I have to say there have only been a couple of movies that I have seen that have truly disturbed me and kept me up all night thinking about them. I can only think of three movies that I have seen that disturbed me enough to keep me thinking about them for hours.
The first movie that comes to my mind is American History X. This movie was asbolutely gripping and had me up a night or two. It was frighteningly realistic and showed how hatred hurts everyone but is sometimes vital to bringing about change at the same time. The curbing scene in the movie by itself is disturbing enough to make me shudder every time I think about it.
The second movie that comes to my mind is Sleepers. This movie is about the sexual abuse that four 11-year-old boys suffer while in a juvenile detention center. I think the main reason I found this movie disturbing is the fact that I was about the same age as the boys in the movie when I saw it. I found it hard not to picture myself in the boys’ situation.
The third movie that comes to my mind is Existenz. This is a really trippy movie starring Jude Law and Jennifer Jason Leigh. When did the Game start in the movie? By the time the movie is over your not even sure the Game ever ended in the movie. Watch this movie and you’ll know what I’m talking about.
So what movies have you guys seen that really disturbed you?
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover is very provocative and quite disturbing (especially the ending). Titus is similiarly disturbing
I also found thought provoking, and by extension quite disturbing were A Clockwork Orange and Minority Report, both very bleak visions of a not too wonderful future (at least from a civil liberties perspective)
But top of my list of disturbing movies is possibly Texas Chainsaw Massacre because I had a lot of difficulty with the constant screaming. It completely did my head in. Also Salo and Baise Moi because they are both seriously fucked up movies
The ending where they ate the girl and complained that she was hairy … shudderTwitch, twitch I had never even considered cannibalism before. Beside she was soo cute and I had quite a crush on her.
A Clockwork Orange however didn’t bother me at the same age. The Meaning of Life and Raiders of the Lost Ark did what with exploding people and melting faces. Nightmares I tell you.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind was on television again recently. I loved it in the seventies but something about the ending seems disturbing to me now after September 11, 2001. (I’m going to beone of the first to put 2001. In one and half months everyone will have to do it).
Ok, since September 11, 2001 there have been millions of words written on the WTC attacks and some of them have been for the purpose of trying to understand Moslems and their points of views. Essentially, they see America as too dominant a player on the world stage. They see Americans as self-centred and arrogant.
They must have seen the last 30 minutes of Close Encounters. Only Americans were chosen to go with the aliens. Only they were good enough. There were no other contenders. It’s a bit worrying.
For Close Encounters I thought people from all over the world were contacted and invited but the US military stopped them with the scare. But even then some made it through but they were all stopped on the site and choppered out. The US military had chosen several military officers to go but the aliens only took the people the invited that made it to the site and that was Dreyfus.
Movies that have disturbed me so much that I saw them once and Never Want to see Them Again, though they are all good films (at least, if the fact that they affected me deeply is any indication).
SPOILERS
The Rapture - A good film in its way… so good that the part where the main character kills her kids was far too believeable. Bothered me a great deal.
Jude - starring my favorite actress, Kate Winslet… a pretty good adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure. Again, though, the scene in which Jude’s children are killed is terribly disturbing to me. That sort of thing is what gives me nightmares.
Rosemary’s Baby - Sensing a pattern here? One of the most well-made “horror” films ever, but its premise is chilling.
Dancer in the Dark - An excellent film, and Bjork is wonderful in it, but its unbearably sad. I was in a piss-poor mood for at least a day after watching it, and even now listening to the soundtrack puts me straight into a funk.
Ghost–I was working graveyard shift in a hospital at the time and my job took me wandering through the dark deserted hallways at odd off hours. That, and–Demi Moore always give me the willies.
I was disturbed by Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, but who wasn’t?
In adulthood, one that disturbed me was Natural Born Killers. For some unexplainable reason, I identified with Robert Downey Jr.'s character. If I watched it again, it probably wouldn’t have such an effect on me.
Raise the Red Lantern and Farewell, My Concubine also left me feeling pretty hollowed out afterwards.
Fight Club. The idea of a completely nihilist organization committing acts of sabotage aimed at utterly destroying our civilization and putting nothing in its place. That’s Nechayevism, and that’s just plain evil.
8mm I agree. I haven’t seen many of these other ones though. Existenz was like watching one of my dreams. It was surreal in that way but it didn’t disturb me.
I thought long and hard about this question. Movies that scared me didn’t necessarily disturb me. Movies that made my skin crawl, again, didn’t necessarily disturb me. Memento did.