I recently saw “Rampage” from 2009. Its basically a movie where a spree shooter is portrayed as the good guy/anti-hero. Several parts gave me that pit in your stomach, teeth gritting uncomfortable moment. I really hated it. Although I’m not surprised there are sequals I am disappointed and will not be watching them.
Pasolini’s Salo/120 Days of Sodom - Nobody ever regrets watching it.
Bad Boy Bubby - One of many grim Aussie films of that era. A classic.
The Warzone - Tim Roth’s directorial feature. Incestuous rape introducing Colin Farrell in his feature debut.
Drowning By Numbers/ A Zed and Two Noughts - Peter Greenaway shoots his films like renaissance paintings. Do you like lots and lots of snails on naked bodies? No? Tough. The Michael Nyman scores are terrific though.
You can pretty much take your pic with any of Lars Von Triers films. Breaking the Waves, Antichrist, Dogville etc.
Festen - which is Danish but NOT a Lars Von Trier film is probably the best Dogme 95 films of all. Including that fucking MAGAT Harmony Korine. Don’t know if this is that haunting but a good film anyway.
Come and See - Yes yes come and see! and in the vein of horrible WW2 films…
Salon Kitty - Tinto Brass before he went full porno.
Baise Moi - FUCK ME! No really that’s what its called.
Christiane F : Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo - Not a documentary but based on fact.
Reckon that should be enough. Happy viewing! LOL.
The War Zone is a great pick here. Tim Roth’s contributions in this sphere are notable, that was his directorial debut, and before that his acting debut was playing a teenage skinhead in Made in Britain which fits the criteria too.
someone mentioned Michael Haneke elsewhere, Roth is in the english language remake of Funny Games, another film that meets the requirements and one of the the few remakes worth watching, due to it being a) an exact replica of the original but in english and b) having tim roth in it
Do you know I have had Funny Games on DVD for years and I haven’t watched it. I got so burned out by dark films that I have to ‘fall’ into watching them organically somehow. Like either they are on and I get pulled in or I have to creep up on them without quite realising/admitting they’re going to be a fucking brutal trip, or go see them at the cinema.
You sound like your a bit of a film buff as well. What have you watched recently that you rate or hate?
yeah, you never know what will get to you but for what it’s worth i think Funny Games is less dark than many mentioned here
i’ve been lax at watching and noting down what i’ve watched lately but two newish ones that stood out were MadS (2024) and the Toxic Avenger remake (probably in it’s favour that i saw it after the relatively disappointing Street Trash one). also yet another rewatch of From Dusk Till Dawn which is always a winner for me
MadS looks good. I will dl it tonight. Haven’t seen the Toxic Avenger remake but I have it on the server, but tbh I’d probably rather rewatch Tromeo and Juliet. Some films have a magic to them and that film is a sputtering dark candle in a gutter o’erflowed with filth.
I recently rate The Surrender 2025, Bring Her Back 2024 (not just cos I have a thing for Sally Hawkins) and if you haven’t seen it When Evil Lurks from 2023. All scratched the horror itch.
Agree on the pointless Street Trash remake. Feels like ‘they’ have done that a lot recently, i.e. remake schlock and double down on the shit bits in some kind of ironic crapfest. Like with the new Anaconda film. Why not just remake something good instead of microwaving crap bc they got the IP for pennies.
Troma of course a mixed bag but i have a big soft spot for more or less anything of theirs, agree T&J high up the ranking
cheers for The Surrender, haven’t come across that, i’ll get it to add to Bring Her Back already on the backlog
When Evil Lurks is excellent, very high stakes, noone safe. And even though ST wasn’t much cop the same guy made Fried Barry before that which i think you might like
Thanks for the recommendation for Fried Barry, looks like a lot of fun. Much Appreciated! I haven’t watched anything out of South Africa for years. Not since Oats Studios which feels like a million years ago now.
Ah yes. The ‘Backlog’. I keep seeing films come up on Kodi or Jellfin that I would quite like to watch but there’s always a ‘but’. I don’t know quite when I started obsessively paying attention to exactly how long a film runs but probably somewhere around the same time I started asking myself: “Am I going to fall asleep after an hour?” and “Will I bother picking it up again tomorrow if I do?” Lee Cronin’s The Mummy almost fell by the wayside, saved only by the young woman playing the titular being (I thought) rather good (also is he trying for a Clive Barker thing or is just to avoid confusion with Tom Cruise’s The Mummy?)
Sometimes I even start films I know for a fact I am not going to watch just so I can sit there grumbling for fifteen minutes or so. In much the same way you might speculate over the existence of an especially egregious turd - “The size! the smell! Who would lay such a thing!?” The Bone Keeper is the most recent one I can remember the name of. Though there seems to be a recent glut of Loosely Lovecraft films that seem to be made of old dried up bits of Shoggoth shit.
I am quite enjoying Widow’s Bay though. Thirty five minutes, a monster of the week and it’s funny.
cool, i know nothing else from seff effriceh except District 9 (good) and Chappie (shit) so will check Oats, they’ve got stuff on youtube it looks like
film length opinion is 90 minutes is ideal, i read John Waters saying that about comedy before but it applies just as well to horror as far as i’m concerned and i watch little else (with extra broad definition of horror). if i watch something at home after dinner there’s a decent chance i’ll fall asleep regardless of quality - in fact if i’m enjoying it the probability increases and i’ll happily restart after. home setups have their insurmountable limits but there’s no such luxury in the cinema
loosely lovecraft is a neat way to put it but i think i’ve avoided the brunt of that - what i can think of off the top is mainly tv series, brand new cherry flavour (good), lovecraft county (didn’t get far), that one with newspaper delivery kids? the shorthand for films i would guess is that the poster is in a pinky purply colour (out of space)
will dl Widow’s Bay, i don’t have much patience for long series tv but always interested in horror comedy and if individual episodes are fun by themselves it suits me fine, i liked Welcome to Derry well enough on this basis
Kids, Requiem for a Dream
All quiet on the western front
It’s a movie about a German soldier during WWI, really trying to convey the horrors of war.
I read the book when I was 11. I still have dreams about being in the gas attack.
Grave of the fireflies.
Grave of the Fireflies. You don’t see any fighting and most people the protagonists meet are good, AND YET it’s so depressing. Seeing how bad the horrors of war are, even in the best case scenario, was eye-opening for me.
Even worse when you realize it’s based on an semi-autobiography that was written by the older brother. After the story was published, the author admitted that he was much more selfish than the older brother in the story. Basically, the older brother in the story was who the author wished he had been. He admitted that the older brother in the story was extremely selfless and always tried to make sure his sister ate first. But in reality, he frequently ate while his little sister went hungry. And in retrospect, he believes that was a large contributor to her death by starvation. He originally published the story as an apology to his dead sister.
That movie gave me PTSD
AI: Artificial intelligence
Messed me up a little because I watched it so young. I was old enough to understand the themes and moral dilemmas, but some scenes were just so heartbreaking. What matters? What’s real? What does it mean to be alive or to be human?
Threads
Everyone that welcomes the fall of society or post war survivalist fantasies should watch this for a reality check.
Dancer in the dark. Sad story of a woman who does everything to be happy ans still cant.
Spy Kids disturbed me as a kid because of the idea of people being turned into fooglies. The film doesn’t even show them being changed back, I guess we’re supposed to assume it. Why couldn’t they have a scene at the end where the rescued agents videochat with the cortezes and thank them? The movie also has kind of a creepy atmosphere. I revisited it a bunch of times and kept being disturbed. Then I watched it again at age 30, fully prepared to be triggered by certain scenes but weirdly, I wasn’t. It’s just a normal movie to me now, and a pretty good one for what it is
Black Mirror’s Striking Vipers episode. Initially made me uncomfortable, but then prompts questions about virtual/online interactions and where to draw the line. Building (virtual) things in an online game together with a (adult) friend is OK. (Virtually) harming or killing your (adult) friend in online game is OK. Is having (virtual) sex with your (adult) friend in online game OK?
Also is it gay? I mean if your friend is indistinguishable from a lady but you know its your friend in there.
There is no on screen violent or sexual acts but it still got a NC-17 rating. It’s the darkest of dark comedies, if you’re after disturbing for the sake of disturbing, you won’t be able to top this.
I couldn’t finish it. It was fucking awful
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Idk if I’d classify it as non-Horror, but Threads is the scariest movie I’ve ever seen.
Its a movie from 1984 about a nuclear war scenario in the UK. The movie kept close to the science of the time, and made significant choices in casting and presentation that makes it all feel so much more real.
- Casting unknown actors who look like regular people instead of celebrities
- Giving all the actors relatively average Joe, nobody, roles for their characters
- Presenting the movie in a documentary format as if its real
- Characters exiting the narrative to unknown fates in the aftermath
- The overall sense of hopelessness, dread and loss throughout the
And it’s free to watch on YouTube.
Apparently, they’re making a modern version of it too.
Adam Curtis’s Hypernormalisation. It is a documentary and does a painful job of examining reality. I was vaguely unsettled before seeing it and after seeing it I have a specific vocabulary and lens through which I perceive current events. I feel helpless to this day. Free on YouTube:
I remembered you want non documentaries, so I will add Basketball Diaries. DiCaprio film about a talented young basketball player ruining his life through drug addiction.
Testament.
The slow death of living in a post-nuclear world. Terrifying in its hopelessness. You don’t actually see the destruction from the nuclear detonation, only people slowly dying. I know there are other films like Day After or Threads, but in those they depict the epicenters of the bombs destruction, not the slow death outside of the worst hit area. I found it crushing in a way that the other movies didn’t match.
Imagine watching all three when you’re just nine years old.
And you’ll have my childhood.
Yeah, I saw those in middle school. Definitely scarring.
Also the movie Aniara
What happens when you’re trapped in space and everything goes wrong.
