2013: SCARIEST MOMENT - DESCENDING THE STAIRS (V/H/S 2)

I'd never have thought it after seeing Gareth Evans' The Raid, but his collaboration with Timo Tjahjanto for the anthology film V/H/S 2, entitled Safe Haven, was fucking terrific, and fucking terrifying too. And it's particularly notable for its scariness in that it doesn't rely on blood and guts to generate fear, nor jump scares. Instead, it employs them sensibly and, in the case of the gore, liberally. But the more unsettling moment was in the build-up to all of the later bloodshed. As the documentary film crew descends the stairs to the cult compound, the camcorder lighting, the claustophobic stairwell and the strong sense of impending horror (already apparent, even in the segment's early moments) are unutterably horrible in cumulation. It's far from the most consistent film of 2013 (Adam Wingard's opening segment is truly dire), but in Evans' and Tjahjanto's contribution, it's undoubtedly the scariest.