Have you ever been disturbed or sickened by a movie, not including one or two passing gory scenes in a war or horror movie?
Was there any redeeming quality to it or purpose that gave it meaning beyond mere shock or novelty disgust?
Background:
After randomly clicking on a review for a movie I knew nothing about - A Serbian film - at Aintitcool news, I read some pretty horrific things about what happens in that movie (which I initially thought would be some Bosnian war-set movie). I won’t recount it here, but in the talkback section, some incredibly disturbing scenes are described as well as a few other almost equally disturbing movies are mentioned - “The Human Centipede,” “Inside,” “Neckromantic 2,” and a few others. I haven’t seen any of these movies and have no intention to whatsoever. I suppose they could be described as horror movies, but some describe them as true torture porn and making the Saw or Hostel movies look like after school specials in comparison.
For these types of movies in particular though, who do they appeal to and are they the direction that horror movies are going to be turning to in the future?
When I was around 14, a very impressionable age, I saw the original version of the film “Lord of the Flies” (1963 I think). I was depressed for a couple of weeks after that, at the sickening glimpses at some of the worst of human nature. So yes, I was very disturbed by this film.
It was, of course, a cautionary tale about that very topic (i.e. the savagery that lurks just beneath the civilized surface) so it was a serious film, if that can be called redeeming. Pretty much unrelentingly negative, though, to my view.
Roddy
August Underground’s Mordum was sickening and had no redeeming qualities unless you count the make up special effects.
Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom was thoroughly disgusting, but it was extremely well done. Good direction and cinematography, and it actually had a point.
I saw Faces of Death when I was a teenager. It was wrong.
Gummo was disturbing but it had an artistic quality, when it was over I said, “What the fuck was that?” then my friends and I discussed it. I don’t discuss many movies.
I guess it was “disturbing,” or at least really gross…except that it was boring. Extremely boring. In fact, it put me to sleep. I mean literally, I fell asleep trying to watch it. It was so boring it was actually relaxing. The soundtrack—think Phillip Glass crossed with a windshield wiper—didn’t help anything.
Most of the movies that I’d actually call “disturbing” are ones that do it on a more philosophical or emotional level. Blood and gore are just so much latex and spirit gum to me, in the end.
Capturing the Friedmans makes me feel that way, though it’s not as gory as some of the films listed here. It’s not gory at all, actually, but the content is quite disturbing. It’s a documentary about a family in the 80s, where the father and eighteen year old son were accused (the filmmakers make the case, perhaps falsely) of molesting and sodomizing many young boys. The film does make it clear that the father was indeed a pedophile. Plus the whole family dynamics are so insanely dysfunctional, that it’s hard to watch at times. It’s still one of my favorite movies of all time and I’ve seen it about four or five times.
You can watch Sunday’s Game for yourself on the web. It is just a short film of a group of old ladies getting together for a friendly weekend gathering. Warning: it is disturbing by any measure but that is what you asked for but the acting is incredibly realistic at the same time.
The movie Pretty Persuasion is available on Netflix on Demand and it is a full-length movie with a large budget and everything. It is about a really smart and beautiful 15 year old girl who manipulates the shit out of everyone and ends up destroying everyone’s lives in her wake causing them to commit suicide, lesbian pedophilia, or lose their livelihood. It is written as a dark comedy on top of that. It isn’t a completely great movie because it is uneven but I read a review that said the most amazing thing about it is that it ever got made at all. Someone read the script and thought it was a good idea to hire people to make it. It is roughly similar to Heathers which is one of my favorite movies except darker.
City Of God was probably one of the only movie I’ve ever had a truly hard time getting through. But I think that’s because a lot of the violence was caused by or directed at very young kids.
Pretty much any movie that has a rape scene I can’t watch.
I was flipping through channels a few years ago, and caught either a movie or an episode of the Sopranos (it was on HBO, and I didn’t check to see what it was) where there was a graphic rape scene that took place on a staircase. I still get a little ill when I think about it.
I wouldn’t say I was disturbed or sickened by it but I really disliked the movie “Martyrs.” What happened on screen was justified by pseudointellectual psychobabble which I thought was insulting to the audience’s intelligence. I know a lot of people really like the movie though…everyone’s mileage varies.
Just because a movie has horrific elements in it doesn’t make it a horror movie. You wouldn’t call Irreversible or Salo a horror movie, would you? This doesn’t sound like a horror movie either (to me anyway). It’s apparently a critique of Serbian society. This was an interesting review:
That aside, there have always been movies (and books, and art etc). that attempt to push people’s buttons. That isn’t a new trend, why would you think it would, only now, become a popular medium?
In a horrible act of revenge, a man is kidnapped and held captive for 15 years, his wife murdered and his daughter sent to foster care. He is inexplicably released one day and of course has nothing in mind but revenge, yanking out people’s teeth with pliers and all sorts of nasty shit as he tries to move closer to the truth. There is a romantic subplot in which he falls in love with and has sex with a woman who is helping him find his way. At the climax of the film, he is confronted by his former captor who reveals that the woman he fell in love with and fucked is in fact his own daughter and that this was all an elaborate plot to trick him into committing incest. Horrified, the protagonist crawls on the floor sobbing as begs for forgiveness from his former captor. He pleads with the man not to tell his daughter about his true identity. Then he cuts out his own tongue and offers it to said former captor in exchange for a vow of silence. Then he tries to have a fortune teller erase his memory of these events so that he can continue having an incestuous relationship with his unwitting daughter. That’s basically how the film ends.
Two things make this film awful.
The first is that the acting is impeccable. You feel the passion, the grief, the anguish, the horror.
The second is that the first 80% of this film seems like your run-of-the-mill revenge movie, badass Korean dude prepares to open a can of whoopass. You think you’re just watching a particularly grisly/disturbing action film, getting caught up in the suspense of it all and then BAM! The film becomes something truly horrific in every sense of the word.
ETA: Now that I think about it, there is nothing gratuitous about this film. It doesn’t use the twist as a gimmick. It doesn’t let you look away from the reality of this horror. It brings you too close. You aren’t meant to enjoy the resolution. It’s meant to be sickening.
So in that sense, this is actually an excellent film. But I will never watch it again as long as I live.
vivalostwages–The Cook, the Thief, etc. is the one movie my mom walked out of. She said it wasn’t so much the gore as it was the idea of this guy manipulating and controlling everyone–she said she’s known people like that in real life and it wasn’t fun to watch on the screen.
