The Vanishing

I read that this was supposedly one of the scariest movies of all time. It's not scary, so much as just creepy and chilling. What's remarkable about it is that it goes well beyond most movies in the thriller or horror genre in exploring themes of existential dread and fate. The antagonist bucks fate once by jumping off a building as a youth. He reasons that it's predestined that he - won't - jump off the building, so off he goes. Likewise, [spoiler] it's predestined that people like him, a family man with two daughters, which is significant - won't - kidnap people and send them to their dusty doom, so, in his warped reasoning, kidnap them, he must[/spoiler]. As a portrait of the inner workings of a madman and sociopath, it's a fascinating movie, and from a directing standpoint, it apparently inspired countless movies that came after it.

Kubrick said it was the most terrifying film he’d ever seen