Horror

John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness. Really cool premise with a cameo from Alice Cooper, and some neat practical effects

American History X

As you wish: Wishmaster (1997).

"Do you wish to be beautiful forever?"

Threads (1984), imo there are very few films I think everyone should watch but that's the one that most readily comes to mind.

It's on the edge of horror, but I find it terrifying.

8mm. It's a Nick Cage movie, but it's him at his best.

If that's not truly horror, then I gotta go old school and say the original Nightmare on Elm Street. It's not a must see because it's the best ever made or anything; there's some spotty acting, and it has that eighties vibe. But it's still scary because the concept is a nightmare of its own. The idea of something creeping around the edges of dreams, waiting to ooze into you and rip you apart from the inside? That's fucking genius.

It's also a seminal film, and of the slasher genre. It's one of the holy trinity that, eventually, led to things like Saw, scream, and all the modern variations on the slasher theme.

pi 1998 by darren aronofsky.. obsession, paranoia, gaslighting, pattern seeking.. maybe visually jarring for its high-contrast b/w but lends itself to the texture of delusional clarity. story of a man whose independent research yields some numerical anomaly and he becomes driven by the need to re-create this outcome.

Tuesdays with Morrie

(1997)

My English teacher had the class watch it every year before graduation and for whatever reason it stuck more than any other in class school memory