What's the most disturbing movie you've ever seen?

Don't Go in the House. The serial killer burns a victim alive.

One movie that truly traumatized me was "The Prince of Tides".

I mean, you are watching a story full of romance, passion and all that stuff and then, halfway through the film... BAM... you have to stomach the scene in which Kate Nelligan and her two kids are getting raped at the same time.

Right away I thought about " The Killing Fields." I've only watched it twice, and I'll never forget it.

The Bridge, without question

Probably Come and See. It was a while ago and not something I have any desire to revisit.

Everyone should watch it, at least once, especially citizens of any nation caught up in war fever

I couldn't sleep after watching "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover."

Freaks (1932).

Apocalypse Now, specifically, the scene where they behead a water buffalo.

A tie between Threads and The Vanishing. They’re both excellent films, but I would never suggest them to my friends.

POISON (1991)

The Gene Genet prison sequence

Stomach turning!

“I Spit On Your Grave”. I don’t like portrayals of sexual violence and this walks the line between condemnation and titillation in a big way. Every time I thought the worst was over, she gets brutally raped again.

Mame

"Albert Nobbs"

Wow! You have some good choices!

Anything by Paul Verhoeven or Michael Haneke.

This is built for Requiem for a Dream. If you feel normal after watching that and want to watch perhaps again, you likely want to blow up buildings or kill a bunch of people. One and done but regret it.

Michael Haneke has said he thinks "120 Days of Sodom" was the greatest film of all time.

In the Realm of the Senses. That egg scene is...something

[quote] The Gene Genet prison sequence

Any relation to Jean?

[quote] Every time I thought the worst was over, she gets brutally raped again.

Sounds like a normal Saturday night for me.

Mr. Mom (see below)

Night and Fog

For kindertrauma, this scene from The Manster

Last House on the Left

The Deer Hunter

[quote]This is built for Requiem for a Dream.

R17 As well as Last Exit to Brooklyn. Both based on books by Hubert Selby, Jr.

House of Sand and Fog. It was gut wrenching and shattering and I will never watch it again.

OP again, still impressed with your choices. Mine is "Forced Entry," the only film Harry Reems (who was a gentle, fun-loving man) ever regrets making.

As was common in the early '70's in New York, the Mob gave a guy a few thousand bucks to make an X-rated movie. The director cast Harry as a gas station attendant and deranged Vietnam vet who tracks down his woman customers, rapes, and kills them.

Already troublesome, but the director made a worse decision: he cast a female porn star who actually could act, and the second rape/murder is absolutely harrowing. It's violent, unsimulated anal sex at gunpoint and knifepoint, shot in a filthy apartment with no budget, Harry verbally abusing her while she screams and begs, and the girl makes it totally believable. It ends when Harry cums and then kills her while war noises play in his head. On top of all this, the picture/sound quality are so bad that you feel like you could actually be watching a crime.

I can't imagine the sickest weenie-wacker sitting through the violence to see the sex in a porn theater, and the extremely hardcore content kept it out of drive-ins and grindhouses. Truly upsetting.

Recently The Coffee Table is a hard sit.

Silence of the Lambs

I was only willing to read its Wiki entry, r30.

Jill Learns about Periods

R32, Thanks for the warning.

No Country For Old Men

The Coffee Table is a hard sit.

Not for me - Danny Thomas.

Eden Lake

[quote]I was only willing to read its Wiki entry

That's smart, r32. It's as bad as you think.

Don't get me wrong — 99% of my viewing is vintage monster movies, women in prison movies, drive-in fare. But this was a thread about the most disturbing movies, and "Forced Entry" is the first one I thought of.

Good lord, r37, that's a firm no from me. Watched a recap and there's no way.

The Hitcher (1986).

The movie isn’t especially good, but towards the end one of the protagonists dies in a REALLY horrible way.

You don’t see it happen, but I remember being really horrified.

[quote]Good lord, [R37], that's a firm no from me. Watched a recap and there's no way.

Yeah. I watch really gruesome horror movies all the time no problem but Eden Lake is the only one I can't bring myself to rewatch. Only film that has ever scared me - it's traumatic.

I got towards the end of the recap, r41, and when I realized where it was going I stopped watching. I thought it was an incredibly sadistic thing to do to the audience.

Thank you for the advise on Coffee Table and Forced Entry. Won't watch either or look for more information. I don't need more shit in my head.

Exit To Eden.

R43, Very wise. We need to be careful what we feed our brains.

I don't really understand the need to MAKE torture porn movies or WATCH them.

"Ha ha...it's just in fun! It's SATIRE!!! Ha ha!!!!"

Jeanne Genet

"Martyrs"

Million Dollar Baby, Clint Eastwood's boxing martyr movie. Hillary Swank is terrific, but the fatal beatdown of her character is something I will never watch again. Gruesome and disturbing.

Riding the Bus With My Sister

I started The Coffee Table this morning due to this thread. Had no idea what it was about going in.

YIKES!!

Irreversible- a French film. Horrifying

Midsommar.

Just a sick film from beginning to end. Truly disturbing.

From the New York Times review:

.For all of Mr. Pasolini's desire to make "Salo" an abstract statement, one cannot look at images of people being scalped, whipped, gouged, slashed, covered with excrement and sometimes eating it and react abstractedly unless one shares the director's obsessions.Far from being the "agonized scream of total despair" the New York Film Festival calls the film, it is a demonstration of nearly absolute impotency, if there is such a thing. Ideas get lost in a spectacle of such immediate reality and cruelty."Salo" will be shown at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center today at 1 P.M. and repeated there tomorrow evening at 6. It opens its regular commercial engagement Monday at the Festival

Oct. 1, 1977

The Divide (2011) - An obscure low budget post-apocalyptic thriller. It fucked with my head for days after seeing it

R19 THAT'S where I've seen it! I couldn't remember the name of the movie, but that scene with the egg has been emblazoned in my mind for DECADES.

At the time, Eraserhead was pretty disturbing.

Lucille Ball in MAIM.

When Lucille stabs the kids to death and cackles with that laugh? It can never ben unseen

A Serbian Film.

Audition.

In My Skin.

Irreversible.

Ichi the Killer.

I still can’t repeat watch “Jacob’s Ladder” from 1990 with Tim Robbins. Disturbing to say the least.

Probably A Serbian Film. Most of it is just edgy like a Ramstein video until... that scene. I do NOT want to vacation in Serbia.

HENRY, PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER.

It's hard to forget it isn't an actual snuff film when you're watching it.

EO, movie by Jerzy Skolimowski, about a donkey encountering terrible people. It's a masterpiece but one of the most traumatic movie experiences of my life. I saw it two years ago and still can't get it out of my head and it makes me incredibly sad and hating humans so much.

This same thread every few months.

[quote]I mean, you are watching a story full of romance, passion and all that stuff and then, halfway through the film... BAM... you have to stomach the scene in which Kate Nelligan and her two kids are getting raped at the same time.

But the Academy thought this scene and the rest of the movie directed itself. Sure - if Costner or Gibson directed, you think they'd be ignored by the Academy ?

Tusk

Dear Zachary

The original "The Wicker Man".

MAME starring Lucille Ball.

Santa Sangre directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky (1989):

"In Mexico, the traumatized son (Axel Jodorowsky) of a knife-thrower (Guy Stockwell) and a trapeze artist bonds grotesquely with his now-armless mother (Blanca Guerra)."

The Human Centipede

What did I just watch at r70?

at one time I would have said LUNA

I have seen The Holy Mountain and now want to see r70

I'm the one who first mentioned The Coffee Table and I actually think it succeeds at what it's doing, and it is the DARKEST comedy imaginable. Like just reading a plot synopsis won't fill in the experience of how they manage to walk a tightrope of actually making it a genuine comedy, just for sickos. Among which I count myself I guess because I was laughing. And also simultaneously horrified. It's like slapstick somehow, just from Hell.

I'm the one who could only read the Wiki synopsis, r75. For some reason I'd missed the part about it being a dark comedy, so the tone of the film sounds less disturbing than I'd imagined.

Wrote about it on another thread....

"Beneath the Planet of the Apes." when I was a kid. Scared the living daylights out of me.

It's not loud, in-your-face disturbing, but as a lifelong sufferer of depression and harborer of suicidal thoughts, 'Night Mother had a profound effect on me.

Inside- 2007 French Horror Fiilm- It is brilliant "Le Interieur" (SP)

The Danish version of Speak No Evil- Absolutely fanatastic film.

Haneke's The Seventh Continent

Recently- Magazine Dreams

Dear Evan Hansen

The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, especially the meat hook scene.

The House That Jack Built

Hereditary.

Another vote for Last House on the Left. A friend’s “bad seed” older sister dared us all to watch it in their basement one noght when I was 17. I lasted two thirds through and was profoundly disturbed and agitated inside. I stood up and left. Walked home a half mile in the dark and my parents said I looked like I’d seen a ghost. I lied and mumbled something about hearing an animal in the woods while I was walking.

Shoah. Documentaries spliced together from hours of interviews with Holocaust survivors. Released like 30 years after the interviews took place. What they endured was harrowing and inhumane. That anyone survived at all is a miracle. But how to live as a survivor? No easy task.

Link

r84 -

Torta, you were supposed to keep telling yourself "It's only a movie, it's only a movie."

Good choice r85

Torta how are your friends, the houseguests with such strict dietary restrictions.

Grave of the Fireflies (1988)

Their father died somewhere in war, and their mother was burned to death by a bomb raid. The start off living with an awful aunt who steals their food for herself, and they eventually decide to be homeless beside stay with her.

But, the most haunting thing was that Setsuko, 4, was entirely dependent on her older brother, Seita, who is just 14. Seita has to beg and steal for food and water. The entire time Setsuko has no idea the gravity of what is going on.

The Witches

The Bridge is so disturbing - I caught it one late night and didn't know what I was watching at first. Is this a recreation or am I actually watching people jump off bridges to their deaths?

Yes, I'm watching people suicidal people the moments before their deaths and seeing them jump.

I would put Magdalene Sisters up there - a film created from 4 women's stories about how they were forced into manual labor without pay for the Catholic Church in Ireland. It's rage-inducing. And the last one closed in 1996 (!). Some women spent their entire lives behind the walls doing laundry without pay and could not leave. The few women who were pregnant had their babies taken from them and sold for adoption.

Johnny Got His Gun.

Any documentary about the Twin Towers during 9/11. People on the top floors decided to jump to death over being burned alive.

Kiss Me Kate (1953). The hyper-bright colors . . . the self-conscious and overwrought choreography . . . the smug cheerfulness . . . the shallowness . . . HELPMEHELPMEICANNEVERUNSEEITGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH . . .

R29 In that same vein, another Harry Reems movie called "Fleshpot on 42nd Street" from 1972.

It's an ultra low budget softcore movie that I believe also features Laura Cannon, one of the actresses from "Forced Entry." It's a dark, depressing story of a Times Square prostitute headed nowhere fast. She happens to meet a nice man with a good job and a future who treats her well (Reems), and just when it seems like things are going to work out for her, something tragic happens. The movie's ending is incredibly sad and disturbing.

I actually saw this one on TMC a few years ago, back when they had the still had that late night "TCM Underground" programming. I can't believe they actually showed it, what with all the penises and vaginas on display.

The Green Inferno. I love horror movies, but this one was traumatizing.

Megan Is Missing. It starts off slow but the ending is horrific.

Dahmer- Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. This Netflix series was so disturbing I had to put it on pause a few times during every episode and had to wait a few days before I watched the next episode.

"Mother," that horrific Darren Aronofsky mess with Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem.

I found Megan is Missing absolutely disgusting, r97. I also couldn't get through Soft and Quiet.

Lilya 4-ever, Happiness, I stand alone, A Serbian Film. Each for a different reason.

[quote]In that same vein, another Harry Reems movie called "Fleshpot on 42nd Street" from 1972. It's an ultra low budget softcore movie that I believe also features Laura Cannon, one of the actresses from "Forced Entry." It's a dark, depressing story of a Times Square prostitute headed nowhere fast. She happens to meet a nice man with a good job and a future who treats her well (Reems), and just when it seems like things are going to work out for her, something tragic happens.

Good find, r96! "Fleshpot" has great footage of seedy old Times Square, including a couple of gay bars. Laura's roommate is a drag queen. It was directed by Z-list cult filmmaker Andy Milligan and is the only Milligan film I've ever been able to sit through. Of Milligan, John Waters said, "Is it possible to be a genius with absolutely no talent?"

Audrey Rose. Freaked me the fuck out. Rosemary Baby. Just because. Jaws. I was too young. Still have an unusual fear of water nearly 50 years later. Thank you uncle 😀

Any of the August Underground films. Vile, bloody, and disturbing. A Serbian Film is almost unwatchable. But I've watched it a few times. It is truly not for anyone.

The 2001 Japanese film Suicide Club.

Opening scene is a bunch of Japanese school girls jumping in front of a commuter train. Body parts flying everywhere. It's actually sickly funny, at first because it's so blatantly fake, but the film gets more and more vile.

Worst scene: puppies in sacks being stomped to death at an underground bowling alley.

R92 I remember thinking The Bridge was going to be so disturbing, and then when I saw it it didn’t bother me that much. I remember the one young guy who survived tell the entire tale of his jump in complete detail and I thought it was fascinating.

The 911 jumpers disturbed me much more.

[quote] Worst scene: puppies in sacks being stomped to death at an underground bowling alley.

Sounds hot!

The 70s Watership Down. An animated movie, promoted for kids with some pretty brutal deaths is a tough watch at 7 or later in life.

Some of these films feature such sick and brutal acts that I have to question the screenwriter/director’s intent and sanity. Who thinks of portraying such horrible things?

Salo is ok , just rewatched & it's kind of tame imo. If you watched saw, salo is child play

r109 is oh so edgy.

Mame

There's late and then there's r111.

“Last House on the Left” is such a weirdly inconsistent movie. The rape and murders are very sad and bleak. I do like Joe there’s no real blame assigned to the victims. But we spend too much time getting to know the killers before the crime. Then we have bizarre slapstick moments with the cops and that country music. We have the least concerned mom in movie history as when her daughter is dying in front of her, she asks her husband, “Isn’t there anything we can do?” with all the concern of a mom whose daughter has a boo-boo.

Then we get those closing credits with chipper music as we get to see who played which terrible character. Yay!

Irreversible with Monica Belucci

Albert Noobs

[quote] “Last House on the Left” is such a weirdly inconsistent movie. The rape and murders are very sad and bleak. I do like Joe there’s no real blame assigned to the victims.

I do like you too.

I second "Martyrs". That film is a grueling masterpiece. "Wolf Creek" is also extremely disturbing because it feels so realistic.

Nope, you couldn't get me to sit through Martyrs, r117.

[quote] The 911 jumpers disturbed me much more.

They weren't the typical suicide. They were choosing a way to die. Death was inevitable.

Gaspar Noe's "Climax" is extremely fucked up

R105 and R119 the people had a choice to burn to death or jump to their deaths.

Horrifying.

R118 fair enough, but I think it is a masterpiece that's worth watching if you can swing it. It's a well-constructed film with some interesting, deep themes. It's easily one of the best horror films of the 21st century IMO. For most people, I think it's a one and done viewing, though—obviously not a pleasant popcorn flick.

The human slaughterhouse in Cloud Atlas really disturbed me.

R121 / R105 / R119 These people were real not characters in a film. It was terrifying watching them in real time, jumping to their deaths. What would you do if faced with that choice - burn to death or fall to death? What went through their minds at the time?

[quote] What would you do if faced with that choice - burn to death or fall to death?

Kobayashi Maru!

I started watching Audrey Rose for the first time thanks to this thread!

Both the 9/11 jumpers and The Bridge jumpers were horrifying to witness, of course.

But the utter despair of the bridge jumpers disturbed me more. Their suffering did not begin on the bridge, and the jump itself was the culmination of weeks, months, years, entire lifetimes of disappointments, losses, rejections, shame, guilt, grief, anger. As someone who has struggled with such feelings for great stretches of my life, I am pretty familiar with the thoughts that lead someone up to that point. They are utterly exhausting and soul-killing. But even those thoughts are hard to articulate or even define.

The fear of a fiery death, on the other hand, is immediate, tangible, and understandable. Their decision to jump from the towers involved a horrifying calculus made in moments. But the bridge jumpers had been struggling with the decision -- live or die, jump or continue on down the bridge -- for a very long time. It's one thing to jump when you know the physical alternative will be worse and just as fatal. It's quite another to be in such quiet, unspeakable despair that jumping seems the only viable alternative.

Earthlings (2005 documentary). I've never eaten meat since.

Runner up: The Cove.

The Road - the scene where they go into the cellar. I was not expecting that.

It was so disturbing I came out of the cinema and it was grey and raining and I felt so ugh I went back in to the cinema and watched It's Complicated where Meryl loves a lot of semen.

I'm torn between "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer" and "Audition."

One of them - or maybe it's both - has the sound (but not the sight) of a severed head dropping on the floor, and that sound was the most unsettling thing I ever experienced hearing in a movie.

R78 - a number of years ago, I saw "'Night Mother" on Broadway (starring Edie Falco) and the guy sitting in front of me was SO distraught during the last half hour of the play, I thought they were going to need an ambulance to take him to a hospital.

r130 I think it's Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer (which I have only watched once)

For me, the most disturbing scene was the home invasion scene. It's extended and has a very unsettling documentary feel to it

I know a lot of people thought the movie Seven with Brad Pitt was good. Perhaps it was well made/acted. I was absolutely disgusted and disturbed by it. It weighed on my mind for days and I wish that I hadn't seen it. Fake horror things like vampire movies don't bother me, but Seven seemed to real and disturbing.

I can't watch The Bridge. A friend of mine drove his car onto the Golden Gate Bridge, parked it in the middle of the right lane, got out of the car, then ran to the railing and threw himself off.

The Bridge would be too much for me to handle.

[quote]It's Complicated where Meryl loves a lot of semen

Thank you, r129, for the most disturbing sentence I've ever read on Datalounge

The moment in Last House in the Left that upset me the worst was the moment where the girl being brutalized pees her pants and the killers all point and laugh at her. I've only watched the movie once because that moment of humuliation was too cruel and the actress played it too well. I've watched Texas Chain Saw Massacre a hundred times but LHOTL feels somehow even.scuzzier. I think the weird tonal shifts are part of it. The juxtaposition of goofiness and absolute bleakness is jarring and off-putting in a way I think Craven meant intentionally. He was a very smart man - a lit professor before turning to movies. It's a remake of Bergman! lol

I love that "Last House on the Left" and "Little House on the Prairie" have nearly the same acronyms.

Now there's a mash-up I'd watch, r136

Michael Landon with a chainsaw !

Where do you think Michael Landon got the idea for the rape clown, r136?

R127 In a strange way, that’s the exact reasoning I kind of had the opposite feeling. I almost saw the Bridge people as ending their long suffering. Almost like euthanasia. Sad for sure. Suicide is a difficult issue, but doing it from a bridge or a gun result in the same ending. My father committed suicide, so I’m not speaking from a hypothetical. We knew he was suffering and it was oddly not traumatic to us when it happened.

The 911 jumpers OTOH presented people with an absolutely horrific choice to make, immediately. I can actually put myself into envisioning that situation and it terrifies me to the bone.

Girl Lost and Girl Lost: A Hollywood Story. They're about how girls start off as Webcam girls but then get trafficked.

Not the Sinister movies, but the films found within the movies.

Cronenberg's Dead Ringers

Gynecological instruments for alien women . . . OMG

^^^ oops gynecological instruments for mutant women