Disturbing Films Megathread

[Oliver Onions]

I'd recommend Possum if you want a disturbing film that doesn't actually make you look at anything particularly gratuitous. A lot of people criticise it for being style over substance but I thought it was absolutely brilliant. It's basically a live-action David Firth cartoon, written and directed by the criminally under-rated Matthew Holness.

 

[Daddy's Angry Juice]

Everyone is gonna say some shit like Salo, but I present to you a film that is not unlike the content on this website: Be My Cat, its a romanian film, so its likely based on a true story, about a guy that wants to impress an american actress.
you can watch the whole thing on youtube, not a 10/10 but its disturbing in its own right.

 

[Londo]

Oh nooo the cuttufeash is not sitting well, it's a going to be a rot, hold on kyru I BEREAVE IN YOUUU!!

I genuinely lol'd

 

[TotalNematodeDeath]

The doc Brother's Keeper always got to me, a film about a murder case in a group of inbreed brothers. The fact that those guys live in NY is the major funny part though.

 

[The Cunting Death]

Happiness by Todd Solondz

It's actually a dark comedy but the subject matter is incredibly fucked up. It's about 3 sisters and the people around them and how they achieve happiness, if it all. With themes of pedophilia, rape, genital mutilation, shooting up places, fun for the whole family!

IMO it has the best performance of Philip Seymour Horfman's career.

It's getting a criterion release next month.

 

[The Blue Morpho]

To try and be a little more original than just saying Salo or some Lars Von Trier film, I'll put forward Color From Out of Space

A lovecraftian horror starring Nic Cage, this one caught me off guard. Watching it on recommendation of some friends, I was lulled into a false sense of security by the tone on display in the film's opening chapters only to be hit with some of the most fucked up, disturbing imagery and concepts I'd seen in a film in a while. The shit with the mother and the little boy was like something from one of those lame edgy analogue horror series you see everywhere these days, but done with an actual budget on film.

I give it a glowing recommendation as a good disturbing spook horror film with some of the best fucked up body horror I've seen.

 

[The Cunting Death]

Another good one is Combat Shock. It's a Troma distributed war movie about a guy with REALLY bad PTSD from his time in the Vietnam War. It's one of the most nihilistic films I've ever seen and its absolutely guaranteed to ruin your day.
It also has a directors cut.

Weird fact: the guy who plays the lead is the conductor for major Hollywood film scores like Inception, the Despicable Me series. lots of shit from Universal.

 

[levin88]

My favorite disturbing film is I saw the devil. Oldboy and ichi the killer are also great but I think the mangas are better. Crossed is a comic series created by the same creators as the boys but it's getting a movie soon. I hope it would be great but I'm sure it's gonna be watered down heavily.

 

[PaulBearer]

Angst (1983) will always win this competition...I invite all to check it out.

 

[Meat Target]

The films that always fucked me up as a kid was Threads, a movie produced her in the UK that highlights how grim British film making can be. The entire movie is a documentary style look at the build up and post-reality of a complete nuclear exchange. There's literally nothing happy or positive about that movie.

I feel this way about its American counterpart, The Day After.

I can get why people think Threads is the superior film, but The Day After has scenes in places I've been IRL, so it literally hit home for me.

TDA gets criticized as being a run-of-the-mill disaster movie, but I disagree. It doesn't show the long-term consequences of nuclear war like Threads, but it ends with pretty much all of the cast dying of radiation poisoning.

Jason Robards weakly tells a squatter to get out of "his house", which is nothing but rubble, then breaks down crying with the man. Then the voice of John Lithgow asks over a ham radio, "is anybody out there? Anybody at all?" before it fades to black.

 

[Pitbull Victim]

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and The Golden Glove stand-out because they pull no punches realistically portraying their serial killer protagonists as cruel, grimy, stupid, and hateful. The Golden Glove is more graphic but also has some funny dark humor segments, while Henry is genuinely one of the most oppressively bleak movies I've ever seen.

There's also Feed, the horror movie about a feeder fetish website owner that is honestly not a very good movie but the scenes of the fatasses eating were so disgusting it made me legitimately nauseous.

 

[Oliver Onions]

My favorite disturbing film is I saw the devil.

I love I Saw The Devil, but I think similar Korean films like The Chaser and 'H' are better. A lot of the violence in I Saw The Devil felt overly gratuitous for the sake of being shocking.

Strangers From Hell/Hell Is Other People is a TV series with a similar vibe, but the editing in it is really fucking annoying.

 

[Londo]

I feel this way about its American counterpart, The Day After.

I can get why people think Threads is the superior film, but The Day After has scenes in places I've been IRL, so it literally hit home for me.

TDA gets criticized as being a run-of-the-mill distaster movie, but I disagree. It doesn't show the long-term consequences of nuclear war like Threads, but it ends with pretty much all of the cast dying of radiation poisoning.

Jason Robards weakly tells a squatter to get out of "his house", which is nothing but rubble, then breaks down crying with the man. Then the voice of John Lithgow asks over a ham radio, "is anybody out there? Anybody at all?" before it fades to black.

I'm a bit of a Nuclear fallout film enjoyer. I just went through a phase of watching all the major ones about a month ago.

The day after is definitely hurt by the American film making industry's inability to allow a truly bleak and awful experience like British cinema does.

The War Game is a pretty good, albeit much tamer, version of threads and is quite interesting to watch as it was produced in the 60s before the creation of fully actualised ICBMs and higher payloads.

Testament is another interesting one -- kinda the same issue as The Day After in that it doesn't really show the true brutality of fallout; it's very tame compared to threads, and some aspects of it are kinda pointless, but still good for a watch.

 

[Meat Target]

I'm a bit of a Nuclear fallout film enjoyer. I just went through a phase of watching all the major ones about a month ago.

The day after is definitely hurt by the American film making industry's inability to allow a truly bleak and awful experience like British cinema does.

The War Game is a pretty good, albeit much tamer, version of threads and is quite interesting to watch as it was produced in the 60s before the creation of fully actualised ICBMs and higher payloads.

Testament is another interesting one -- kinda the same issue as The Day After in that it doesn't really show the true brutality of fallout; it's very tame compared to threads, and some aspects of it are kinda pointless, but still good for a watch.

The ending title card of The Day After comes right out and says "a real nuclear war would be much worse than this, and world leaders (read: Reagan) need to de-escalate".

When the Wind Blows is also pretty disturbing.

There's something peculiarly cursed about 70's/80's animation. Ever seen the Soviet adaptation of Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

 

[Londo]

The ending title card of The Day After comes right out and says "a real nuclear war would be much worse than this, and world leaders (read: Reagan) need to de-escalate)".

When the Wind Blows is also pretty disturbing.

There's something peculiarly cursed about 70's/80's animation. Ever seen the Soviet adaptation of Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains"?
https://youtube.com/watch?v=5LNHYz89sNc

Watching now. This is the most eerie 80s thing I've ever seen.

I'm not a big anime fan, however Bare Foot Ben is pretty accurate and horrendous in how it portrays the days after the first Atomic Bombs were dropped.

 

[BrodyDaMan]

The films that always fucked me up as a kid was Threads, a movie produced her in the UK that highlights how grim British film making can be. The entire movie is a documentary style look at the build up and post-reality of a complete nuclear exchange. There's literally nothing happy or positive about that movie.

This reminds me of another British film, that I cannot recall the name of. It's animated, and is about an old couple in the countryside. Unlike Threads, it's centered on these people, and they do their best to follow the instructions from the radio. You only get very slight hints that something is going wrong, like all the protractors suddenly going out of stock. And once the fallout happens, you watch as this charming couple, who are so good mannered that they keep trying to make each other happy through the fallout, slowly starves to death. It's very similar to Grave of the Fireflies, but while in that movie you can be put off by the elder brother's retarded decisions, this movie is absolutely bleak and very effective.

Edit: The movie is When the Wind Blows. Someone already recommended it above while I was typing this lmao

 

[Ken Barlow]

This may be a bit tame. The Hitcher is an old school video nasty from when I was growing up and it still greatly unsettles me. I dunno, something about Rutger Hauer just creeps me out. I have always preferred psychological shit over gratuitous gore.

 

[Londo]

This reminds me of another British film, that I cannot recall the name of. It's animated, and is about an old couple in the countryside. Unlike Threads, it's centered on these people, and they do their best to follow the instructions from the radio. You only get very slight hints that something is going wrong, like all the protractors suddenly going out of stock. And once the fallout happens, you watch as this charming couple, who are so good mannered that they keep trying to make each other happy through the fallout, slowly starves to death. It's very similar to Grave of the Fireflies, but while in that movie you can be put off by the elder brother's retarded decisions, this movie is absolutely bleak and very effective.

Edit: The movie is When the Wind Blows. Someone already recommended it above while I was typing this lmao

When the Wind Blows is up there with Watership Down as my reason for having trust issues with anything animated.

"Oh a cartoon, this will be so cool" Fast forward 25 years of waiting for the nukes to drop post cold war, and wondering if the Rabbits from the ship will kill me in my sleep.

 

[BrunoMattei]

When discussing the most disturbing films, I think it's important to clarify what a film is. Does it need to be given an official age rating? Does it need to be widely projected in a country? Does it need to have an official media release like cassette or DVD? Case in point, these kind of lists largely ignore mondo films presumably because most of them don't satisfy at least one of the aforementioned criteria, for example, Traces of Death never got a BBFC rating.

I think in this example it has to be a feature film with a narrative story of some kind. Otherwise, you can list whatever the fuck from Liveleak to just porn. And documentaries/mondo (staged or otherwise) should also be excluded.

It will take me until later to draw up a list but to get the most unpleasant choice out of the way regarding something real that isn't a feature would be Jamie Gillis' shit porn where he cajoles random women off the street to get fucked, verbally abuses and breaks them down, and the one I saw had him shit on the floor and orders the woman to wipe his shit all over her face in mock-blackface.

Needless to say, I did not jerk to that (unlike some people). But Peter Sotos was a fan of that and write up transcripts in his shitrag.

 

[We Are The Witches]

Can't really get disturbed from movies, but Begotten could be for some people, if they don't mind silent films that is.

It's not horror in the traditional sense, it's "experimental horror", so expect it to not make any sense, unless you see it like a metaphor, or poetry, etc. From what I remember, it's supposed to be the story of a god, or the son of a god facing cruelty in this world (perpetrated by humans, I think), and has Christian and Celtic religion and mythology themes as part of its inspiration.

I watched it many years ago, if you can't make it through a silent film (don't think it has any dialogue), then maybe it's not for you.