John Carpenter’s Scariest Pick Might Surprise You: “I really loved the movie. Loved it.”
Ask horror fans what keeps them up at night and you will hear a dozen different answers. John Carpenter knows that feeling better than most. The filmmaker who gave us Halloween and The Thing has spent a lifetime studying how fear seeps in and lingers. He tends to praise movies that do not just jump out at you but work their way under your skin.
Carpenter has often said that the best horror is about what you imagine rather than what you see. He values mood, tension, and the sense that something is wrong even when nothing obvious is happening. That is the kind of terror that never quite lets go.
When pressed on the single film that delivers that experience at full strength, Carpenter points straight to Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In his words, “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is an incredible movie. It’s one of the scariest movies ever. The whole idea is scary. You really don’t see anything; it’s not explicit. But it’s what’s going on in your head that’s scary. It’s also extremely funny — it’s almost a comedy. I really loved the movie. Loved it.”
He returns to that point again and again. What makes it so frightening is not the gore but the imagination it sparks. The whine of the saw and the heat of a summer day do more damage than any splashy effect. Even the humor makes the shocks feel stranger and more real.
Carpenter has also shared a wry aside about Hooper’s classic from another conversation. “That was a pretty cool flick. It’s also funny. That movie was comedy, in a sense.” The idea sounds odd until you remember how nervous laughter can tip straight into dread.
His taste across the genre backs up this view. He admires films that broke rules because they made audiences feel something raw. Talking about The Exorcist, he put it simply. “You know what’s scary about The Exorcist. Everyone knows what’s scary about that movie. It’s the devil.” He added that it “broke a bunch of taboos” and still hits hard when you revisit it.
All of this explains why Carpenter’s scariest pick lands where it does. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre traps viewers in a nightmare that feels like it could happen on any forgotten road. It leaves space for the mind to race. It lets sound and suggestion do the heavy lifting. And in doing so it proves Carpenter’s long held belief that what you cannot quite see is often the most terrifying thing of all.