Seven
[ranking: 1]
After you've seen Seven, the opening of a box will forever be no simple task. David Fincher's 1995 stylish neo-noir tells the sordid tale of a serial killer who bases his victims off of the seven deadly sins.
Fincher creates a hellish unnamed city in which it it never stops raining, and the streets always seem dirty and dank. Each crime scene is carefully crafted to take the spectator inside the psychotic mind of the aptly named John Doe. The film's twist ending still packs a walloping punch, no matter how many times you've screamed in mock horror, "What's in the box?"
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Zero Day
[ranking: 2]
Of all the films made surrounding mass school shootings, Benjamin Coccio's 2003 faux-documentary Zero Day may be the most disturbing. In Zero Day, two students make a year-long plan to shoot up their high school, but even though audiences are being told what is going to happen, it somehow doesn't seem like the boys will actually go through with it in the end.
However, when the reprieve does not come, the boy's pointless killing spree is terrifying. Knowing that this kind of horror actually happens in real life only makes Zero Day more dizzying to watch.
Buried
[ranking: 3]
Buried tells the story of Paul Conroy, a US contractor working in Iraq who is kidnapped and buried alive. With nothing to save him other than a lighter and a cell phone, Buried is a horrifying movie that make its audience feel as though they are choking for air alongside the protagonist.
If a spectator was not claustrophobic heading into the cinema, they definitely were after watching Paul struggle helplessly in his confined space for an hour and a half.
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Schindler's List
[ranking: 4]
Room
[ranking: 5]
In Room, a young woman and her son are being held captive by a violent psychopath in a small shed. The five-year-old son, a product of rape, knows only the sheltered life of the shed, or "room," as Ma calls it. The small space is his whole world, as the young boy doesn't even know that he's a prisoner.
Room is essentially two horrifying films. The first half deals with Ma and Jack's claustrophobic life inside the shed ?C culminating in the audience's realization that their captor rapes Ma every night while Jack listens.
But then there is the second half, Ma and Jack's life after the escape. After being held captive for years, the elements of the real world seem just as psychologically terrifying to them as their life inside the shed.
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Requiem For A Dream
[ranking: 6]
Perhaps no film captures what it means to be a hardcore drug addict better than Darren Aronofsky??s sophomore indie, Requiem for a Dream. The director??s hip montage editing style brings audiences into the world of heroin and speed addiction. Aronofsky pulls no punches, showing audiences rock bottom ?C the point of absolutely no return for four addicts who would otherwise probably be decent human beings.
Requiem for a Dream is beyond disturbing. It can make you run out of the room crying, begging for the images to leave your head ?C but they won't... not anytime soon anyway.
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Irr??versible
[ranking: 7]
Irr??versible was specifically designed to make audiences panic. Gaspar No??'s 2002 graphic revenge drama literally made viewers sick. The director used a 27 hertz bass frequency during the first 30 minutes of the movie, a frequency that cannot be heard by the human ear, but has the ability to induce panic, anxiety, extreme sorrow, and heart palpitations.
Several audience members reportedly left the theater during the film's opening scenes because they felt sick and disoriented. And the film already features a beyond-disturbing, nine-minute rape scene that is nauseating enough without the low-frequency bass designed to induce panic.
Film critic Roger Ebert described the feature as, "a movie so violent and cruel that most people will find it unwatchable."
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American History X
[ranking: 8]
Happiness
[ranking: 9]
Writer/director Todd Solondz portrays the middle-class suburban life of three sisters and their families in the 1998 dramedy Happiness. Almost every character is a vile human being in their own way, and the scary part is each of them reeks of familiarity.
In the film, Dylan Baker plays Bill, a loving father and husband ?C a standup suburban dad. That is... until the audience discovers he is a pedophile. The most disturbing part of Happiness is Solondz's constant challenge to the viewer, attempting to make Bill sympathetic. The spectator is almost rooting for him not get caught.
Happiness was an extremely controversial film that was denied entry into the Sundance Film Festival. Roger Ebert wrote about the film's combination of tragic irony:
Happiness is about its unhappy characters, in a way that helps us see them a little more clearly, to feel sorry for them, and at the same time to see how closely tragedy and farce come together in the messiness of sexuality. Does "Happiness" exploit its controversial subjects? Finally, no: It sees them as symptoms of desperation and sadness. It is more exploitative to create a child molester as a convenient villain, as many movies do; by disregarding his humanity and seeing him as an object, such movies do the same thing that a molester does.
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12 Years A Slave
[ranking: 10]
12 Years a Slave tells the story of a black man who is born free in New York but is kidnapped and forced into slavery for over a decade. Director Steve McQueen depicts the protagonist's struggle with an unapologetic eye. This is a true story adapted from Solomon Northup's memoir, and McQueen made sure that he told Solomon's story, no matter how hard it is to watch.
One scene in particular is especially excruciating, a sequence in which Solomon is forced to whip his own friend. It's simply heartbreaking to watch, as it pulls at every ounce of human emotion that exists within a person. How many scary monsters can do that?
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127 Hours
[ranking: 11]
127 Hours is especially terrifying because it actually happened. Hiker Aron Ralston gets his arm stuck in a boulder, and, in an act of both desperation and survival, cuts off his arm with a pocket knife in order to break free.
Reports came in from around that world of audience members vomiting, passing out, and having seizures in the theaters during the particularly graphic self-surgery scene. Wrap contributor John Foote wrote of the amputation scene, "I cannot remember a reaction to a film like this in a very long time, perhaps not since The Exorcist sent audiences scurrying for the doors."
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Trainspotting
[ranking: 12]
The Passion Of The Christ
[ranking: 13]
Mel Gibson's extremely controversial depiction of the last 12 hours of the life Jesus was so graphic that it sent many spectators racing for the door. Acclaimed film critic Robert Ebert wrote of the 2004 picture, "The movie is 126 minutes long, and I would guess that at least 100 of those minutes, maybe more, are concerned specifically and graphically with the details of the torture and death of Jesus. This is the most violent film I have ever seen."
If running for the door isn't bad enough, the drama may have also been responsible for the death of one Kansas woman. Despite the fact the woman had no known health conditions, she reportedly suffered a fatal heart attack while watching the extremely graphic crucifixion scene.
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