Some Movies Are Incredibly Disturbing, & These 10 Will Leave You Numb Afterwards

This article contains mention of disturbing content, including violence, sexual assault, and torture.

Seeing a movie isn’t necessarily always a fun experience, with plenty of films out there so disturbing that watching them all the way through can leave a viewer completely numb. For the most part, the best-known and highest-grossing movies are pleasant experiences in which everything works out in the end, or their disturbing elements at least don’t broach the general accepted limits for an R-rating. But some rare films manage to break the mold with just how disturbing and psychologically distressing they can be.

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It’s hard to say what makes such vile experiences worth watching, with the decision to digest such bleak movies being a very personal one. Even some of the greatest horror movies can’t hold a candle to films that go out of their way to be particularly bleak, without even the smallest crumb of positive emotions to balance out the narrative. Whether they’re hauntingly realistic, overly dour in tone, or simply too gory to stomach, some films need to be delved into like a mine shaft full of toxic gas, with all the proper precautionary procedure.

10

Threads

One of the bleakest takes on humanity’s future ever

For the most part, post-apocalyptic movies are indeed quite distressing, but many manage to balance out their dangerous and inhumane conditions with some degree of zaniness or pomp. As terrifying as it would be to live in the worlds of the Mad Max films or A Boy and His Dog, there is at least some macabre humor to be derived from the strangeness of their settings. Threads is an English production that totally strips away any sense of fun a nuclear wasteland could possibly have, leaving only misery in the wake of its fallout.

Threads centers on a young couple in Sheffield, England whose lives are upended thanks to an impending nuclear strike. As the two are separated, they soon live through the rapid breakdown of polite society in the wake of the attack, examining just how cruel and self-serving humanity can be when stripped of our modern establishments. With an incredibly bleak ending that suggests an inevitable return to the Stone Age, Threads has one of the darkest forecasts for humanity’s future ever put to film.

9

Come And See

A haunting depiction of boots-on-the-ground war

The best war films are anti-war at their core, and few of them are able to meaningfully convey the horrors of modern armed conflict like Come and See. The film follows a young teenager in Belarus who joins up with the Soviet partisan forces, fighting against the occupying Nazi army. What follows are some of the most harrowing and affecting depictions of the atrocities of war ever comitted to film.

There are plenty of bleak movies set during World War II, but Come and See offers a particular brand of hopelessness that’s hard to replicate. The film was made in the Soviet Union and struggled to evade censorship for a long time, and it’s easy to see why, with the movie even drawing sympathy for Adolf Hitler himself at one point. Unrelenting in its unabashed showcase of the horrors of war, Come and See‘s title is a nerve-wracking dare for all but the most hardened cinema completionists.

8

The Mist

A truly hopeless horror movie

At first, The Mist plays out like a standard Stephen King horror story adaptation, certainly spooky but nothing that’s necessarily going to challenge experienced scary movie veterans. However, it’s the positively dour twist ending that truly sticks with any viewer, earning its spot as one of the most depressing and bleak films ever conceived. The story centers on a town that is set upon by a mysterious supernatural fog, bringing with it a population of terrifying monsters that pick off the local populace one-by-one.

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Much of the film uses these scary circumstances to examine the truly terrifying nature of people in dire circumstances, creating a haunting hierarchy within the supermarket The Mist‘s subjects are holed up in. But by far the most existentially haunting plot development occurs right at the end, when one survivor abandons all hope only to be proven wrong in an instant. A deeply affecting horror movie, The Mist leaves the viewer with a feeling just as gloomy and gray as its titular phenomena.

7

The Road

A desolate trek through a cruel, unforgiving world

While Threads might be the most disturbing glimpse at an actual apocalypse presently unfolding, The Road might take the cake for the most bleak depiction of an actual post-apocalyptic landscape. Named after the equally-depressing novel of the same name, The Road follows the grueling journey of a father and his young son across a post-apocalyptic America in search of a coastal safe haven. The lack of food has driven most of humanity to cannibalism, making for a dangerous trek ahead of them.

The Road might have a few bright spots, including an ambiguously bittersweet ending, but that doesn’t stop it from being a desolate experience through and through. It’s hard to imagine that the film’s supposition that so many people would turn to cannibalism for food should other resources become unavailable isn’t true. The Road is a deeply upsetting glimpse into the mirror, begging the question as to how far someone might go in order to protect oneself and their loved ones first and foremost.

6

Se7en

A difficult crime thriller to stomach

One of the most influential crime thrillers of all time, Se7en has become famous for its all-star cast of performances, but its recognition precludes just how disturbing of a film it truly is. Se7en centers on a police investigation of serial killer whose crimes seem to correlate with the seven deadly sins of Christian mythology. Things take a hauntingly morose turn when the serial killer takes a personal interest in his pursuers, leading to a nauseating final act of malice.

David Fincher knows how to unsettle and get under the skin of an audience like no other, and the harrowing depictions of the film’s murders are enough to make the spine crawl even if they aren’t directly shown. It’s bad enough that the film weaponizes religion to such a nasty degree throughout, but the final moments of Se7en have become infamous for just how shocking they are. Humanizing the victims of the crimes enough to make their murders all the more ghastly, Se7en will hamper the ability to smile for days after watching.

5

Men Behind The Sun

Describes some of the most horrific real tragedies to ever happen

Watching a movie with its own fictionalized accounts of blood, gore, and torture is one thing, but a film that accurately portrays real-life atrocities can be deeply cutting on a far grander scale. Enter Men Behind the Sun, a Hong Kong historical exploitation horror film that describes the very real horrific acts committed by the infamous Japanese Imperial Army Unit 731. The film initially takes the point of view of a pair of conscripts drafted into the group’s macabre research headed by the deranged Dr. Ishii.

The real-life crimes perpetrated by the actual Unit 731 in World War II, which haven’t reached anywhere near the same notoriety as the events of the Jewish Holocaust in Western history, make Men Behind the Sun a particularly grueling watch. As a biological warfare unit, Unit 731 used human guinea pigs to research all kinds of insidious methods of killing, hauntingly rendered with gut-wrenching detail in the film. Even if it suffers from dated special effects at times, Men Behind the Sun‘s importance as a chronicle of real events makes it all the more disturbing.

4

Antichrist

An infamous character study rife with bodily mutilation

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Perhaps the single most controversial and infamous role in Willem Dafoe’s storied career, Antichrist lives up to its profane title with ghastly efficacy. The plot centers on an older couple who go on a retreat by themselves in a remote cabin in the woods after tragically losing their child in an accident. It’s not long before eerie, supernatural events begin to plague the two of them, seemingly feeding on their own latent trauma surrounding the loss, driving them to commit vile acts of violence.

Director Lars von Trier more than earns his controversial status with Antichrist. A bizarre fever dream of a movie with some unintentionally funny moments, the sheer brutality of the film’s very graphic and sexually-charged violence is not for the faint of heart. Laden with psychosexual symbolism and macabre inversions of Christian theology, Anitchrist is sure to haunt the mind of anyone who watches it for a long time.

3

The Bunny Game

An alarming exercise in shock therapy

Some of the most disturbing films ever created have little to no plot to speak of, existing only for the sake of exploring the most twisted and depraved images of violence and sexual assault imaginable. Such is the case for The Bunny Game, a snuff torture horror movie whose only value lies in the brutal reaction it is able to inspire. The sparse plot details a drug-addicted prostitute who is kidnapped by a trucker, then subjected to a range of painful and sexual torture over the course of several days.

The inception of The Bunny Game is just as disturbing as its content. According to actress and co-writer Roldeen Getsic, the film was based on real trauma she had actually suffered through, being the victim of kidnapping more than once. The entire production served as a form of cathartic shock therapy for Getsic, making it an even more alarmingly personal and difficult piece to stomach.

2

Martyrs

Another harrowing account of torture

In a similar vein to The Bunny Game, Martyrs is a torture horror movie with a focus on kidnapped women and the immense trauma that results in ghastly repeated torture. Unlike The Bunny Game, however, Martyrs has a much more complex plot. The film begins with a young woman, Lucie, escaping a slaughterhouse where she has been kidnapped and tortured for upwards of a year, only to return to the perpetrators of the crime to get revenge. Before long, Lucie succumbs to her guilt, causing her childhood friend to sadly follow in her footsteps.

Martyrs at least does have an intriguing plot hiding underneath the surface of the carnage. The clear themes of Catholic guilt and martyrdom are evident throughout the unsettling torture, evoking the concept of divine femininity in the most appalling way possible. But that leaves the film far from being an easy watch, remaining one of the most disturbing widely-available movies ever made due to its sheer brutality and hostility towards its female characters.

1

Salò, Or The 120 Days of Sodom

The pinnacle of depraved imagery

Salò, or the 120 Days Of Sodom is, in short, a film that nobody should have the misfortune of watching. An infamous Italian exploitation movie, the film is perhaps one of the most nauseating and disturbing fictional narratives ever put to screen. Taking place in what was then called the Republic of Salò under the rule of the Nazi-allied fascist regime in modern-day Italy, the movie describes the kidnapping of eight young girls and eight young boys by high-ranking officials. What follows is a depiction of torture, humiliation, and sexual violence so foul that it defies description.

Obviously, Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom was affected by heavy censorship at the time of its 1975 release, which persists even today. But the movie also may have had very real consequences for its brutality, theorized as a motive by some for the actual graphic murder of director Pier Paolo Pasolini. Even if it has a point with its scathing critique of fascism, Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom will be permanently scarring for most movie fanatics.

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Category: Entertainment