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60 Most Disturbing Movies Of All Time


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From ‘Martyrs’ to ‘A Serbian Film,’ ‘The Last House on The Left,’ and ‘Cannibal Holocaust,’ we’ve compiled a list of the most disturbing movies of all time.

 

I've seen half of these and will probably track down the half I haven't seen.

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  • skillzdadirecta changed the title to 60 Most Disturbing Movies Of All Time
3 minutes ago, SimpleG said:

You aint missing anything.

I'll never know :p 

 

Also, Martyrs was one of the most pointlessly vile films I've ever seen. The DVD I saw had what amounted to an apology from the director before the film started. I've seen folks try to defend that film but it really is just torture porn masquerading as "art".

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22 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

I'll never know :p Martyrs was one of the most pointlessly vile films I've ever seen. The DVD I saw had what amounted to an apology from the director before the film started. I've seen folks try to defend that film but it really is just torture porn masquerading as "art".

I think the films premise started off interesting but then quickly changed to a vehicle for brutality. All of which is fine as long as you realize it is what it is. I like watching Fulci films but I watch them for the terrible acting and the over the top gore. His films will never be high art, but I still enjoy them.

 

In this list there is maybe 3 good or better films a hand full of ok ones and shit ton of bad ones.

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12 minutes ago, SimpleG said:

I think the films premise started off interesting but then quickly changed to a vehicle for brutality. All of which is fine as long as you realize it is what it is. I like watching Fulci films but I watch them for the terrible acting and the over the top gore. His films will never be high art, but I still enjoy them.

 

In this list there is maybe 3 good or better films a hand full of ok ones and shit ton of bad ones.

Right the film DID start off with an interesting premise and then just devolved into a pretentious B-movie.

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One movie this list is seriously missing is "Come and See." It's a Soviet WW2 movie from the 80's surrounding the "Holocaust by bullets" that happened in Belarus under Nazi occupation. It follows a young boy who becomes a Partisan fighter.

 

It's not like any other war movie you've ever seen. There is no actual music. It's shot like a horror movie, with lots of narrow close ups of characters' faces who are experiencing true, brutal horror. And the most disturbing thing is that the events in the film actually happened in real life. The film is loosely based on the writer's own experiences. Then, at the end (no spoilers), at the credits, they have a slideshow of real photos from events like what happened in the movie, and it's like getting socked in the gut after the movie. It's one of those movies that really fucked the rest of my day up.

 

Anyway, I've seen 59, 50, 49, 48, 47, 44, 43, 42, 27, 13, 10, and 9. I generally have to be in a really specific mood to watch brutal shit that I don't get in very often. And I hate jump scares with a passion, so movies based around jump scares don't get watched very often unless I'm watching with a group of people and it's part of the fun.

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I think I've seen 25 of them. No Philosophy of a Knife or bloodsucking Freaks?

 

3 hours ago, skillzdadirecta said:

I will NEVER see (Human Centipede)

 

I saw the first one and since my friends wanted to see it and I saw it without them they refused to watch any of them. :(

I'm not going to try to convince you to watch them but they aren't bad. I think people are more turned off by the idea of the movie than the actual movie itself. The second one is way better BTW!

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Seriously, if no one else has seen Come and See

 

c115ed24-7ba3-4477-b1b9-575e45cb3d36.jpg
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Directed by Elem Klimov • 1985 • Soviet Union This legendary film from Soviet director Elem Klimov is a senses-shattering plunge into the dehumanizing horrors of war. As Nazi forces encroach on his small village in Belorussia, teenage Flyora (Alexei Kravchenko, in a searing depiction of anguish)...

 

 

It will haunt your nightmares. A Serbian film may be fucking disgusting, but it's just a film. Come and See is based on shit that actually happened. It mixes the loss of innocence with the brutality of war in a way that I haven't seen another film do. Like, Saving Private Ryan is wonderful in its brutal depiction of life on the front lines, but it's all about men who volunteered to be there. To an extent, they knew what they were getting into. Come and See is about a boy who was just existing and became transformed by war. It's fantastic, horrifying, heart wrenching, and brutal. As all war films should be.

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19 minutes ago, Fizzzzle said:

Seriously, if no one else has seen Come and See

 

c115ed24-7ba3-4477-b1b9-575e45cb3d36.jpg
WWW.CRITERIONCHANNEL.COM

Directed by Elem Klimov • 1985 • Soviet Union This legendary film from Soviet director Elem Klimov is a senses-shattering plunge into the dehumanizing horrors of war. As Nazi forces encroach on his small village in Belorussia, teenage Flyora (Alexei Kravchenko, in a searing depiction of anguish)...

 

 

It will haunt your nightmares. A Serbian film may be fucking disgusting, but it's just a film. Come and See is based on shit that actually happened. It mixes the loss of innocence with the brutality of war in a way that I haven't seen another film do. Like, Saving Private Ryan is wonderful in its brutal depiction of life on the front lines, but it's all about men who volunteered to be there. To an extent, they knew what they were getting into. Come and See is about a boy who was just existing and became transformed by war. It's fantastic, horrifying, heart wrenching, and brutal. As all war films should be.

Yeah I'm defintely going to check this out.

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1 hour ago, Fizzzzle said:

Seriously, if no one else has seen Come and See

 

c115ed24-7ba3-4477-b1b9-575e45cb3d36.jpg
WWW.CRITERIONCHANNEL.COM

Directed by Elem Klimov • 1985 • Soviet Union This legendary film from Soviet director Elem Klimov is a senses-shattering plunge into the dehumanizing horrors of war. As Nazi forces encroach on his small village in Belorussia...

 

 

It will haunt your nightmares. A Serbian film may be fucking disgusting, but it's just a film. Come and See is based on shit that actually happened. It mixes the loss of innocence with the brutality of war in a way that I haven't seen another film do. Like, Saving Private Ryan is wonderful in its brutal depiction of life on the front lines, but it's all about men who volunteered to be there. To an extent, they knew what they were getting into. Come and See is about a boy who was just existing and became transformed by war. It's fantastic, horrifying, heart wrenching, and brutal. As all war films should be.

 

This is a fantastic essay about Come and See:

 

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36 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

 

This is a fantastic essay about Come and See:

 

That video, while very good, never even mentions Come and See by name.:p

 

1 criticism: He says that the end of Saving Private Ryan proves that the sacrifice of all of the other characters was worth it (25:20). I don't think that could be farther from the truth. You are meant to ponder the meaning of the mission to save Private Ryan throughout the whole film, and at the end, even if it's a success, the question of "was it worth it" is left open. That is very important to the story of the film. "Are we doing the right things for the right reasons? Or the right things for the wrong reasons? Or the wrong things for the right reasons?" That question never gets answered. and, at least the way I look at it, Matt Damon's character is left to ponder the "earn this" line for the rest of his life, and that will haunt him forever. The movie literally opens up with the discussion of "what is one life vs. a nation." To a mother, it's everything. To a squad of grunts who have to go and save that motherfucker, it's also everything. But, to a nation, it's nothing,and why did 5 men have to die to save one. In that way, I think it's unarguably a great anti-war film. The men are heroes, but they shouldn't have had to be. And he gets to that later in the video, but to say that Saving Private Ryan glorifies war in any way is, in my opinion, a gross mischaracterization 

 

32:35 absolutely brilliant breakdown.

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I've seen more of those than I would have actually thought. I also owned a few of those on DVD and Blu-ray before I just laughed my collection. I owned 5, 21, 27, 42. Other than Ichi the Killer, I wouldn't have labeled any of those really disturbing. Eh...maybe Audition gets a nod for being painful to watch at times. Takashi Miike has a certain disturbing style I guess.

 

I've seen, 5, 9, 13, 16, 19, 21, 27, 34, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 49, 50, 55, and 56.

 

No real rhyme or reason here. My parents were big bootie fans when I was growing up, so I guess that covers all the 70s stuff. My wife is a big fan of good gore porn, but we haven't watched much in recent years. I guess kids kind of cracks down on your free time to watch some of this stuff. I also really like Takashi Miike and he has a whole three movies on this list all to himself. Other than Audition, his stuff is like live a action Adult Swim cartoon full of gore.

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7 minutes ago, Chris- said:

I've seen..

 

Requiem for a Dream

Gerald's Game

Valhalla Rising

A Clockwork Orange

Cannibal Holocaust (I think? I vaguely recall watching it once out of morbid curiosity.)

 

Time to add a couple to your takeout date. Perhaps Audition will tickle your fancy! :]

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i’ve seen 25-26 of them i lost count lol 

 

im gonna be honest the grossest (which is different from disturbing) movies i’ve seen is human centipede 2. that shit is just nasty from front to back and at the end i started to feel physically sick. the first one wasn’t a good movie or anything but it was still a movie. sequence 2 is just trying to be gross as hell. it’s one of the most awful movies i’ve watched. 

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2 hours ago, Mercury33 said:

Requiem For a Dream did infinitely more to convince me to never do hard drugs in 2 hours than years of health class could even hope to accomplish. They should really show that movie in schools. 

 

After watching Requiem for a Dream well geez almost 20 years ago now... I said that was one of the best made films I've ever seen, and I never want to see it again. It's so good, but it's soo good at making you unsettled and yes, staying away from addictions for the rest of your life. So powerful.

 

 

Glad to see Irreversible on the list. One of my top movies, but haven't watched it in years. Love the cinematography in it, not one visible cut throughout the whole film, which is even more amazing because the film plays in reverse. That being said, it s a brutal film to watch, with two in particular scenes that are extremely hard to watch.

 

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A lot of the movies on this list try to elicit emotion through violence, rape and gore which is a turn off for a lot of people.

Might I suggest Mary & Max, a whole other kind of "disturbing" - A film that deals with loneliness and mental issues, it will most likely wreck you emotionally and it has no brutal violence.

 

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Could be wrong but movies like these tend to be made for anyone who needs to see them more than those who want to. Nobody in their right mind wants to watch a Heneke, Noe or Solondz film (including many directors who make them), but they're made for resensitization, challenging viewers into watching something that might be a service in the end (character studies of psychopaths if nothing else lets you spot them more effectively), or delving into a very serious subject in an appropriately grim way.  Stuff like Kids and Badlands aren't even over-the-top gruesome in what they show, but still hit on a deep level because of how real what's being shown feels.  Even though they're not entertaining ( "rollercoaster films" as Scorsese might say), they can be important imho

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It's interesting how few of these movies are from the last twenty years. I don't really know how to account for that.

 

Which of these movies are redeemable? I don't go for the ultra-realistic torture stuff, but I liked the psychological aspects of movies like Funny Games and A Clockwork Orange. I'm not exactly sure how to put it, but I'm less interested in movies that just show how fucked up the director is and more drawn to movies that show how fucked up we are.

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