There's bound to be a film out there that pushes one or two of your buttons.
These movies, on the other hand, push every single one of them.
These movies aren't just hard to watch.
They aren't just edgy.
And they don't just challenge the entire concept of good taste.
They're deeply disturbing on almost every level.
Director Eli Roth is no stranger to movies that are hard to sit through.
His 2006 horror hit Hostel proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt, and turned his name into
a synonym for over-the-top violence.
With The Green Inferno, however, Roth pushes things further than ever before, and unless
you're a seasoned gorehound, chances are you won't make it to the end.
In the grand tradition of the video nasties of the '70s and '80s, Inferno tells the tale
of a group college-aged activists who head to the Amazon to protest a logging operation.
They find cannibals instead.
"We are all going to escape tonight, all of us, I promise."
"Okay?"
"Okay."
You can probably imagine the non-stop stream of gore and misery that follows, and if you
can't last through the whole movie, well, that's kind of the point.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Roth said:
"If I've really done my job as a director, nobody can actually watch your movie…
You don't want people walking out of a movie; you want them running out of the theater screaming.
When that happens, that's like a standing ovation for me."
The Green Inferno achieves its unsettling dread by shooting on location in Peru, utilizing
physical special effects, and casting members of the Amazon's native population in key roles.
That's led some critics to accuse Inferno of cultural appropriation, but Roth doesn't
seem to mind.
He's insisted that the amateur actors were all paid fairly, and while they didn't have
much experience in front of the camera they, quote, "got it right away and loved it."
Don't confuse Martyrs, the 2008 French thriller, with its 2015 American remake.
Both movies have roughly the same plot, but there's one big difference: the English language
version is remarkably tame, despite its inherently unsettling subject matter.
That's by design.
Writer Mark L. Smith told Creative Screenwriting:
"I'm not a lover of violence.
I tried to stay away from all the violence and keep it offscreen, which was kind of the
polar opposite of the original."
So if you've got a low tolerance for abuse and still want to watch something messed up
for some reason, stick with that one.
On the other hand, if you want to test your mettle, go for the original.
With graphic depictions of brutal acts, Martyrs isn't for the faint of heart.
When it screened at Cannes, audiences left the theaters in droves.
They just couldn't handle it.
From the basic plot to the film's horrifying climax it's easy to understand why.
Sure, Martyrs is also a nuanced story about guilt and friendship, and Smith is right when
he says that there's more to it than mere gore.
But the gore is a big part of it.
Like the New York Times wrote, this isn't one for amateurs.
You won't find everything that makes Irreversible hard to watch on screen.
Don't get us wrong: Emotionally, the movie is absolutely brutal.
It's bad enough that even its star, Monica Bellucci, can't sit through it.
But that's not the only reason over 250 people fled the film's Cannes premiere, with many
fainting or seeking medical treatment.
The sound played a big role, too.
See, Irreversible uses infrasound, or low-frequency sound waves, to augment its unsettling visuals.
You can't actually hear the sound, but your body registers it anyway, leading to feelings
of anxiety, unease, distress, and depression, in addition to the shivers and, sometimes,
nausea.
"It's sort of anxiety producing.
I don't know about fear, but it's unnerving."
It's a trick that many modern horror films use, including Paranormal Activity, and while
infrasound doesn't affect every member of the audience in the same way, it's credited
as one of the reasons why Irreversible makes many members of its audience feel sick.
In fact, many people who watch don't even make it very far into the film.
Thanks to the soundtrack, a mere half hour of Irreversible is more than enough for many
viewers, forcing them to turn the film off before its most horrific action even truly
begins.
When The Woman made its Sundance debut, many people left the theater.
Others simply wished they had.
By all indications, that's exactly the type of reaction director Lucky McKee was hoping
for.
The plot, which centers on a dysfunctional family's attempt to "civilize" a wild woman
by locking her in the basement and torturing her, is explicitly designed to push every
misogynistic and toxically masculine button.
"Do we really get to keep her?"
"We do."
Oddly, it's also a thoughtful and nuanced film, at least once you get past its surface
shocks.
It's not all gore and gloom.
The Woman has something to say.
It also has a pretty decent Rotten Tomatoes score, especially for this kind of thing.
There's a rewarding experience lurking underneath the discomfiting chills, you just have to
last through the whole movie to find it.
Good luck.
Filmgoers at the Toronto International Film Festival should've known what they were in
for.
After all, its late-night "Midnight Madness" programming block has its name for a reason:
anything goes.
Unfortunately, not everyone got the memo, and one film fan found Coralie Fargeat's Revenge
so intense that he had a seizure right in the middle of the theater.
Reportedly, it was a stomach churning scene in which a man is forced to remove a giant
piece of glass from his foot that did it.
Fargeat told IndieWire:
"We started to hear someone say, 'hello, hello,' from the audience.
I didn't know if it was someone making [a joke] in the room, then I see the paramedics
in the cinema."
Thankfully, the audience member was fine.
He was in good company, too.
Revenge lead Matilda Lutz admitted that the scene made her feel "weird" as well, and she
was there when the scene was shot.
If that scene doesn't get you, the rest of Revenge very will might.
Starring Lutz as a woman out for vengeance after being left for dead by her lover and
his friends, all of which is shown on screen, naturally, Revenge is a lean, brutal, and
extremely well-reviewed thriller that's just as thrilling as it is disturbing.
Just don't take it lightly.
Lars von Trier has been down this road before.
In 2009, the director rolled into Cannes with Antichrist, a film that probably deserves
its own entry on this list.
It's wildly misogynistic, unsettling, and is relentlessly bleak, and people walked out
when it screened.
"Chaos reigns."
A decade later, von Trier did it again.
After doling out a multi-year ban to von Trier after the director said he sympathized with
Adolf Hitler, Cannes authorities decided to let the filmmaker exhibit his latest picture
at the 2018 festival.
Well, surprise!
The House that Jack Built is even more difficult to stomach than its predecessor.
In the movie, Matt Dillon plays a serial killer on a 12-year murder spree.
When The House that Jack Built screened, people left.
Not just one or two, either.
Reportedly, more than 100 festival guests decided to leave the theater rather than finish
watching.
In the aftermath, attendees turned to Twitter to express their disgust, calling von Trier's
movie "vomitive" and claiming that it, quote, "should not have been made."
Fair criticisms, but they should've expected it.
The House that Jack Built is so gross that it wasn't even allowed to compete for the
Palme d'Or, Cannes' top prize.
Instead, it screened outside of competition in order to avoid any Antichrist-like controversies.
When horror fans entered the theater to see Bite at Fantasia Fest 2015, they received
special Bite-branded barf bags.
It wasn't a joke.
As Fantasia Fest co-director Mitch Davis posted on Facebook, during the screening, at least
two people passed out.
One hit his head on the stairs.
Another started puking.
By the time the film wrapped, an ambulance was on site, treating various members of the
audience for illness.
That's a pretty strong reaction, but on the other hand, Bite is a particularly gross movie.
The horror begins in Costa Rica, where a bride-to-be receives a mysterious insect bite while celebrating
her bachelorette party.
"I'm fine.
It's just a small bug bite."
Not that Casey has time to worry about it, of course.
She's already struggling with her upcoming wedding, her domineering soon-to-be mother-in-law,
and her fiancé's child filled plans for their future.
Like Bite's audience, however, Casey doesn't realize the severity of her situation.
Before long she's puking up pus, laying egg sacks around her apartment, raising a hive
of carnivorous monsters, and watching as her body decomposes, revealing the insectoid form
underneath.
In other words, Bite quickly goes from a middling character drama into full-on body horror,
and it doesn't really offer a break once it kicks into high gear.
And as Fantasia Fest proves, it's not an easy movie to finish.
In fact, you may find it to be something of an endurance test if you do sit down to watch
it.
When a filmmaker says their movie is going to make you vomit, believe them.
It's far, far better than the alternative.
Sam Peckinpah's grim and gritty western The Wild Bunch might be considered a classic now,
but during its initial run, the movie's hardcore violence was too much for late '60s moviegoers.
Preview audiences lambasted the film, calling it "wasted insanity."
After launch, cowboy king John Wayne complained that The Wild Bunch's blood-soaked action,
quote, "destroyed the myth of the Old West."
Even by modern standards, The Wild Bunch is still grotesquely violent.
In the '90s, Warner Bros. tried to release a director's cut with 10 extra minutes of
footage.
None of that new stuff was particularly gory, but the MPAA still took the opportunity to
change The Wild Bunch's rating from an R to an NC-17, keeping the film out of theaters
for an extra two years.
The Wild Bunch is brutal and uncompromising and, at the time, was too much for many theater
attendees, some of whom walked out just 20 minutes into the film.
Just because The Wild Bunch is a classic doesn't mean it's easy to watch.
Even today, all of that bloody ultra-violence means that you might have to step away before
the final credits roll.
Don't be ashamed.
You'd hardly be the first one.
"Ain't like it used to be, but, uh … it'll do."