The 10 Hardest Movies To Watch, Ranked

Films of all shapes and sizes have conjured up true, deep emotions, along with exhilarating excitement throughout the years that warrant repeat viewings. On the other side of the spectrum, there are certain movies that cross a boundary into depravity with extreme wickedness. The grotesque perversions and absurd violence in these motion pictures are certainly memorable for a variety of reasons and are considered forms of art if not exploitative.

These particular films are hard to locate and more importantly, very difficult to watch. There’s no shortage of lewdness or sequences that are shamelessly frank in nature, which has caused some of these pictures to be banned in specific parts of the world. Whether the universe enjoys these depictions of maximum debauchery on the big screen, one thing is constant – it’s terribly challenging to get through these particular films.

10 SHOAH

The documentary Shoah belongs in its own category of great films as there is nothing that comes close to how comprehensive and essential this movie is in telling the atrocities of the holocaust. French filmmaker Claude Lanzmann spent about ten years interviewing survivors and civilians that lived close by, as well as consulting secret recordings of S.S. officers about what happened at the concentration camps. The result is a 9.5 hour series of interviews that discuss the darkest corner of human beings that promises an emotional wreck of a day after viewing. There’s not one moment that goes by in this film where an impending breakdown of waterworks isn’t bound to happen.

9 REQUIEM FOR A DREAM

It’s emphasized from a young age that drugs are bad and should never be used. This notion quickly fades away as high school turns into university and drugs become a recreational priority. Darren Aronofsky’s film Requiem For a Dream will convince anyone otherwise as four people’s lives are drastically changed due to the use of various narcotics. It all starts innocent enough, but as the film plays out, amputation, shock therapy, and a certain twisted erotic scene are the culmination of these addictions, guaranteeing an induction of the gag reflex and reiterating the”Just Say No” campaign.

8 GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES

Studio Ghibli usually creates fantastic worlds with meaningful stories and great characters that have a somewhat light-hearted touch with films like Princess Mononoke and Kiki’s Delivery Service. That all changed with the 1988 animated feature Grave of the Fireflies, which is 93 minutes of pure pain and sadness.

If that doesn’t compute, imagine if Pixar’s Up was 10,000 times more heartbreaking. The film follows two children in a war-torn Japan as they try to survive every obstacle warfare throws at them. It doesn’t end well at all for anyone here as this movie will totally deplete every emotion in the human body.

7 ANTICHRIST

Lars Von Trier isn’t exactly synonymous with family-friendly films on network television. The filmmaker doesn’t shy away from the radical taboo subject matter. This is especially true with his 2009 dramatic film Antichrist, starring Willem Dafoe as you’ve never seen him. The movie focuses on a married couple who are still grieving the loss of their child. Everyone grieves differently, but for this couple, the mutilation of certain parts of the human anatomy is the order of the day. Furthermore, elements of mental illness and the effects of nature and religion come into play when death is involved, rounding out this tragedy.

6 IRREVERSIBLE

Gaspar Noe was born to shock and awe the cinematic world with his unique way of filmmaking around some seriously coarse and filthy subjects. This all comes to the front line in Irreversible. The film is told backward like Memento with no real edits like 1917, which gives the film a real-time element like the television show 24.

At the start of the film, a horrendous and brutal sexual assault takes place, ending in murder. Clocking in at an agonizing 14 minutes long with no cuts, it allows no escape for the viewer. It should go without saying that this was extremely polarizing for audiences. While many understandably decried the film for its multiple abject depictions of violence, it did draw critical praise for its filming, and its artistic merit saw it winning several awards.

5 MARTYRS

The French filmmaker Pascal Laugier doesn’t get to make many films, due to industry executives being frightened of what the filmmaker might direct next. This is a straight result of his 2008 film Martyrs that is disgusting, sadistic, and unsavory on multiple levels. The women in this movie are thrown into a chaotic nightmare of outrageous torture, murder, and other heinous acts of turpitude that are utterly unforgettable. There are images in Martyrs that are completely terrifying and make a permanent impression in the brain for better or worse.

4 FLOWER OF FLESH AND BLOOD

This 1985 Japanese film is not for the squeamish or faint at heart by any stretch. Comic book writer and filmmaker Hideshi Himo made a movie titled Guinea Pig 2: Flower of Flesh and Blood that centered on a guy dressed as a samurai who kidnaps a young girl, drugs her, then chains her up and slowly dismembers her body parts for his own sick pleasure. It’s nasty, vile, and monstrous. The film inspired a psychotic Japanese serial killer and eventually ended up in the hands of actor Charlie Sheen, who thought the film was real. This led him to contact the authorities and instigate an investigation to determine if it was indeed a real snuff film. There’s nothing else like this out there, to say the least of it.

3 GOODBYE UNCLE TOM

During the 1960s, exploitation films of all kinds were at an all-time high, including a vast amount of tribal and ritual folklore. Two Italian filmmakers set out to tell true stories of slavery in America with their 1971 film Goodbye Uncle Tom. The film was labeled as a documentary due to the use of public documents recorded about the cruelties that went on before the start of the Civil War, although the entire film is completely staged in elaborate recreations with actors that make Roots look like a family-friendly Disney film. The explicit and ghastly detail that is shown of the most grueling torture to human beings is revolting and horrific.

2 A SERBIAN FILM

Billed as a political allegory and a parody of politically correct films made in Serbia, this appalling and downright revolting movie called is nothing short of sickening. Although wonderfully shot by Srdan Spasojevic and superbly acted, the film is quite similar to the 1997 David Fincher film The Game that starred Michael Douglas. In A Serbian Film though, an aging pornstar is called upon to be in a new artistic film. He soon realizes it’s a snuff film, where he is forced to travel all over town to install himself in repulsive situations. Whatever your impression of this film may be, it’s easily much worse than you can imagine.

1 SALO: 120 DAYS OF SODOM

It feels likes winning a triathlon after finishing Pier Paolo Pasolini’s final film Salo: 120 Days of Sodom, a movie he was murdered for. The director took the story from the Marquis de Sade that features vicious acts of abuse, assault, tremendous torture, forced consumption of human waste, murder, and suicide.

The kicker is that it all happens with young boys and girls throughout the entire film. This is not pure exploitation though. Pasolini was not in the business of producing snuff films, and had something important and significant to say with this film, which is why this decades-old movie is still discussed amongst scholars.

About The Author

Bryan Kluger
(34 Articles Published)

Former husky model, real-life Comic Book Guy, genre-bending screenwriter, nude filmmaker, hairy podcaster, pro-wrestling idiot-savant, who has a penchant for solving Rubik’s Cubes and rolling candy cigarettes on unreleased bootlegs of Frank Zappa records.

Bryan has been in front and behind the camera since the early ’90s and is the head film critic on Boomstick Comics, High Def Digest, and also leads multiple podcast shows related to film, TV, music, and pro-wrestling (My Bloody Podcast, The Celebrity Hour, NO BS Podcast.)

He can be found writing screenplays, serving as Deejay at iconic bars and clubs in the Dallas area, and playing video games on Twitch.

Find him on Twitter. Or Instagram. Or Youtube.

More From Bryan Kluger