do you have any recommendations for really scary and/or disturbing books or movies? especially if they are similar in tone to house of leaves!
alright, if you liked house of leaves you might like—
existential void-horror (ihumans driven by ambition or curiosity or circumstance venture into dark places and find themselves gazing into a silent and swallowing abyss and being gazed back into until they crack open and are changed into something frightful and fractured and deranged):
in space: moon; sunshine; solyaris and solaris (remake; i prefer tarkovsky ‘72 but both are disturbing), alien; event horizon; 2001: a space odyssey; pandorum; doctor who episode “midnight”; william gibson, “hinterlands”; peter watts, blindsight; terrence holt, in the valley of the kings; dan simmons, hyperion.
terrestrial: the descent; the abyss; the divide; dan simmons, the terror; cube; jacob’s ladder; thomas ligotti, “nethescurial”; jorge luis borges, ”the zahir”, ”tlön, uqbar, orbis tertius”; h.p. lovecraft, the call of cthulu and other stories; edgar allan poe, “the pit and the pendulum”.
haunted houses & hauntings:
shirley jackson, the haunting of hill house; kathe koja, the cipher; h.p. lovecraft, “the rats in the walls“ & ”the shunned house”; stephen king, the shining; richard matheson, hell house; the orphanage; the devil’s backbone; [rec]; session 9; edgar allan poe, “the fall of the house of usher”; henry james, the turn of the screw; ringu; SCP-087; the changeling.
sinister postmodernist metafiction:
vladimir nabokov, pale fire & bend sinister; paul auster, oracle night and the new york trilogy; cabin in the woods; pontypool (also a bbc radio drama); philip k. dick, the three stigmata of palmer eldritch and “second variety“ and every story he ever wrote; franz kafka, ”the trial” (proto-postmodern); eraserhead.
robert louis stevenson, strange case of dr jekyll & mr hyde; ira levin, rosemary’s baby; john ajvide lindqvist, let the right one in & let the right one in (swedish film); 28 days later; no country for old men; coraline; cormac mccarthy, the road; dan simmons, carrion comfort; jose saramago, blindness; richard matheson, i am legend; stephen king, salem’s lot, pet sematary, ”the jaunt” (short story); peter straub, ghost story; ian banks, the wasp factory; linda addison, how to recognise a demon has become your friend; octavia e. butler, dawn.
