10 Disturbing Films That Use Subtlety Rather Than Gore To Frighten You

"The Wicker Man," directed by Robin Hardy, is a folk horror masterpiece that gently creeps up on its protagonist and the audience with open arms and a wide smile. The happy residents of Summerisle openly celebrate pagan rituals, which disgust the Christian policeman there to find a missing girl. You watch as a trap slowly encircles the man who thinks he knows better than everyone. That's creepy.

Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez's film "The Blair Witch Project" achieved a fantastic feat. It scared more people than many other horror films with piles of rock, symbols made of sticks, and the reactions of their well-chosen and unknown actors. You only see blood once, and the two scariest moments involve looking at a wall. There's nothing else quite like it.

Alejandro Amenábar's "The Others" is a lush ghost story in which you follow a trail of crumbs telling you what is happening. There are no dismemberments, only the longing and solitude of the country manor and the overwhelming feeling that something is deeply wrong.

Josh Rubin's "Scare Me" is about telling each other scary stories. In it, there is an aura of jealousy and hate that underpins the friendly one-upmanship of the central contest between a successful author and an aspiring author. One of the scariest moments is a one-off meta-moment when one of the two main characters sees the door to the cellar open and then refuses to go downstairs.

The Stepford Wives, directed by Bryan Forbes and starring Katherine Ross and Paula Prentiss, is a horror film about losing your identity. Women who step outside the traditional roles of mother and are wilful seem to turn into 50s homemakers suddenly. Joanna Ebhardt can feel a circle of conspiracy around her but can't quantify it. It isn't until it is her time to be replaced that she learns the truth.

"Compliance" is pure psychological horror. It shows how easy it is to control people's behavior and get them to do terrible and reprehensible things by convincing them that you are in authority. Craig Zobel's film is even more chilling because it is based on an actual life incident.

Lynne Ramsay's alarming film of a family that learns too late that their family member is a killer lasts long in the memory. While the mother harbors feelings of fear about her son, no one seems to listen, and when the son finally acts on his homicidal urges, she is the one that the community blames. It's a nightmare.

Jordan Peele's debut is a psychological terror fest where Chris Washington, played by Daniel Kaluuya, starts to suspect that his girlfriend's family has ulterior motives for inviting him to meet them. The isolation and the unnerving plot are woven around Chris; seeking to exploit his vulnerabilities for their gain is terrifying.

David Bruckner's "The Night House" is a sinister film about how you can never really know someone, even someone you love. Rebecca Hall's incredible performance as the widow of an architect who died from suicide is filled with painful truth as she discovers everything he hid from her and who he really was.

Another one of Mario Bava's classic tales of the macabre that has a brilliance and beauty that few other films have. "Black Sabbath" is a creepy anthology film with three stories, one about a woman with a dangerous man stalking her obsessively. Then Boris Karloff, the film's narrator, plays the Wurdulak, a vampire who preys on their loved ones, and the story of an unfortunate nurse who steals a ring from a corpse she is supposed to guard. The segments are all unnerving, but the last, "The Drop of Water' is the most eerie of them all.