Hmm, from the thread title I thought you were interested in pointless, depressing drug addict movies. 
So I was going to suggest Another Day in Paradise, Highway, Jesus’ Son and Spun. (Hey you have to watch a lot of dreck to find the occasional gem like Salton Sea.) But since it’s disturbing you want:
American History X - skinheads! homicide! shower scenes!
Butcher Boy - she was a damn dirty ape, he had no choice
Erasehead - single fatherhood can be a challenge…
Institute Benjamenta - surreal
Natural Born Killers - sadistic
Sleepers - off the scale
I just saw Gummo last week, so it’s fresh in my mind.
It’s truly hard to describe. It’s made by the same guy who did KIDS, so there’s a fair amount of shock-value. It’s a combination of actors and real people, and I really think it’s an attempt at modern surrealism. There’s no real plot.
KIDS:teenagers::Gummo:rural poor/white trash
I really hate to use the term “white trash,” but the film just magnifies the stereotypes. I don’t know how accurate the movie is in doing so, but it certainly strikes a chord with defining “filthy squalor”.
A scene where a child is adjusting a painting, and bugs are crawling out of the nail hole is truly disturbing - and that’s really just the tip of the iceberg.
I’d suggest:
21 Grams
and, I’ll echo whoever recommended Audition, and add to it another Japanese movie called Battle Royale. Both disturbing, but in a surreal, almost humorous way.
May I suggest a much older movie? I recently bought a copy of Joe, Susan Sarandon’s debut in a feature film, at Walgreen’s on DVD for $3.99. Very gritty, and quite a disturbing ending.
Another one that just came to mind is Romper Stomper featuring a young Russell Crowe as an Australian skinhead.
I’d also add Love & a .45 - Renee Zellweger’s first film. Pretty disturbing.
Most of my favorites have been mentioned, but I want to add Happiness. To this day, I can’t even look at Dylan Baker without thinking of pedophilia. Ick.
another vote for ERASERHEAD here & kudos to DogsLunch for his excellent summary! L
JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN if you can possibly find it! If you saw the Metallica video for “One” (“Hold my breath as I wait for death- Dear God help me!”), it was the movie footage which inspired the song.
You know, I love Gummo, and would recommend it to anyone (not that it is in any way similar to Requiem for a Dream) but I don’t really see what’s disturbing about it. I mainly just think it’s funny and weird. It’s nominally about some phenomenally ugly kids wandering around a dismal, run-down town that’s just been ravaged by a tornado. For some reason it’s set in Xenia, Ohio, though it was filmed in west Nashville. There’s not much plot; it’s much more about strange characters and an overall mood. It has a documentary feel to it because of the amateur actors and the fact that Korine often would just turn on the camera and have people talk about themselves.
One reason I cherish it is because I’m a native Nashvillian who relates to Korine’s interest in the seedier parts of town. There’s a scene (where a man tries in vain to molest some girls) which was filmed right outside a skating rink where I had my 1st grade birthday party. Right after I saw it, my friend and I spent the following week tracking down all the places we could – we even found the car that Korine had inexplicably spray painted “monkee” on. I’ve also personally witnessed the black midget walking around downtown Nash, though I didn’t have the courage to speak to him. Good times. My favorite scene is when that guy destroys the chair, though the shot of the kid eating dinner in the tub with bacon taped to the wall is good, too.
Oh God, the tub scene. How bizarre (and repulsive!).
But you didn’t find the scene with the grandmother disturbing? Or it’s complete lack of resolution? Or the mentally-ill prostitute?
Julien Donkey Boy is also made by the same people who made Gummo and Kids.
Gummo and Julien kinda blur together in my mind, but basically Julien is this really messed up looking guy who is part of a screwed up family. The dad (played by Werner Herzog) is an immigrant of some sort and wants one of his sons to be a wresting star (high school nor pro). So he and the son are always practicing (usually with trash cans for some reason).
Gummo is in love with his sister who is pregnant (and it intimate’s he’s the dad).
THere is a scene where the grandmother…um… pleasures herself.
And I think another where the father is inhaling some substance from a gas mask while wandering around in his tightie whites and his t shirt.
Honestly i don;t remember much of a real plot. I think that’s part of the Dogma 95 style, no plot, no real script, lots of camera angles, lots of different media for the recording and just capture what happens.
Yeah, I can’t remember any “grandmother scene” in Gummo, nor is there a character named Gummo in the movie. Everything that Burn named is from Julien Donkey-Boy, I think. The retarded prostitute, though is from Gummo, most definitely. My understanding is that Harmony Korine (who is the director and writer for both Gummo and Julien Donkey-Boy and who wrote the screenplay for Larry Clark’s Kids) just picked the name Gummo from his love of vaudeville. Gummo was the name of some failed or unsuccessful or even mythical extra Marx brother, I think. I understand that JDB will likely be Korine’s last movie, since it failed so spectacularly. His book (A Crackup at the Race Riots) was pretty funny in parts, but was mostly just random and disappointing.
The thing about Gummo is that while it does have some disturbing moments, it has just as many puzzling and humorous ones, like when the boy and his mother go into the basement to lift weights and tap dance to Madonna’s “Like a Prayer.” And it still has nothing to do with the grinding cruelty that the characters undergo in Requiem that is so disturbing. If you just want to see directors torture their actors, why not see some Neil LaBute movies – In the Company of Men, for example.
To follow up on that idea, two other movies spring to mind of a director inflicting unremitting emotional cruelty on his actors, movies that do, in a way, remind me of Requiem, though without the flashy editing. Both are by Lars Von Trier: Breaking the Waves, and Dancer in the Dark. I hear Dogville’s much the same in terms of the torment, but I haven’t seen it yet. I saw Dancer in the Dark in Manhattan, and was delighted to see, at the closing credits, several Wall Street investment banker types bawling their eyes out over Bjork’s misery. Breaking the Waves also involves some fairly serious sadism, but with Emily Watson this time. Both are great and intense, but aren’t surreal like the Lynch movies I’ve seen mentioned; nor are they hyper-gory like Ichi the Killer, though Audition is still a good suggestion that I’d second.
Movies I found to be disturbing:
Mad Max – I saw only the first one, not any of the sequels.
Kalifornia – Good cast: Brad Pitt plays a sadistic jerk, Juliette Lewis plays his submissive, naive girlfriend. The actors who play Agent Mulder and Ro Laren are in it too. The plot was not so hot, however.
Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead --Excellent movie, while not as completely disturbing as, say, Blue Velvet. Treat Williams is brilliant as Critical Bill.
Wild at Heart–David Lynch. Willem Dafoe plays some sort of sadistic jerk with bad teeth.
Buffalo '66– Damn. What shitty parents. Angelica Huston has the obsessive football fan character nailed.
Mentioned by others: Trainspotting, Natural Born Killers, Spun .
Ooo breaking the waves reminded me of another great movie. Angel Baby.
It’s an australian flick about 2 people with some disorder (i forget what one) that fall in love… and move out of their family’s home and go off their meds trying to have a kid. Very depressing in parts. I forget the cast exactly, except the girl from Romper Stomper is the girl in this movie also.
*Morvern Callar * was a pretty dark film, but it had a light ending, I thought.
How often does a girl find the path to happiness by chopping up her boyfriends body?
I’ve tried to watch Julien Donkey Boy twice, but the film quality is so terrible I can’t get through it. It makes my head hurt.
Disturbing for disturbing’s sake I fifth Kids and add **Doom Generation ** and it’s slightly less upsetting sequel Nowhere. (I think Love and a 45., Happiness and Story-Telling are trying to make points, but YMMV)
The most disturbing movie I’ve seen lately is The Devil’s Backbone. But that’s “oh my God, how could someone do that to little kids” type of disturbing.
you would really like magnolia, imho. the Independant Film Channel is coming out with some great stuff, including these humorus ads- Seth green and Janeanne Garofalo are some of the voices.
Thanks for the recommendations, all. Many of them I’ve seen - Donnie Darko, Memento, Ravenous, Kids, Seven, Jacob’s Ladder.
Gummo certainly sounds interesting. Unfortunately, I see from Amazon.co.uk that it isn’t released in the UK. Arse.