a situation where a supernatural entity is warping time and space, you dumb fuck.

>while also making a commentary on the tropes you're talking about.
Uh, no sweetie, Grave Encounters succumbs to the very same tropes OP doesn't want. I enjoyed Grave Encounters, it's fun, but the final 5 minutes are pure garbage and almost ruin everything that came before.
>the forest
Get the fuck out of here.

Alien
The Thing
The Shining
The Others
The Descent

You just named two of the best if anything. The shining, kill list and the original texas chainsaw massacre are good too. Most horror films are shit desu.

I felt that As above So Below had a great atmosohere, and an interesting story and characters.

It sickens me how underrated Silent House is. If you like films, give it an hour.

Bonus: Elizabeth Olsen tit shots throughout

...

We all know about the category of horrors which are made with minimal effort or care, made not for horror fans but so hoards of teenagers will go to see it just so they can talk about how hilarious it was when Stacey jumped so hard she spilled her popcorn. Most studio produced horror films are this nowadays.

As Above, So Below barely escapes this category. It has brief moments of brilliance but then pisses these brilliant moments away by catering towards the dumb fuck teenagers. That scene where the guy gets sucked into the burning car was fucking laughable. If I was watching the normal teeny bopper horror film it wouldn't phase me because it's exactly what I would expect, but the few brilliant moments this film had meant this car scene just angered me even more.

Simply coming to that conclusion wouldn't be scientific in their eyes.

OP, I'd suggest Lake Mungo. I thought it was an absolutely chilling piece of kino.

>Simply coming to that conclusion wouldn't be scientific in their eyes.
1. These people aren't scientists, just a bunch of children making a documentary.
2. They were looped around the creek. At that point supernatural shit is the only explanation.

I know they're just children, but I was replying to the first critique from the other user. Logically, you'd arrive at the same conclusion, until it was too late. Which is what they did - by the end of the film, they're broken.

>chilling

It's good, but I wouldn't say chilling. It's not even scary, more interesting.

If you tell people it's scary and it's not they're gonna be disappointed

Don't breathe is mostly jump scares. Characters move impossibly far in a set time frame just to make sure that when the camera jumps back to one angle, there they are.

>Logically, you'd arrive at the same conclusion, until it was too late. Which is what they did - by the end of the film, they're broken.
They were dead as soon as they entered the forest desu.

TCM is the pinnacle of using atmospheric horror, especially during Leatherface's first kill

Best film ITT. Not even a contest.

I saw Raw recently and it was pretty cool.
Great atmosphere, well shot. The reveal is kinda silly but it's one of the few horror movies I would actually consider as a good movie.

Does this film actually have a story or is it supposed to be Lynch style where "I'm gonna tease you with a brief hints of a coherent narrative when in actuality this film is a load of random bullshit and there's no actual story". I watched this movie once years ago and didn't understand what the fuck I just sat through.

Those are some nice titties mate

It's beautiful user. You'll understand it if you give it your attention. It's not complicated at all. I'll give you spoilers if you want but I'd rather not ruin the feels

Nah, I'll give it another watch see if I can understand better second time round.

What did it for me was the fact that the film just feels like a scary story told to me when I was younger. It isn't trying to be larger than life horror film - if anything, it's relatable because it deals with a lot of human issues to do with family and loss.
But then it sidelines that with this grander sense of the supernatural which I think is carried out very well. There are the iconic 'photograph' scenes but the whole movie has this thick sense of impending death and judgement. The doco-style helps this out.

I'm Australian too, so the rural Aussie town feel hit very close to home.

Even if it's not a typical horror film, I'd still recommend it to anything wanting a much slower-burn supernatural story that doesn't focus on outright terror or SFX.

They realise this later on in the film. You may have even quoted them, I can't remember exactly.

Enjoy man.

If they did think things through and get out Then that would ruin the movie, but they were pretentious, sheltered college kids who had a bare minimum of what to do in the outdoors. And even if they tried to burn down the forest they'd have to worry about more than the Witch at that point

The scene with the ghost Laura is probably the scariest part, but it does it really well.

Yeah, Mungo is definitely a good film. the Oz docu-drama style was believable imo (a britfag). The twists were awesome.

I watched The Tunnel recently, another oz horror, fucken awful.

Check out Candyman. It's usually regarded as a lame slasher movie, but it's really a lot more than that. Aside from some things that are obviously the result of studio meddling, it's one of the smartest horror movies of the past thirty years. Plus, it gets a bonus for being really effective during mostly daytime settings, which is pretty rare.

>It sickens me how underrated Silent House is
Me, too. I watched it not expecting much, and it ended up being one of the best relatively recent horror movies I've seen. It got a lot of hate, but most of it really didn't make sense; I got the impression people were mad that it wasn't a stupid haunted house movie full of jump scares.

the part where he threw the map in the river ruined it for me. who the fuck does that?

Shit I remember loving this movie. I should give it a rewatch.

This is the one film I couldn't watch. I stopped after 10 minutes and I refuse to try again. It's literally too much horror for me, and there was nothing even scary happening on the screen.

The music, scenery and camera angles give it an atmosphere that is hard to watch imo.

If you want to get creeped the fuck out and probably kill yourself, watch Antichrist.

He explains why. They'd been following it for days and still got lost. He got frustrated and kicked it in the river because it was useless. People who get lost in the woods actually do shit like that all the time.

And by the way, you guys are all replying to really old pasta.

I think it aged very well and had mostly realistic and relatable characters, but that map part was infuriating as hell

I thought he did it on accident. He was laughing and giddy about it because he was so pissed off that he did it.

I'm so happy there's 2 anons that have good taste. Silent House is a 7/10, easy. The entire movie "looks" like it was done in one single take with one camera, years before Birdman did it with CGI. And the story is awesome.

I recommend it in every horror thread and usually get btfo lel

Fuck them. We like it.

Honestly, I think the main issue is that most horror movies are shit, and that's given most horror fans a really skewed metric for judging how good a movie is. Even though most of them say they want movies that focus on tension, they don't know how to handle movies that focus on tension because they're so used to action and jump scares. Silent House is a great example, because the movie is entirely driven by tension. It's literally just a camera following a person who's terrified and going through a scary experience with them. Yet, most people seem to think it's boring and that nothing happens in it.

In the Mouth of Madness is a must see

You've hit the nail on the head.

when i first watched it i thought the characters were going insane, which really explains the later actions in the movie

bemp dat shet metherfecker

Pure kino. The atmosphere in this is so smothering, I'm surprised it doesn't get talked about more often, even more so with how many /r9k/ beta flyovers we have posting here

I'm sure it's great, I just can't watch it user, and horror hasn't scared me since I was 18.

The atmosphere literally crawls into your eyes and fills you with a feeling of actual fucking death.

I don't know how anyone could stand that for 2 hrs lel

>burn down the forest

how did anyone not reply to this? I know it's copypasta but it usually reels in some newfags

Check out Resolution OP. It's all atmosphere, there's nothing even close to being a jump scare in the movie.
It's about this guy that's gone to find his junkie friend squatting in a house in the woods. He finds him and chains him to the radiator. Shit happens from there.