Tame by today’s barometer, but the rape scene in Deliverance gave me nightmares. I haven’t watched that movie in 30 years.
But so over the top that you couldn’t really take it seriously. I have no desire to watch it again, but mostly because I found it uninvolving.
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover was a progressively disturbing film. Well acted, beautifully shot, but utterly and pointlessly gratuitous in its depiction of violence and depravity. Peter Greenaway seems to consider himself a visionary genius, but I think he’s more of an unfulfilled sadist.
Neil LaBute makes movies (at least, pre-Wicker Man remake) that are the combination of the worst elements of David Mamet and Roger Avery. After watching any of his trifecta of In The Company of Men, Your Friends and Neighbors, and The Shape of Things, I want to go home and scrub myself clean with a pumice stone.
The only movie I’ve ever had to walk out of because of how disturbing it was, though, is the Great Patriotic War movie Idi i smotri (usually translated as Come and See), a surrealistic film about the Nazi occupation of Belarus. It’s a horrific film for reasons I can’t even put into words; it goes beyond just the horrors of war. I think I might have suffered PTSD just from watching the film. This is the film Francis Ford Coppola wishes he’d made with Apocalypse Now.
Stranger
The Deer Hunter–disturbing, in that I recall being depressed for about three weeks afterward, and the move stayed with me a long time.
Sickened? I am not sure. If I think a movie is going to sicken me, based on what I read or hear about it (“Saw”, “Hostel” type things, especially) I won’t watch it. Life’s too short. However, I have “Food, Inc.” and I’m procrastinating watching it because of the factory farming of animals that I think I’m going to see.
Two movies have lingered for me.
To be frank, most torture porn-type films I’ve seen (and I don’t go out of my way to see them) bore me. I don’t find them really disturbing, since they tend to lack emotional force - they are just excessively gruesome. To be really disturbing takes the ability to get under your skin …
Two movies that I’d say do that are:
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The Virgin Spring (Jungfrukällan) - not gratuitous in its depiction of brutal rape and revenge, but it has all the more impact because of that (similar story used in the schlockier Last House on the Left, which I haven’t actually seen all of.)
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Night of the Hunter - a truly unforgettable portrayal of a psychopath.
The book it is based on is even more disturbing as is the fact that it was based on a true story.
I thought Schindler’s List was a pretty tough movie to get through. That scene where the commandant or whomever he was just casually strolls out on the balcony and starts randomly shooting Jewish prisoners will stay in my brain forever.
Also I thought 8mm was pretty disturbing.
Requiem for a Dream is the only movie I’ve seen that made me feel physically ill. I definitely felt the movie had redeeming qualities, although I would never watch it again or recommend it to anyone. No Country for Old Men came close to making me ill, but I guess I only felt icky after watching it. In my opinion, it had no redeeming qualities.
Thanks for the warning about Oldboy, olivesmarch4th. It’s been in my Netflix queue for a while, and I’m glad I haven’t watched it yet.
The Lust scene in Se7en was gruesome; and they didn’t show the actual scene itself.
Deliver us from Evil. It’s a documentary about Father Oliver O’Grady, now retired and living on his pension in Ireland. During the 70s he raped at least a dozen children. The interviews with him are the most disturbing real thing I’ve ever seen- he describes his actions in a manner that makes it perfectly clear he feels no guilt and can’t understand why people are upset with him. It’s chilling.
Pink Flamingos. It has this scene where a guy rapes a woman with a chicken. The whole thing was incredibly fucked up and I was kind of surprised it was even available on Netflix. That was the only movie I haven’t been able to sit through due to discomfort (and I’ve watched a lot of weird movies, including many mentioned in this thread so far that are really tame by comparison. Seriously, a Clockwork Orange? I think I watched that in 7th grade and wasn’t disturbed even then)
We went to this with another couple, and afterwards the other guy was laughing, saying nobody was that abusive in real life. The other three of us were like, “um, really?”
I tend to not watch movies that would sicken me…I don’t go for torture porn or the like. But of those I’ve seen, I think Robocop would be the one. Not just that it was violent, but the violence was so sadistic that it made me never want to watch the movie again.
I’d have to say Oldboy as well. Great, moving film, but when everything was revealed in the end, it was really sickening.
I’m very sensitive, and easily disturbed. I try not to pick out movies that I know will disturb me, but I have been caught out. The Deer Hunter, Trainspotting (probably the most disturbing movie I’ve ever seen), The Passion of the Christ, The Green Mile, No Country For Old Men, all off the top of my head.
I just found what I wrote on my SIL’s facebook page after watching City Of God, which she recommended to me
I think the fact that I have a 4 year old was one of the reasons it was so hard for me to get through.
People keep mentioning City of God as a disturbing movie. I watched it after having to have watched the movie Pixote for a Brazilian cinema class. That movie was disturbing.
The main adult female character is pregnant, and then has an illegal, homemade abortion… The remains, pinned with a couple of stitch needles, are shown in the next scene.
It also hurts when you realize that, for some morbid reason, Brazilian filmmakers use real-life destitute children in their films. The protagonist of this movie was eventually murdered.
All I can remember is a scene of some guy being crapped on and some other scene of someone being eaten.
This was on a VHS and I ended up fast forwarding some things and then, thankfully, mentally blotting out the rest.
You should watch it as soon as possible. It’s such a great, great film. Almost everything about it is perfectly executed. And I feel bad for the squid (you’ll find out what I mean).
The movie Dumplings was pretty gross…
I had to look it up… When i was ten for some stupid reason my older sister let me watch “The Tin Drum”… that movie freaked me out. I didn’t want to know anyone named Oscar… nor eat any fish.
When I was a little kid, like 5 or 6, I was over at someone’s house and they were watching Robocop.
I don’t remember anything about this film other than:
‘‘I thought we were just going to scare him?’’
‘‘Well, he’s scared, isn’t he?’’
(I think that’s the dialog… haven’t been anywhere near that film since that day.)
I think that was the first time I’d ever been exposed to the concept of torture. That scene will be stuck in my head for the rest of my life.