Horror Movies for Cowards Like Me

I am a very cowardly person, but I really love horrors and thrillers. My favorite movie, The Night of the Hunter (1955), genuinely haunts my dreams, despite the fact that it was made 70 years ago and has many comically awful continuity errors. I am simply not cut out for this genre, but I really don’t want to seem faint-hearted to other people. 

If you also care about what other people think and are secretly a coward, here are some horror movies that won’t keep you up at night. And if anyone ever asks for your favorite horror movie this October, you not only sound incredibly brave and fearless, but also niche and mysterious with these artsy picks! (And the first two are free to watch on YouTube! No excuses now…)

The Cat and the Canary (1927)

The Cat and the Canary has a classic “family fighting over inheritance” plot, but is set in a haunted mansion. An added bonus is that it won’t scare you in the slightest. For one, it’s silent. It’s very difficult to create good suspense when the audience has to pause to read all the title cards to even understand what’s happening. Also, 100-year-old movies are the way to go for horror—we’re so accustomed to CGI and colorful gore that the horrors of this movie seem very tame. The “ghost” is literally a guy in a big overcoat. 

Viy (1967)

Viy, briefly categorized by Wikipedia as a “Soviet Gothic dark fantasy folk horror,” checks all the boxes for you to appear both cultured and courageous. Based on a Nikolai Gogol tale (anyone who took English 9 will recall his story ‘The Overcoat’), this is the pinnacle of weird Russian art. It follows a priest who has to spend three days locked in a room exorcizing and blessing a coffin, but the witch inside keeps coming back to life. My favorite scene, pictured above, involves her surfing in circles on a flying coffin around the priest for an extended period of time. I don’t think my heart rate rose once during this whole watch.

House (1977)

This Japanese comedy-horror movie is so incredibly bizarre that you will forget to be scared. There are strange practical effects, odd music choices, and such an indescribable, fast-moving plot that I physically can’t even begin to summarize it. Just watch it. It’s gained a large cult following that you can join afterwards for a lovely community.

Honorable Mention: Certain Stephen King Books

Horror books can be more manageable for cowards than movies. Stephen King is a great pick because he notoriously writes horrible endings. This means that you’ll sleep very well at night after finishing a book by him, because any tension you had while reading it quickly fades with a horrible conclusion. Here are some of my favorites by him that suffer from this problem: The Shining, Pet Sematary, and The Stand. Happy reading!