I like scary movies, but they don't usually scare me. Unfortunately, though, I usually have to wait until the movie comes to HBO/Starz/Showtime or go by myself because they give my husband nightmares! I thought
Frailty was particularly good, but I haven't seen
The Ring yet.
Actually, I found
The Shining with Nicholson to be more comic than scary, and it took out the parts of the book that I thought were the most important to the story (and the neatest). Sadly,
Misery does a 180 on the whole point of the original book--how annoying! The best Stephen King adaptations?
Stand by Me (The Body),
The Dead Zone,
The Shawshank Redemption (Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption),
The Green Mile--and an honorable mention for
Pet Sematary, in which the actors tried harder than the production.
The door-knocking scene in the original
The Haunting (1963) is actually pretty tingly, and the movie's based on one of the scariest novels I've read,
The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson. Unfortunately, they didn't put enough of the book into the movie, though.
Unfortunately, the majority of scary movies tend to be unimaginative and disappointing, but the increasing production values lately (
The Sixth Sense,
The Others) are encouraging. Better films are coming out more frequently.
Well, too long. Anyway, there's some suggestions.