What is your favorite setting for horror movies?

[The Burgomaster]

Often, the setting of a horror movie is just as important as the characters or the monster.  What is your favorite setting?

[moman]

I like forests because I like adventures and Evil Dead. Schools are good to because students and teachers tend to have potential to be interesting characters.

[frank]

I voted for "mansion", but I'm picky. It has to be an old (preferably black and white) mansion with a lab in the cellar with all kinds of bubbling and pretty useless apparatuses and the whole setting is to be situated not too far from a small rural town (for gossipping about the mansion), and I wouldn't mind a deep forrest or jungle nearby.

Now some popcorn and let the movie begin!

[Dennis]

I chose "other", a better choice for me would have been all of the above, the setting of the story is important to be sure, but the story also needs to explain the setting, some movies do this better than others, as long as it's even semi-believable within the story, even something as simple as, "we brought the giant beastie to San Dego because that's where I live", I'm okay with it.

[threnody]

Definitely a castle, or in some ruins.

Did anyone ever play that old PC game, Clive Barker's Undying? For me, that's the ultimate setting.

[JaseSF]

The dark and dreary castle with the thunder and lightning stormy night always tends to come to mind first so that's what I decided to vote.

[SynapticBoomstick]

A good, tough question this one. I finally chose The Museum because so many ancient artifacts reside within them and everyone knows, artifacts equal curses, creatures and supernatural events . Movies like The Relic, Hellboy, even Alone in the Dark, they all tap into an unknown fear: The past can't hurt you. Oh boy can it ever!

Second would be the Lab because something strange is always cooking in those tubes.

Third, I'm going to have to go with Castle as well because one of my favorite "WTF" titles, Pit of Bloody Horror, takes place within one.

It wasn't an easy choice

[Killer Bees]

I chose "other".  In my case it would be an abandoned town, covered with fog like The Fog or Silent Hill.  Somewhere the main character/s don't know so they have to contend with finding their way around (like to a phone to call for help) and also hearing weird noises they can't identify and things coming out at them from all sides so they can't defend themselves properly.

[Shadow]

Any of those settings would work for me, but since I have a fascination with castles, I chose that one.

[Eyesore]

As a kid I visited my aunt several times in a mental institution, and it was one of the most surreal, frightening experiences of my life. As I got older, other family members were also institutionalized, and visiting them brought back the same feelings. When my Grandma died in 1990, I found a newspaper clipping from the late 20's that stated that my Great Grandma died (drowned) in the state mental hospital.

Haunted or not, abandoned or populated, mental institutions scare the hell out of me.

...and Yes, the "Thorazine Shuffle" is the most popular dance at my family reunions...

[RCMerchant]

EYESORE has a good one-nut houses are creepy joints...I too have had to visit kin in the mental ward....it's pretty creepy.

But  I choose rural settings....I live in the backwoods, and I can picture some whacked out interbred hill-rats living in those tar-paper covered , tin roof shacks down near the track-pan outside of town ...going apes**t on meth and going on a killing spree. YIKES! 

[Jack]

Although I adore castles with laboratories and dungeons and the omnipresent thunderstorm, I had to go with a spaceship.  My first love is sci-fi, and my second is horror.  Mix those together and I'm a happy man. 

[The Burgomaster]

Unfortunately, I inadvertently left the ever-popular CARNIVALS / AMUSEMENT PARKS off the list.  So anyone who wants this choice can select "Other."

[Ash]

I chose the Home.
We tend to think of our homes as safe.  It can be quite disconcerting when ghosts and/or monsters get us where we sleep!


Forests/campgrounds would be my next choice.

[Andrew]

Hammer had a good taste in settings:

The family manor house
The family graveyard/crypt behind the house
The local tavern
The spooky old church or castle