Horror movies' ability to evoke a physical response in audiences has long been used as
part of hyping the genre.
And sometimes, the advertisements aren't lying.
Here are some horror films that literally made audiences sick.
1973's The Exorcist is a landmark moment in the history of horror.
Based on the best-selling novel of the same name by William Peter Blatty, the film stars
Ellen Burstyn as divorced actress Chris McNeil.
After playing with a Ouija board, her daughter Regan, played by Linda Blair, begins exhibiting
bizarre behavior and physical changes.
After exhausting all medical and psychological options, Chris turns to Catholic priest Damien
Karras for help.
Reluctantly determining that Regan's malady is of a supernatural origin, Karras teams
with Father Merrin, a veteran exorcist, in a grueling battle of life and death.
The Exorcist's scary effectiveness lies in the seriousness with which it treats its supernatural
subject matter.
Good and evil are not just ambiguous concepts, but concrete realities in an unending war
fought within a young girl's soul.
Aside from the film's skillful direction and brilliant cast, the key to The Exorcist's
power lies in the artistry of makeup artist Dick Smith, whose nauseating effects are enough
to put even the most hardcore horror fan off pea soup forever.
It's well-documented that fainting and vomiting were common occurrences during first-run screenings
of the film, with some audience members being hauled off in ambulances.
And in some theaters, ushers were even issued smelling salts to revive unconscious patrons.
1999's The Blair Witch Project revolutionized both filmmaking and film marketing, as it
was promoted as the actual recovered footage of three missing film students.
"Montgomery College film students Heather Donahue, Michael Williams, and Joshua Leonard
were reportedly shooting a school project about a local myth called The Blair Witch.”
The plot follows the students as they become lost trudging through the Maryland backwoods
while making a documentary about a horrifying local legend.
Largely improvised and shot by the actors themselves on Hi-8 video and 16-millimeter
film, The Blair Witch Project has long divided horror fans, who either applaud its revolutionary
approach or decry its lack of traditional narrative.
Nonetheless, its impact on horror is undeniable in light of the continuing rash of found footage
films that have followed in its wake.
As horrifying as the premise of being stalked by a ghostly witch is, it wasn't The Blair
Witch Project's scares that sent some audience members running for the exits.
Instead, it was all the motion sickness caused by the handheld cinematography.
The vomit-inducing camerawork led many theaters to post signs and make announcements that
those susceptible to motion sickness should choose another movie or leave the cinema at
the first sign of nausea.
Despite the warnings, though, moviegoers continued to make life hard for cinema staffers, who
were forced to deal with the messes while armed with mops and rubber gloves.
The Saw series tells the story of terminally ill serial killer John "Jigsaw" Kramer and
his twisted, moralistic crusade to "rehabilitate" his flawed victims through elaborate games
and deadly traps.
Labelled "torture porn" by critics for their protracted scenes of graphic violence, the
films reignited the decades-old debate over the desensitizing effects of the horror genre
on audiences.
Nevertheless, the movies touched a nerve with fans, who made Saw one of the most popular
and profitable horror franchises of all time.
All of the Saw movies are notorious for their sadistic, endurance-testing sequences of blood
and gore.
But 2006's Saw III took it to another level as it proved particularly hard to take for
patrons of one British cinema.
As The Guardian reported, the staff of the Cineworld theater in the English town of Stevenage
were forced to call emergency services three times during a Friday-night screening of the
film.
Two fainting adults were treated by medics at the scene, while one woman was transported
to an area hospital.
According to Matthew Ware, a representative of the East of England Ambulance Service,
the incidents put quite a strain on emergency medical personnel.
As he told BBC News,
"If you know you're squeamish, don't go.
[...] Taking three ambulances out of the system on a Friday could potentially be a problem."
The creative team of producer J.J. Abrams, writer Drew Goddard, and director Matt Reeves
rebooted the 1950s-style giant-monster-on-the-loose thrills for a new generation with the 2008
thriller Cloverfield.
Focusing on a group of friends struggling to survive the onslaught of an enormous rampaging
monster in New York City, the film is shot from the perspective of one of the movie's
camcorder-toting characters.
Reeves skillfully exploits the found footage style, lending a sense of reality to what
could otherwise easily seem a ridiculous premise in a conventionally shot film.
But just like Blair Witch before it, Cloverfield's shaky cam left audiences feeling seasick.
ABC News reported that sensitive viewers suffered headaches, dizziness, and nausea.
Many couldn't last for more than a few minutes before bolting for the exits.
Complaints and walkouts even prompted the theater chain AMC to post signs warning,
"Due to the filming method used for Cloverfield, guests viewing this film may experience side
effects associated with motion sickness, similar to riding a roller coaster.”
Director Eli Roth burst onto the scene in 2002 with his feature debut Cabin Fever, a
gory body horror film inspired by both 80s horror flicks and a skin infection that Roth
himself contracted while horseback riding in Iceland.
"But my neck was covered in blood, and I look, and literally, I was shaving chunks of my
face off, like I was peeling a banana."
Mixing humor with stomach-turning special effects, the movie made Roth one of the leading
horror directors of the 2000s and garnered accolades from other filmmakers like Peter
Jackson and Quentin Tarantino, who declared Roth "the future of horror."
The Green Inferno, Roth's 2013 homage to grueling grindhouse classics like 1980's Cannibal Holocaust,
follows a group of environmental activists in their efforts to halt a petrochemical company's
bid to clear a swath of the Amazon rainforest.
However, when their plane crashes in the jungle, they find themselves at the mercy of an undiscovered
indigenous tribe of cannibals.
The film's brutal scenes of dismemberment and mutilation reportedly caused a woman attending
a screening at a French theater to faint.
When Roth got wind of the incident, he took it as the supreme compliment to his flesh-eating
opus, as he posted on Instagram,
"It's official!
Someone FAINTED at thegreeninferno.
Best review ever!!!!"
Based on allegedly true incidents experienced by paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine
Warren, The Conjuring series has the dubious distinction of being related to at least two
deaths.
In the first case, the Times of India reported that a 65-year-old man experienced a fatal
heart attack while watching 2016's The Conjuring 2 at a theater.
He began having chest pains and collapsed while watching the movie, which was based
on the notorious Enfield poltergeist case of the 1970s.
The man was rushed to a local hospital but was declared dead on arrival.
Adding an appropriately spooky air of mystery to this tragic incident, the man's body disappeared,
apparently spirited away by an unknown body-snatcher.
A similar tragedy occurred three years later when a corpse was found in a theater after
a screening of Conjuring spin-off Annabelle Comes Home in Thailand, according to The New
Zealand Herald.
The body of Bernard Channing, a 78-year-old British national, was reportedly discovered
by a fellow cinema patron after the movie concluded.
Raw, the debut feature from French filmmaker Julia Ducournau, tells the story of Justine,
a freshman veterinary student and strict vegetarian who develops an insatiable appetite for human
flesh.
After being forced to eat raw rabbit kidneys as part of a hazing ritual, Justine finds
herself craving meat.
Unsatisfied with raw chicken, she turns to her classmates for sustenance, but she eventually
discovers that she's not the school's only cannibal.
Acclaimed for its innovative script, tight direction, and inspired performances, Raw
was hailed as a modern horror masterpiece by critics.
Unfortunately, though, some viewers may have missed out on the finer points of Raw's rich
subtext because they were fainting or retching their guts out in response to the film's highly
realistic gore effects.
During a screening of the movie in Toronto, The Guardian reported that an ambulance reportedly
had to be called to the scene when the film became too much for a couple of patrons to
handle.
The visceral responses would soon become a part of the film's marketing.
The Nuart Theatre in Los Angeles, for one, took full advantage of Raw's growing reputation
by resurrecting the classic grindhouse gimmick of passing out souvenir barf bags to eager
patrons.
1960's Psycho follows Marion Crane, played by Janet Leigh, a woman on the run after embezzling
a large sum of money.
She checks into the Bates Motel, whose affable but off-kilter owner is hiding a deadly secret.
Psycho changed the face of horror forever, as it represents a firm break with the gothic
tradition that had been prevalent in the genre up to that point.
It brought cinematic horror down from the windswept castle and into contemporary, middle-class
America.
Psycho is horror for adults filled with serious themes, subtext, and shocking violence.
"A boy's best friend is his mother."
The film's most celebrated sequence is the infamous shower killing, which has gone on
to become one of the most studied scenes in movie history.
A perfect synthesis of cinematography, music, and editing, the scene is director Alfred
Hitchcock at his unrelenting best.
Running just over three minutes, the intense scene proved too much for some viewers.
As J. Hoberman of The Village Voice wrote in 2010,
"Audiences responded as though trapped on a roller coaster through the spook house,
with a convulsive mixture of screams and laughter.
People bolted for the doors and fainted in their seats.
The mayhem caused one New York theater to call the cops and others to call for censorship."
Eyes Without a Face, which was released in the United States as The Horror Chamber of
Dr. Faustus, is a stylish French horror film that shocked both critics and audiences in
1960.
It's about a plastic surgeon who's wracked with guilt after his daughter is horribly
disfigured in a car accident that he caused who then becomes obsessed with restoring her
beauty.
With the help of his loyal assistant, the mad doctor lures young women to his secluded
mansion, where he attempts to graft their faces onto his injured daughter.
Although the surgeries are initially successful, the daughter's body repeatedly rejects the
transplanted tissue.
With her scarred face concealed by a featureless white mask, she grows weary of her father's
attempts to heal her and turns against him.
Eyes Without a Face was lambasted by critics for its graphic effects and horrifying subject
matter.
As film historian David Kalat wrote in an essay featured on The Criterion Collection,
"The movie scandalized viewers so much, the outraged French critical establishment tried
to deny that the film even existed.
The only English reviewer to admit that she liked it was nearly fired."
Audience reactions were even more visceral, according to the French news magazine L'Express.
At preview screenings in France and Scotland, nauseated and fainting filmgoers were hauled
out of theaters on stretchers.
Released by Netflix in 2019, The Perfection is one of the most recent horror films to
tickle its audience's gag reflex.
Directed by Richard Shepard, the movie stars Allison Williams and Logan Browning as a pair
of gifted young cellists who hatch a complex plot to take revenge on an abusive cult in
a prestigious Boston music school.
Billed as a "psychological thriller," the film packs a heavy, visceral punch that may
not be immediately obvious based on that description.
The Perfection features such sequences as an amputation by meat cleaver and insects
erupting from flesh.
There's also an utterly disgusting incidence of maggot-infested projectile vomit that was
inspired by a real-life incident involving director Richard Shepard.
"Are those b- Are those bugs?
Are those f---ing bugs?"
The movie led sickened viewers to flood social media with their stories of headaches and
nausea.
One Twitter user posted,
"The perfection on netflix is SICK... in a bad way.
[...] My body can't move and I feel like puking."
And another tweeted,
"I [started watching] The Perfection while I was eating and now I feel so sick.
Worst decision ever."
It's pretty clear that as long as horror filmmakers keep crafting disgusting and intense scenes,
viewers are going to keep losing their lunches and their consciousness.
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