The Architecture of Fright: 9 of the Scariest Buildings In the Genre

David Lynch's Lost Highway is chilling for several reasons, but the gorgeous home of Fred and Renee Madison (Bill Pullman, Patricia Arquette) is architectural eye candy. The house is every bit as glamorous as Fred and Renee, but it seems like a vacuum of anxiety and low-key terror. There is the jail where Fred is eventually incarcerated, Pete Dayton's (Balthazar Getty) home, and finally, a lonely shack in the desert. The narrative seems to go from house to house but never has a home. The remarkable scene with the Mystery Man (Robert Blake) centers on Fred's house, one of the most disturbing scenes in cinema.

The Night House, directed by David Bruckner, stars Rebecca Hall and Evan Jonigkeit. It is perhaps one of the best examples of a film where the home's architecture is central to its scare factor. Beth Parchin's (Rebecca Hall) husband was an architect and left a plan for a "reverse house," or another version of the home he designed and built for them, that Beth finds after his death. One of the biggest scares comes when a face appears from a corner molding. The film's climax occurs when Beth discovers the reverse house is real and lies a short distance from her home, and she finds the truth inside of it. You can watch Fango's interview with director David Bruckner here.

The Shining is set at the fictional Overlook Hotel and is another film where the building seems to become a character in the story. The Overlook collects souls and seems to covet the souls of people with "The Shining," or precognitive psychic power. The evil force within the hotel tricks people into thinking that they are meant to be a part of the hotel forever, and the hotel's power seems to be concentrated in specific places like the infamous Room 237. The beauty of the hotel is its lure.

Brad Anderson's Session 9 is centered around a different type of building. It is a decommissioned mental hospital that needs asbestos removal. The hospital they used in the film, Danvers State Hospital, had a labyrinth of tunnels used during the winter months for staff to continue to go from different parts of the hospital without going out into the snow. Architect Nathaniel J. Bradlee designed it. Some literary historians believe Danvers may have inspired H.P. Lovecraft's asylum in his story The Thing On The Doorstep. The oppressive and frightening look of the crumbling hospital is scary, and director Brad Anderson takes advantage of the hospital's menacing aura.

Derek Jarman, a genius theater scenic designer, entirely constructed the set of Ken Russell's film The Devils. He was so great that Ken Russell hired him for the huge task despite the fact that he had never before worked on a film as a production designer. The mostly white sets were built at Pinewood Studios and were the largest that had been built since the making of the film Cleopatra. His inspiration was the works of neoclassical artists such as Claude Nicolas Ledoux, Étienne-Louis Boullée, and Giovanni Battista Piranesi. The clean yet unforgiving white walls serve to show the terror of the witch hunt in sharp relief.

In a change from the gorgeous hotels and homes, Candyman is set in Chicago's Cabrini-Green housing development, which was notorious for shoddy construction but had art in the form of graffiti everywhere. The housing development isn't evil; ordinary people just trying to live peacefully reside there. But the ruined conditions of the buildings and the desolate urban setting give it an unnerving atmosphere. Buildings, even formerly glorious ones, can be very frightening as they decay.

Robert Wise's film The Haunting is adapted from Shirley Jackson's novel The Haunting of Hill House. The mansion is very intimidating, and the exteriors were shot at Ettington Park, an English estate that later became a hotel. The lead actresses, Julie Harris and Clare Bloom were reportedly frightened by the house. British designer Elliot Scott constructed the rococo-style interiors at MGM British Studios. The sets were built with ceilings. This construction gave each specially-made room a claustrophobic feel. Jackson's novel highly influences Stephen King's book and, thus, the film adaptation, so you can see a cinematic lineage between the two films. In the story, the house seems alive, and the construction and decor of the sets make that idea as realistic as possible.

Bong Joon-ho's Parasite is a film about the greed and class war between ultra-rich and lower-income families. There isn't anything supernatural about it, but there is a killer driven mad by imprisonment brought on by poverty. The villain is economic distress. The story shows a wealthy family incapable of doing anything for themselves and a lower-income family scamming the wealthy family. The haunting beauty of the rich family's home is central to the conflict in the film. There aren't ghosts; the monster is a human being. The house was designed just for the film and is a cold yet gorgeous container for animosity. It seems to generate and amplify those feelings within all three families differently from Hill House or the Overlook Hotel.

David Cronenberg's Shivers has an architectural horror based on modern convenience. The "Starliner Tower" is a high-rise on an island that will give you everything you need: security and luxury. The problem isn't a supernatural force, it is the sexually transmitted parasites. The horror is that being inside the building traps you, and it's only a matter of time until you are infected. The building has a cold and generic feeling, another factor in the film's terror. As the hero Roger St. Luc (Paul Hampton), tries to escape, the building becomes his prison. Shivers was filmed in Mies van der Rohe's Hi-Rise no. 3 on Nun's Island.