‘I left shellshocked’: writers on their scariest non-horror movies

For Halloween, Guardian writers have picked the most efficiently terrifying films outside of the horror genre from How to Have Sex to The Hunchback of Notre Dame Minor spoilers ahead Hiding in plain sight throughout Lee Chang-dong’s deliciously enigmatic Burning, in which a spiri

For Halloween, Guardian writers have picked the most efficiently terrifying films outside of the horror genre from How to Have Sex to The Hunchback of Notre Dame Minor spoilers ahead Hiding in plain sight throughout Lee Chang-dong’s deliciously enigmatic Burning, in which a spirited young woman (Jeon Jong-seo) disappears, and a wealthy playboy (Steven Yeun) gives serial killer vibes, is a disaffected male rage. That’s perhaps the most commonplace horror of our times, whether on the internet or politics, and you feel the tremors of it steadily breaking the surface in Yoo Ah-in’s performance. He plays Jong-su, an aspiring writer, quietly frustrated with his lot in life.

Jong-su works odd jobs and tends to his incarcerated father’s dilapidated farm, growing more desperate to grasp some sense of control over the world around him, which is where the scary part comes in. Chang-dong is the master dramatist who with Burning tilts violently into thriller territory, navigating elements from Taxi Driver, The Vanishing and Michael Haneke’s Caché, using the language of horror movies to conjure up a creeping anxiety and dread that erupts into pure existential fear. Radheyan Simonpillai Continue reading...