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What is the most disturbing film you've seen?


Sharkissimo

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I must be fairly desensitized to violence and deplorable behavior, because I didn't find Irreversible all that disturbing *shrug*

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Hannibal is one of the best shows on TV right now, its incredible.

Dexter was good for a few seasons, but ended up being one of the worst shows I've ever watched and I never want to see it again nor would I recommend it to anyone

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For me, the most disturbing things in films were not placed in traditional horror films or the kind of classless gritty/raw films you see more of nowadays that hold nothing back and inevitably fail to shock me. Chilling scenes that were totally unexpected in, I suppose, unassuming films. For instance, that pulse-raising alien scene in Fire in the Sky, which is pure horror and quite disturbing, but comes out of nowhere after an hour and a half of human drama. Another example would be Return to Oz, which gets quite macabre and features disturbing elements galore for a child. I remember being pretty disturbed by Gene Hackman's forced addiction in French Connection II. Hell, even the ending of Empire disturbed me as a kid. Luke getting his hand cut off and backing out on that ledge over a "bottomless" pit and his suddenly raspy/echoey voice (which I think has been altered in the modern home video sound mixes); then plummeting and hanging off the bottom of Cloud City, hopeless. It's a hero at his lowest point.

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Call me a sicko, but SEVEN never disturbed me. Just found it repulsive, daft and full of its own self-importance.

Why is it repulsive and self-important?

Haha. I'm not a Fincher fan true, but I don't have the exact same response to all of his films.

Why not? And where lies the difference?

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I'm not particularly disturbed by films that feature human menace and evil. I'm aware that people can be utterly horrible. They can also be done away with by a bullet to the head.

I'm creepified most by vague supernatural shit. We've recently talked about Event Horizon. Whatever the actual quality of that film is, something about it hit the right (wrong?) spot with me. I literally can't watch it, it makes me so uncomfortable. The way Satan is portrayed in Mel's Passion is similar. Genuinely makes me look away from the screen. And of course the room 237 scene is always a "better turn the lights on" moment.

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That's funny, because I don't mind the supernatural stuff so much, seeing that it's fictionally conceived and portrayed. It's imagination, so you can dismiss it more easily (or I can, anyway). It's what people do to other people that bothers me, because it's a reflection of what real people can—and sometimes do—perpetrate on others. The 2007 film Funny Games disturbed me so much I couldn't watch the whole thing. Not so easy to do away with the human problem in that one. The bullets aren't always readily available.

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Eyes Wide Shut, Saw Series, Motel Hell*, The Amityville Horror (1979)*, Poltergeist (1982)*, Elephant Man, Crash.

* because I was young at the time I saw them!!!

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Yeah, the second closet scene in Poltergeist messed me up when I was younger.

But Eyes Wide Shut? How was that disturbing? Ponderous, dumb, not worth your time, perhaps, but . . . disturbing?

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Blood of the Beasts or Man Bites Dog, I think. Dogtooth was pretty disturbing. Haven't touched stuff like Antichrist, Funny Games, Salo, A Serbian Film etc. (and not planning to.)

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Call me a sicko, but SEVEN never disturbed me. Just found it repulsive, daft and full of its own self-importance.

Why is it repulsive and self-important?

It's repulsive in the combination of the grisly grand guignole (AKA overdone) murders plus Fincher's trademark pseudo-objective, pseudo-Kubrickian lens, along with the film's nihilistic bent. Self-important because despite the film's allusions to Dante, it's ultimately trite. Medieval Catholicism is just used as a springboard by Fincher and Walker for adolescent bloodlust and fashionable, but ultimately meaningless cynicism.

SEVEN's (and to an extent FIGHT CLUB's) only value is as a marker of how we got to our current cinematic anomie. Where film lost its way.

Haha. I'm not a Fincher fan true, but I don't have the exact same response to all of his films.

The difference lies with the subject. Obviously I ain't gonna be repulsed by BENJAMIN BUTTON. It's too banal to incite such a strong response.

I'm not particularly disturbed by films that feature human menace and evil. I'm aware that people can be utterly horrible. They can also be done away with by a bullet to the head.

I'm the sort of polar opposite about this. To me there's nothing more terrifying than human nature and the depths it'll sink to given the right conditions. Maybe it's due to growing up in a family with mental illness, but I find the psychological and sociological subtext of say, THE SHINING, way more scary than ghouls, ghosts and shit. That's partly why the Steven King novel and the terrible TV remake don't work for me--the supernatural becomes too concrete.

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I'm creepified most by vague supernatural shit.

True Detective was wonderfully disturbing in that regard.

Absolutely, forgot about that somehow. That show stuck with me and colored my whole mood for a few weeks after I first saw it. That is also probably the only instance of actual nasty human acts getting to me.

Also Under The Skin was mentioned. But that wasn't disturbing as much as it was strangely uncomfortable. Wonderful feeling to get from a film.

And I love Eyes Wide Shut but have never found it all that scary. Well, no. When he comes back home and sees his mask on his pillow, that does damage my calm a bit. Ligeti's "knife through Stalin's heart" helps.

Anddddd... you know, some parts of The Mirror are really unsettling.

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The Shining and Funny Games are the first to spring to mind.

As Sharky mentioned earlier, it's the human psychological horror that gets to me, not the fantastical or over-the-top horror which is obviously fictional.

I wouldn't classify these as disturbing, but their impact is deeply emotional and heartbreaking in their horror. The Thin Red Line and 12 Years A Slave.

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I don't know, I suppose it all just has to do with how hardened or exposed you are to the darkest types of human behavior. My brother is in a line of work that brings him into the heart of that, and through him I've heard and sometimes seen more than I would like. It doesn't get less sickening, but it doesn't strike real fear into my heart either. Just disgust. No, fear, for me, comes from the unknown.

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