Five Furious Paranormal Flicks

It's October, and that means it's time for yet another installment of the frighteningly fun Paranormal Activity franchise. In the spirit of those malevolent entities, we've rounded up five very different films about things that go bump in the night to get you adequately on edge…

They're here… Poltergeist premiered in theaters 30 years ago, and the Steven Spielberg –produced film still remains one of the scariest movies ever made. The story of an ordinary family that experiences malevolent spirits who claim their youngest daughter, Poltergeist was directed by Tobe Hooper of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre fame, but Spielberg's fingerprints are all over the film, from the themes of childhood innocence and imagination to the awe-inspiring soundtrack and cookie-cutter suburban setting that mirrors E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Back when the film came out, Spielberg told ET, "Essentially [Poltergeist] is a movie about tightening your stomach muscles and keeping them there for two hours until something gives."

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Get Poltergeist

This haunted happening from the Paranormal Activity producers and Saw director James Wan finds a young couple (Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne) grappling with the fact that their house isn't haunted – their comatose little boy is -- and in jeopardy of being trapped in a mysterious realm. The film is clearly inspired by Poltergeist and The Shining, but has enough originality and genuine scares to qualify as a worthy thrill ride.


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Get Insidious

Definitely not to be confused with the Clint Eastwood film starring Angelina Jolie, this 1980 horror film stars George C. Scott as a composer and recent widower who moves into a spooky old Victorian mansion that turns out to be haunted by the ghost of a murdered child. An antique wheelchair and bouncing rubber ball provide the right chills as the angry ghost does some serious door-slamming, window-shattering damage, prompting Scott to investigate his mysterious murder.


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Get The Changeling

Based on the supposedly true bestseller, the 1979 film starring James Brolin and Margot Kidder -- about a family that moves into their dream home in Long Island, only to discover that it is haunted -- delivers chills with its eerie children's chorus soundtrack and '70s cinema verite-style approach to horror, from the swarming flies and ghostly voices yelling "Get out!" to bleeding walls and Jodie the red-eyed, invisible pig. Stay away from the 2005 update starring Ryan Reynolds and Melissa George, which misses the mark at every turn.


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Get The Amityville Horror

A black-and-white chiller that provides plenty of ghostly thumping and bumping, the virtues of this 1963 film about experts investigating a haunted New England mansion (with a rich history of death and murder) are in the innovative sound design, the unseen off-screen and the less-is more build-up to some great, old-fashioned scares. Stay away from the overkill 1999 remake with Liam Neeson, Owen Wilson and Catherine Zeta-Jones. What's scary about that film is how boring it is.


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Get The Haunting