It’s been a few weeks since I solicited the advice of my audience on the topic of disturbing movies I could recommend to my sister. She’s since been enrolled in the Netflix DVD rental program (as opposed to the cheaper streaming-only plan) and has received her first two discs. The fist, À l’intérieur (Inside), more than satisfied her gore-lust. This pleased me, as I like to be the person whose recommendations are well-received. She returned Inside and received her second title the other day, Martyrs, and I’m eagerly anticipating her response to it. I have no doubt she’ll enjoy the extreme violence, but the more nihilistic aspects were my favorite aspect of the film so who knows if she’ll find that equally enjoyable.
That said, I started to look ahead and fill the Netflix queue with what I felt were more films that were on par with Martyrs and Inside. Never having worked with the DVD queue function on their website before, it gave me the perfect opportunity to figure out my list of the ten most disturbing movies I would recommend to a gore hound or fan of really fucked up films. So here’s the Netflix DVD queue as it currently stands. Or, in other words, here’s my list of the ten most disturbing movies I would recommend.
10. Salò – It’s not necessarily a horror film like a lot of these extreme films tend to be, but considering what you see on screen and the fact that it was made in 1975 says a lot about the origins of the extreme filmmaking movement as well as its earliest influences. If you haven’t seen Salò (it was recommended to me right around the time I started my current job, by a customer I had never met before, who invited me to a screening with him…it was an odd circumstance) the plot is relatively simple: Set in Fascist Italy in the 1940s, a group of powerful men kidnap eighteen children (nine boys, nine girls) and pretty much sadistically torture the kids for fun. That’s pretty much it. There’s a lot of sodomy, mutilation, and shit. Literal shit. The fact that it’s still banned — after more than 35 years — in several countries is a testament to the graphic and disturbing nature of Salò. Not too much blood. Oh, also it features music by Ennio Morricone. I know, right?
09. Haute Tension – Or High Tension to us English-speaking folk. Alexandre Aja might be better known for his relaunch of The Hills Have Eyes back in 2006, or Piranha 3D a couple years ago, but High Tension is easily his most intense, disturbing movie. Standard slasher/home invastion/torture porn rules apply. There isn’t much of a setup really, other than a girl named Marie and her best friend Alex go to Alex’s parents house for the weekend, and then a serial killer shows up and shit hits the fan. The amount of blood spilled reaches near-impossible levels (how much blood is in a human body, by the way? Judging by this film I’d have to say A LOT. And yeah, there’s that fucking plot hole…but I’d still watch this over a Saw movie any day of the week.
08. Frontière(s) – What we in America would call Frontier(s) is called Frontière(s) in France. This is the first actual horror film on the list, and boy-oh-boy is it a good one. A series of events brings a group of people to a family-run inn near the France/Swiss border. Once there, some pretty fucked up shit starts to happen. A guy gets boiled alive and that seems like a nice way to go compared to what befalls some of the other characters. What separates Frontier(s) from most American torture-porn films is the fact that the plot is both relevant and a bonus to all the blood. I mean…what’s the real STORY behind a film like Hostel? A bunch of kids backpacking across Europe until blah blah blah blood ‘n guts. The same goes with Saw. It’s all about creating elaborate ways to die, and never about the WHY — only the HOW. In Frontier(s) there’s political upheaval spurring the action, there’s a racial ideology that can be attributed to the killings…hell, at the start of the film a pregnant woman reflects on the prospect of bringing a child into such an ugly world. And that’s BEFORE the violence starts. It’s got all the hallmarks of a Hostel, a Saw, a Wolf Creek…but thankfully there’s some social commentary that helps it rise above it’s torture-horror pap peers.
07. Tiresia – Nominated for the Palme d’Or at Cannes back in 2003, this movie has drawn a lot of comparisons to another entry on my list, Irreversible for its unflinching treatment/depiction of violence and sex. Basically, a transexual prostitute working the back alleys of Paris is kidnapped, tied to an old and dirty bed, and left in an abandoned house. Without hormones, “she” begins to transforms back into “he,” and…well…that just doesn’t jive with the kidnapper. It’s a modern adaptation of a Greek myth where, after being left to die in the woods, the victim is saved and receives the gift of prophecy — the ability to tell the future. It’s not the kind of film you’re going to feel “meh” about, you’ll either love it or hate it. For me, the telling of the story is most reminiscent of a film like David Lynch’s Lost Highway, which I hated for a long time after I first saw it. That said, I love Tiresia.
06. Men Behind The Sun – This Japanese film about war atrocities committed by the country’s army during World War II was made in 1988, but it can still match any of its new-school peers in regard to sheer brutality. It’s kind of like Salò in that the film follows a group of boys who join the Youth Corps and partake in various military experiments…like finding a highly contagious strain of the plague to unleash on the enemy. Or organ harvesting. And there’s supposedly actual autopsy footage involved, as well as not-so-nice treatment of animals. Let’s just say there was a reason director T.F. Mou received death threats after its initial release. Again, this isn’t a horror movie per se, but the fact that it deals with the harsh realities of war and the atrocities committed in its name combine to create an aura that might be more frightening than your typical home invasion or faux snuff film often produced for fans of the genre today.
05. Seul Contre Tous – In English, I Stand Alone. The first of two (!!) Gaspar Noé films on this list. There is no light at the end of this tunnel, it is one of the most perversely dark, intense films you’ll ever see. Where else are you going to see a 30-second “WARNING” message giving you a chance to give up watching before the film reaches its conclusion. Trust me, it’s warranted. That said, this is totally unique in that the main character’s inner-monologue drives everything that happens on the screen. And he’s not happy. At all. Every thought he has is dripping with disdain, sadness, or rage. He is literally sick to his stomach when he sees anyone expressing even a modicum of happiness. Considering what the most vile aspects of the film are, I refuse to divulge any further information. It’s probably best that you go into it without any spoilers. Trust me, you’ll walk away from I Stand Alone feeling things you might never have felt about a movie before.
04. À l’intérieur – AKA Inside. Remember a while ago when I wrote about the ridiculous amount of blood spilled in High Tension? Inside might top that film, and it actually has a solid story to back it up. There isn’t necessarily a lot of convincing required to pique potential viewers’ interests here. In fact I could sell you on Inside in one sentence. A pregnant woman is stalked in her home by a stranger who wants to literally cut her baby out of her with a pair of scissors. That’s pretty much the entire plot. All you have to do is just sit back and watch it unfold. It’s gloriously violent but with a level of depth you don’t traditionally get in the horror genre. What’s more, this isn’t just flat-out gore, there’s suspense and terror involved. Add to that the fact that the protagonist is pregnant (how often do you see THAT in a main character, let alone one being brutalized repeatedly) and the result is all the more terrifying and shocking. I’m just happy that men can’t become pregnant. Also, I’ll never look at a pair of scissors the same way again.
03. Dans Ma Peau – Otherwise known as In My Skin, to say that this one is pretty discomforting would be a massive understatement. The main character, Esther, is set up to be a successful young woman who — for all intents and purposes — is a normal, functional human whose professional stock is on the rise. One night at a party she stumbles in the yard and cuts her leg on a shard of metal. She sees a doctor who cleans and patches the wound, but tells her if it doesn’t heal right she might need a skin graft. Then Esther — who has been set up to be self-conscious to a degree — becomes OBSESSED with the wound, and her compulsions lead her to cut herself to an extreme degree followed by…well…self-cannibalism. Yeah. It gets there. It’s one of the most disturbing psychological profiles you’ll ever bear witness to. And that all the torture in the film is self-inflicted, it adds an element of anger/frustration/unease in the viewer that not many films have ever achieved. Oh, man, I felt a lot better about my own OCD post-In My Skin.
02. Irréversible – There used to be this kid who lived on my hall during my junior year of college who LOVED disturbing films. He was a rich kid from Connecticut who also owned an automatic rifle that he took me out into the woods a mile or two from campus to show me once. It was one of the most frightening moments of my life. If he’s not in jail now, he’s probably dead. Anyway, being a rich guy he had an insane setup in his room for watching movies, and one time he told me I needed to this movie he rented called Irréversible. I used to describe it to people as being the only film I’ve ever physically felt ill while watching. I couldn’t understand why. There’s really only one GRAPHIC violent scene. The other — and more famous — disturbing scene didn’t have much effect on me. But for some reason I felt seriously uneasy/sick while watching it. A few years later I read about how Gaspar Noé employed an extremely low-frequency sound during the opening scenes of the film to create a state of disorientation in the audience. Suddenly the seriousness of my unease made sense. Perhaps more than the disgusting murder scene, it is the actual physical discomfort I experienced watching Irréversible for the first time that has never left my memory. And yes, it holds up on repeated viewings. If you don’t believe me, read up on human reactions to infrasound and tell me it’s just me.
01. Martyrs – The cream of the disturbing crop, so to speak, Martyrs is the only movie that I have finished watching only to be disturbed by my own reaction to it. I think I literally experienced an existential crisis while absorbing the story and the gruesome visuals. It haunted me for weeks. I still think about it sometimes when friends make causal movie recommendations. “No, I can’t recommend anybody watch that,” I tell myself. It’s hard to talk about. Hell, it’s hard to describe. I’ll just say I think what disturbed me the most about Martyrs is how director Pascal Lauguier found a way to make me subconsciously feel for the people COMMITTING the atrocities depicted in the film as opposed to the victim of said atrocities. At least in my own experience, I started out asking the traditional “How long can she endure this?”, “Is she going to get away?” questions and wound up 180-degrees away, wondering if the torturers would achieve their goal. It’s absolutely horrifying, that moment when you realize you’ve given up on the victim. This, along with the nihilistic worldview I mentioned at the start of this list, is what remains with you long after the movie ends. That’s what makes Martyrs the most disturbing movie I’ve ever seen. It’s psychological torture. It’s proof of the meaningless of life. It’s the epitome of a film I can’t possibly recommend you watch. But I am. You’ll understand once you reach the other side.
Benoit Pioulard – Mercy [MP3]
