No genre is as notorious for being disturbing, uncomfortable, and violent as the horror genre. While not every entry in the canon has to feature copious amounts of blood, gore, and disgusting images to strike fear into an audience, it is one way the genre can deliver scares and thrills. While a certain level of violence is expected, some go above and beyond and push the boundaries of horror (and even taste) further than expected.
Ti West's X is one of the latest examples of this kind of extreme horror movie and makes for an entertaining and confronting watch. It essentially tells you that from its title alone, and from its premise, which involves a film crew shooting an adult movie at a farmhouse owned by a mysterious elderly couple who don't react well when they find out what's happening. The following nine films all offer similarly shocking and gruesome rides for the most devoted horror fans. They're not for the faint of heart, but they're easy to recommend to those who enjoyed X.
Titane (2021)
Winning the Palme d'Or at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, Titane is a radical and unique horror film that ends up being as touching and emotional as it is confronting and disturbing. To try and summarize the plot is difficult, but broadly, it involves a woman who has a unique fascination with metal, has apparently been impregnated by a car, is a serial killer, and fakes her identity when she goes on the run, forming a unique bond with a firefighter who himself is struggling with the loss of his own son.
The fact it's so relentless and shocking and out there in its first half makes the emotional pull of the film's second half that much more impactful. With its bizarre imagery and graphic violence, it may not be for everyone (the Academy Awards included, where it didn't even get a Best Foreign Film nomination), but its ambition and gutsiness ensure it's one of the most memorable films of 2021.
Midsommar (2019)
Ari Aster's follow-up to Hereditary pushed things even further when it came to shocking visuals and in-your-face horror. While Midsommar may lack the despair and visceral trauma of Hereditary, it makes up for it with its unpleasant sights and sounds.
With its story about a cult in Sweden terrorizing a group of American tourists playing out almost entirely in daylight, there are no shadows to hide the film's more grisly scenes. Things kick off with a bizarre and shocking ritual involving people leaping off of cliffs, and it never really lets up after that. Due to its slower pace and focus on characters, those scenes might not be as frequent as they are in other horror movies, but whenever it wants to disgust its audience, Midsommar succeeds almost a little too well.
Revenge (2017)
Revenge takes a well-worn horror premise and does it far better than any movie that came before it. After a woman is physically abused and left for dead by several men in the middle of the desert, she tracks down and seeks vengeance on those who are responsible, refusing to stop until they've all paid for what they've done.
It sounds like it's been done before, but with its bold visuals, relentless pacing, and incredibly brutal violence, Revenge is far and away the best of the "lone woman seeks revenge on men" horror sub-genre that had its origins in the infamous and flawed I Spit On Your Grave. In fact, it might be one of the best revenge-themed films period. Director Coralie Fargeat's ability to do something phenomenal with an often mishandled premise is remarkable, and it's a must-watch for all strong-stomached horror fans.
The Fly (1986)
Featuring one of Jeff Goldblum's most famous roles in what might be horror legend David Cronenberg's best film, The Fly is the rare remake that's even better than the original. At its simplest, it's about a science experiment that goes wrong, which slowly begins to transform Goldblum's character into a fly.
It might sound silly, but the special effects and genuine tragedy of the story make The Fly hold up as a gripping and genuinely disturbing horror film. The practical effects that are used to demonstrate the awful metamorphosis still look disturbingly real, and while the 1950s original still makes for a fun watch, Cronenberg's remake still stands as a genuinely great film.
Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)
Tetsuo: The Iron Man is definitely not to be mistaken for Iron Man, the first film in the MCU. Rather than being a fun, franchise-starting superhero film, Tetsuo: The Iron Man is a low-budget body horror movie about a man who day by day finds more and more of his body parts turning into metal.
The look of this movie is unlike anything else, and the low budget doesn't make things look any less real or horrifying. Its distinct visual style and editing are as much of an assault on the senses as the horrifying black and white imagery, and as great as it is, it's so relentless that it only being 67 minutes long is something of a relief.
Mother! (2017)
Darren Aronofsky has a knack for putting intense and nightmarish imagery on screen, so to say Mother! might be the hardest film to watch in his whole filmography is really saying something. A story about one woman whose quiet home life is disturbed by a constant stream of unwanted guests (that is probably also a feature-length biblical analogy), to call Mother! a stressful film would be an understatement.
It's hard to put into words why the film is as horrifying as it is, as it really has to be experienced and to describe the most stomach-churning scenes would be giving too much away. It's the kind of film you might watch once but never again, and for as bad as it might feel to sit through, it is an undeniably memorable experience.
Braindead (1992)
Braindead (or Dead Alive in North America) might be Peter Jackson's most famous film made before The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. It's notorious for being one of the goriest films of all time, and lives up to its reputation and then some.
While most zombie films are bloodbaths, Braindead manages to make most zombie films look like Sesame Street, particularly in its final 20 minutes. The tone is comedic enough and the violence so over the top that it's not too horrifying, but it is undeniably gross and extreme. 30 years later, nothing really matches it in terms of sheer, over-the-top carnage.
Raw (2016)
Before winning the Palme d'Or for Titane, director Julia Ducournau made the cannibal/coming-of-age film, Raw, which is just as wonderfully intense and in-your-face as her 2021 film. Raw works so well because it feels sufficiently grounded and relatable, and works as a character drama, and then it introduces the whole... cannibal element to shake things up.
While it is confronting in parts, it's not only confronting, and it's definitely not the kind of movie that shocks for shock's sake. Raw's a film with important, very down-to-earth themes, and at the same time, it has some of the best and most shocking horror scenes of the 2010s. It truly is the best of both worlds.
Eyes Without A Face (1960)
Perhaps not as shocking as many films that followed it decades later, but for 1960, the French horror film, Eyes Without A Face, is incredibly disturbing. Psycho might be widely considered the most shocking horror film of that year, but Psycho doesn't have a plot that involves facial transplants and genuinely sickening surgical procedures that still look real 60+ years later.
The moody black and white cinematography and sadness of its characters make it a tragic and bleak horror movie, too, evoking the classic Universal monster movies of the 1930s and 1940s. Many older horror movies can be appreciated as extreme for their time, but few hold up as extreme decades later the way Eyes Without A Face does.