Editor's Note: The following piece contains graphic descriptions of horrific, taboo, and potentially triggering imagery and content. We delight in watching acts of violence on screen. From the shenanigans of Looney Tunes cartoons to the Avengers beating the shit out of Thanos in a four-quadrant blockbuster, moviegoers get a kick out of people getting a kick.
Perhaps it's an act of vicarious catharsis; perhaps it's because we know it's all fake which gives us "permission" to enjoy it; perhaps it's because the actual stakes, both in and out of the text, seem so low. I am not here to indict folks who enjoy this kind of content β I am one of them. Instead, I'm here to examine what happens when filmmakers turn this dial past the breaking point.
There is a subset of cinema that is interested in exploring the extreme, the profane, the taboo, the disturbing. A brand of movie that brands the viewer, searing their brain with unforgettable imagery and dissection of the most base and perverse human impulses β impulses which just might have something in common with the more "sanitized" form of screen violence we find acceptable whoops, I guess I am self-indicting a little!
Some of these movies are made merely to shock with empty provocation; some have something genuine to say at their core; all of them will disturb you. Here, then, are the most disturbing movies of all time, a list of transgressive cinema that will leave you shell-shocked and cowering.
Watch at your own risk. The bluntness of this film's title should clue you in for the bluntness of its content. And when I say "unspeakable," I am not being hyperbolic. Taboos involving sexual violence, necrophilia, incest, and pedophilia are lensed with unsparing detail, giving the film an instant sense of notoriety on the festival circuit.
