15 Disturbing Movies That You Can't Unsee
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Some go to the movies to be entertained. Others go to the movies to be challenged. Then, there are a brave (or depraved) few, who hope to be challenged way, way beyond the standards that most mainstream audiences would find acceptable. For those viewers, there exists a category of movies so f*cked up that most audiences haven't even seen them - and in many cases, that's because rating boards slapped them with an NC-17 rating, an X-rating, or the rare “unrated” status. These movies typically feature gore, drug use, sex, or all of the above.
However, it would be reductive to categorize these screwed up films as pointless exercises in shocking viewers. Some of the most disturbing movies on this list are also some of the most critically acclaimed. Many have a valid political or satirical point to make in their depravity, while many others offer up compelling writing, visuals, and performances that stick with you, for better or for worse. These films may be worth watching, even if viewers come to regret it later.
- 1284 VOTESPhoto: Unearthed Films
Disturbing Premise: An aging Serbian adult film star takes a gig that turns out to be a snuff film requiring him to participate in the worst depravity imaginable.
Why You Might Regret Watching: This film is basically like if someone looked up "most taboo sexual behaviors" and tried to fit all the search results into one movie. To put it another way, it's been banned in 46 countries.
However, A Serbian Film is not merely an exercise in shock value, the movie is actually intended as a political allegory about the rule of dictator Slobodan Milosevic. It's well worth a watch - for those who are able to stomach watching some incredibly graphic acts unfold.
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- 2323 VOTESPhoto: IFC Films
Disturbing Premise: In the first installment of this delightfully disgusting trilogy by Tom Six, released in 2009, a demented German surgeon surgically attaches three kidnapped tourists from rectum to mouth. There's really not much more to it than that.
Why You Might Regret Watching: If you haven't seen The Human Centipede, all you have to do is picture the digestive dynamics of having three people attached mouth-to-rectum. If you can't, the film documents this for you in exhaustive detail. How hard this is to watch really depends on one's individual tolerance for body horror. If the first movie isn't enough to make you almost lose your lunch, remember that there are two sequels, which take the “centipede” to much greater lengths (literally).
- 3245 VOTESPhoto: United Artists Europa
Disturbing Premise: Cannibal Holocaust tells the merry tale of a rescue mission to locate a group of documentary filmmakers who went missing in the Amazon rain forest while trying to locate a remote tribe. However, when the rescuers eventually discover the lost film, the result is a nightmare.
Why You Might Regret Watching: Where to even start? Cannibal Holocaust is an Italian film from 1980 and definitely did not earn the “No animals were harmed while making this film” designation. One scene features a rainforest guide butchering and cooking a tortoise without sparing any details. That's just one example.
To add to the discomfort, there's the way the film depicts indigenous people, who alternate from being bloodthirsty killers to hapless victims. At one point, hoping to spice up their documentary, the students torch an indigenous village and kill several people in the process. On top of all that, each and every moment of carnage is depicted in unflinching detail. The film maintains a cult following due to the sheer line-crossing nature of its content, but it's not for the faint of heart.
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- 4173 VOTESPhoto: United Artists
Disturbing Premise: For starters, Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom is an adaptation of the Marquis de Sade's novel The 120 Days of Sodom, which is a typically depraved yarn about a bunch of French aristocrats who kidnap several innocent people and make them participate in an orgy. An adaptation of this story would already be tough to watch, but in 1975 director Pier Paolo Pasolini updated it by setting it during WWII and making the aristocrat characters into Italian fascists.
Why You Might Regret Watching: The entire film is a touch watch. On the level of political allegory, the film is a story about wealthy, power-hungry fascists kidnapping a group of young people specifically to degrade and destroy them. It's an uncomfortable reminder about the reality of war and how middle-aged politicians throw away young people's lives. But it's also nearly two hours of high-status characters humiliating their victims in increasingly awful ways, without a comeuppance. If that isn't enough to serve as a warning, one should also know there's a particularly disgusting scene involving a character eating feces... with a spoon. This is the kind of movie that film nerds pull out of their collection when they really want to shock their friends.
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- #11 of 125 onThe 100+ Grossest Movies Ever
- 5246 VOTESPhoto: Hallmark Releasing
Disturbing Premise: Wes Craven's 1972 horror classic, which is his take on Ingmar Bergman's 1960 film The Virgin Spring, has a straightforward yet horrifying plot: a group of depraved criminals brutalize and murder a 17-year-old on her birthday, along with her best friend. Then, her outraged parents exact their revenge on the killers.
Why You Might Regret Watching: While most horror films deal with fantastical threats and monsters, The Last House on the Left deals with relatively grounded situations and real-life stakes. Craven doesn't flinch from portraying the worst aspects of either the inciting incident or its aftermath. There's really no way to describe the graphic acts that unfold in polite language.
That being said, the film is also Craven's feature directing debut, launching a career that includes the Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream franchises, along with many other horror classics.
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- 6162 VOTESPhoto: Sovexportfilm
Disturbing Premise: A dramatization of the Nazi occupation of Belarus, through the lens of Soviet filmmaker Elem Klimov's family's experiences, Come and See tells the story of a Belarusian boy named Flyora who is forced to join a group of partisans to fight Nazi rule, witnessing a series of atrocities against his people along the way.
Why You Might Regret Watching: Movies about war atrocities aren't easy to watch, nor should they be. This one includes countless acts of violence committed on all sides by and against the Nazis, their collaborators, the partisans, and civilians. One of the most gut-wrenching moments is when Flyora watches the Nazis herd all the members of a village into its church, where they are then burned alive. It's all the more haunting to see these horrors through a child's point of view.
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- 7250 VOTESPhoto: Artisan Entertainment
Disturbing Premise: Darren Aronofsky's 2000 adaptation of Hubert Selby Jr.'s 1978 novel follows four characters as drug addiction exerts increasing physical and psychological tolls on their deteriorating lives.
Why You Might Regret Watching: For starters, Requiem for a Dream delivers an unflinching look at a painful subject that affects millions of people around the world: addiction. It also features a nauseating buffet of extreme moments as these four characters seek to score drugs to feed their addictions. For a couple of harrowing examples, Jared Leto's character has his arm amputated after extreme heroin abuse, and Jennifer Connelly's character is pressured into sex work. At one point, she's forced to perform a particularly degrading act in front of a bunch of businessmen - the faint of heart should not look it up.
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- 8162 VOTESPhoto: Mars Distribution
Disturbing Premise: Told in reverse chronological order, Irréversible follows two men, Marcus and Pierre, who seek revenge against the man who sexually assaulted their mutual love interest, Alex.
Why You Might Regret Watching: Irréversible begins with Marcus and Pierre hunting Alex's supposed assailant through a Paris BDSM club, which concludes with Pierre brutally murdering him (a sequence that has been described as one of the most violent scenes ever filmed). From there, it unravels the story that led up to this moment, including a depiction of Alex's sexual assault in excruciating detail. Both of these moments would be hard enough to watch even without coming to care about the characters, but director Gaspar Noé ensures that viewers do.
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- 9264 VOTESPhoto: Warner Bros.
Disturbing Premise: A weekend rafting and camping in Appalachia turns into a nightmare when a group of buddies runs afoul of stereotypically inbred backwoods freaks.
Why You Might Regret Watching: In addition to the crude, stereotypical portrayal of the mountain-dwelling folk, there's the infamous “Squeal like a pig!” sequence involving Ned Beatty's character, Bobby. Suffice to say, it's a drawn-out, unpleasant scene of violent degradation that throws the rest of the movie off-kilter. By the time Bobby's remaining friends get their revenge, that infamous scene is still one of the more nauseating things viewers will remember - though hardly the only disturbing moment in an all-around gory film.
- 10127 VOTESPhoto: Good Machine Releasing
Disturbing Premise: Happiness is Todd Solondz's critically acclaimed 1998 character study of three sisters. That doesn't sound all that disturbing, until you get to the specifics, which include sexual assault, suicide, and pedophilia.
Why You Might Regret Watching: Although the film is dark throughout, the first storyline involving eldest sister Trish and her husband Bill, a psychiatrist who's attracted to children, tends to overshadow the rest in terms of shock value. Happiness starts off with multiple straightforward scenes featuring Bill committing his crimes before being caught, all of which are difficult to stomach. In the two subsequent segments, younger sisters Helen and Joy don't fare much better in the relationship department.
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- 11130 VOTESPhoto: Roxie Releasing
Disturbing Premise: Both a satirical mockumentary and a bleak thriller, Man Bites Dog is a 1992 Belgian comedy that's as dark as it gets. The film follows a long-practicing serial killer named Ben who teams up with a camera crew to document his murders.
Why You Might Regret Watching: While the film does hit some strong satirical notes, skewering the media's need for sensationalized stories, it's still tough to watch Ben murder one innocent person after another in increasingly brutal and sadistic ways, including, eventually, the camera crew themselves. Somehow, the fact that Ben is an otherwise charming and affable fellow able to mask his urges makes it even worse. This one pushes documentary and reality TV satire about as far as they can go.
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Disturbing Premise: Anna and Georg, a couple from Berlin, take a lake house vacation with their young son and dog. When they arrive, a pair of psychopaths named Peter and Paul terrorize and eventually murder them.
Why You Might Regret Watching: Either Michael Haneke's 1997 German original or his 2007 English-language remake would qualify for this list. For starters, plenty of people find horror films about home invasions to be a non-starter, and this one hits many of the familiar beats while going to extreme lengths. Everyone comes to harm, including the dog.
On top of that, the villains repeatedly break the fourth wall to implicate the audience for enjoying the violence they're watching. At one point, Anna appears to escape and kills her captors, only for the film to literally rewind itself and deliver a grimmer outcome, denying the audience any catharsis.
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Disturbing Premise: Edward Furlong stars as Danny, the younger brother of Derek (Edward Norton), a white supremacist who's committed a litany of heinous crimes. As Danny learns the truth about Derek, Derek tries to steer him on the right path.
Why You Might Regret Watching: Racism and violence blend to create a noxious moviegoing experience that few will find fun to watch. The vicious beatings and prison sexual assaults alone would warrant inclusion on this list, but the infamous “curb stomp” scene pushes American History X beyond the pale.
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Disturbing Premise: A couple played by Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg move to an isolated cabin after their son dies on Gainsbourg's character's watch. Is their relocation cathartic? Of course not - they soon turn to inflicting abrupt and confusing acts of violence on each other - and, sometimes, themselves.
Why You Might Regret Watching: It's Lars von Trier - anyone who knows his work will know not to expect light, family-friendly content. Among many psyche-destroying moments, perhaps the worst to watch is a scene of genital self-mutilation, in closeup, performed with gardening shears.
That being said, like von Trier's other films, Antichrist is full of mind-blowing surrealism, unforgettable imagery, and riveting performance. It's a risky watch for those who get the creeps from nightmarish imagery, though.
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- 15147 VOTESPhoto: Greycat Films
Disturbing Premise: Made in 1986 but not released until 1990, and loosely based on the real serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer follows a psychopath, Henry, who coaxes his buddy, Otis, into a life of murder. When Henry and Otis aren't busy murdering people, the film explores Henry's relationship with Otis's sister, Becky, which is mainly built on the fact that both were abused as children.
Why You Might Regret Watching: These days, movies and TV shows about serial killers tend to honor the lives of the victims, not the killers, and tend not to revel in the carnage. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer does the opposite. It's old school, and not in a good way.
The film wasn't released until 1990 because the MPAA slapped it with an “X” rating, essentially killing its box office prospects. It was ultimately allowed a limited release with unrated status after a successful screening at the Telluride Film Festival. Many critics and audience members had trouble with the film's realistic depictions of violence, although Roger Ebert did credit the film for its “uncompromising honesty” in presenting the atrocities committed by Henry and Otis.
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