Film-making is a completely subjective profession. All art forms are subjective, because everyone perceives different art mediums in different ways. Art is meant to invoke feelings, and there is perhaps no other art form designed to provoke a person’s feelings as much as film is.
Movies are classified as entertainment for the sole reason that they inspire some sort of emotion, and that’s what audiences want — to feel something. Whether a movie inspires laughter, tears, excitement or chills, films excel when they pull feelings from the viewer.
While most movies are meant to make viewers go through a range of emotions, some films are purely meant to shock the audience. Directors such as Gaspar Noé and Lars Von Trier notoriously make films that leave their audiences shocked, confused, and likely appalled.
Non-American directors are typically known for making shocking films, but even American directors like Eli Roth have had their fair share of influence on shocking cinema. Brace yourself — here are 10 movies that are pure shock value.
11 The Human Centipede (2009)
The Human Centipede (First Sequence)
- Release Date
- April 26, 2009
- Rating
- R
With a truly disgusting concept, Tom Six’s The Human Centipede follows a deranged surgeon who kidnaps and operates on three tourists. He performs a completely unspeakable operation to attach the three people together, and make them share one digestive system. Why? It doesn’t really matter.
Why It’s Pure Shock Value
If the title itself wasn’t a giveaway, the synopsis of the film certainly is. Not only is it meant to shock and disturb audiences, it is utterly and completely gross. The body horror subgenre has been around for a long time, but this film doesn’t seem interested in incorporating clever themes or metaphors like others in the subgenre. Instead, it visually assaults the audience in the most disgusting ways.
Stream The Human Centipede on AMC+
10 Funny Games (1997)
Michael Haneke’s original Austrian film Funny Games is an unnerving yet gripping movie that you can’t look away from. It follows a young family on vacation at their lake-side country home. When two seemingly innocent young men knock on their door asking to borrow eggs, the family quickly learns that the boys are not what they seem. They force the family to play sadistic “games” with one another for their own amusement.
Why It’s Pure Shock Value
Despite it being quite shocking for most viewers, Funny Games is a well-made film that keeps its audience on their toes. These young men force this family to humiliate and hurt each other, but they never say why, leaving the viewer itching to know their M.O.
Which was Haneke’s goal, to make whoever watches an unwilling accomplice in the violence. It serves as a commentary on society’s relationship with senseless violence. After realizing this, and witnessing the surprising twist, it will leave you shocked — as intended.
9 Raw (2016)
French director Julia Ducournau has only directed two feature films, and both of them are shocking, yet captivating. Her feature directorial debut, Raw, is a horror drama about a young woman named Justine (Garance Miller) who has been raised vegetarian.
As she embarks on her journey through veterinarian school alongside her older sister, Justine is put through hazing rituals that force her to eat raw meat for the first time. It leaves her with a voracious appetite for meat of any kind — especially raw.
Why It’s Pure Shock Value
This film is undoubtedly a body horror film, but in a non-traditional sense. The grotesque aspect doesn’t come from happening with a person’s body, but rather to the body. Justine develops an insatiable craving for raw meat and flesh that consumes her entire being. She will physically tear into anyone to get just a taste of meat.
It also completely affects her personality and even her sensuality. There are some truly uncomfortable scenes, such as one involving Justine scratching her entire body, yet the film is somehow artistically and thematically beautiful.
8 Hostel (2006)
Hostel
- Release Date
- January 6, 2006
- Rating
- R
Executive-produced by Quentin Tarantino and directed by Eli Roth, Hostel follows two American best friends on a backpacking trip through Europe to indulge in their hedonistic ways after their college graduation.
After meeting another backpacker in Paris, they are told about a hostel in Slovakia where their twisted fantasies can be taken to the next level. However, their deepest desires end up putting them into their worst nightmare.
Why It’s Pure Shock Value
This is one of the films credited with starting the “torture-porn” subgenre of horror that was popular in the 2000s. It’s gory, ultra-violent, and never shies away from shocking its audience.
It features several torture-heavy sequences that are not suited for those who squirm easily, including one of a man’s Achilles tendon being ripped out. The movie revels in its shock value, as that’s mostly what it has going for it.
7 Climax (2018)
Directed by notoriously controversial French filmmaker Gaspar Noé, Climax centers around a group of dancers who gather in an empty school building one winter night to rehearse. Their all-night celebration takes a strange, disturbing turn after it is revealed that someone has spiked the sangria with LSD.
Why It’s Pure Shock Value
The entire film is shot like a hallucinatory nightmare. It purposefully disorients the viewer with scenes shown out of order, the opening credits occurring in the middle of the film, and imagery that tricks the mind.
It’s not shocking in the way that some of the other films on this list are, but the wildly unconventional filmmaking approach completely throws you off guard. Combine that with a group of hallucinating, drunk dancers who have gone completely insane, and you are bound to be shocked at least a few times.
6 Antichrist (2009)
Antichrist
- Release Date
- May 20, 2009
From influential Danish filmmaker Lars Von Trier, Antichrist follows a guilt-ridden therapist (Willem Dafoe) who attempts to treat his depressed wife (Charlotte Gainsbourg) on his own. They embark on a self-therapeutic journey into their darkest fears, but instead are thrust into a primitive ritual of unprocessed feelings and profound sadness. As they try to heal, their journey goes from bad to worse.
Why It’s Pure Shock Value
The purpose of this horror drama is to shock the audience. The catalyst for the events in the film is the couple’s son falling to his death from an open window near his crib, so right off the bat, the story shocks you. Von Trier is an incredibly controversial director, and this film includes some bizarre sex scenes and body horror that are certainly not for everyone.
5 Irreversible (2002)
Irreversible
- Release Date
- May 22, 2002
- Rating
- NC-17
Irreversible is another Gaspar Noé film that is highly controversial and arguably more shocking than Climax. The film takes place over the course of one traumatic night in Paris. The night’s events unfold backwards as a young woman is brutally assaulted by a stranger in an underpass tunnel. Her boyfriend and ex-boyfriend decide to take justice into their own hands.
Why It’s Pure Shock Value
The film includes what is often regarded as one of the hardest scenes to watch in cinema. The sexual assault of the female protagonist is unnecessarily prolonged and sickeningly graphic, and many people walked out when it premiered at film festivals. It has a lot of uncensored violence that will not sit well with most people.
Not currently available to stream or rent
4 Martyrs (2008)
Classified as French Extremism, Martyrs is hailed as one of the most difficult films to watch by many, but still a film that has a story to tell. Taking place 15 years after escaping the horrific abuse of her childhood, Lucie (Mylène Jampanoï) embarks on a bloody quest for revenge against her captors.
Along with her childhood friend Anna (Morjana Alaoui), who also suffered abuse, Lucie descends into madness and delusions. As Anna is left on her own, she is forced to re-experience what Lucie did when she was only 12 years old.
Why It’s Pure Shock Value
Martyrs features many disturbing, shocking scenes that will undoubtedly permanently live in the minds of whoever watches it. It is unbelievably difficult to watch the horrifying experiences these women endure. It touches on themes of child abuse, trauma, and the price of revenge in ways that even seasoned horror fans have trouble viewing.
3 Audition (1999)
Audition
- Release Date
- October 6, 1999
- Rating
- R
Takashi Miike’s Audition centers around a film producer whose widowed friend expresses his sadness as his son is about to move out, so he decides to hold auditions for a non-existent film. The intention is for his friend to find a new wife from one of the auditioning women. The woman his friend becomes enamored with, however, is not at all what she appears to be.
Why It’s Pure Shock Value
Audition intentionally starts relatively harmless because Mike deliberately reserved the most violent sequences for the later scenes in the film. He did this intending to have audiences stick around to finish the movie. Saving gratuitous violence toward the end of the film completely shocks and throws the viewer off guard.
2 Cannibal Holocaust (1980)
Cannibal Holocaust
- Director
- Ruggero Deodato
- Rating
- Unrated
- Runtime
- 1hr 35min
Italian director Ruggero Deodato’s horror film Cannibal Holocaust is the original found-footage film and is considered one of the most controversial films ever made. It follows a professor who stumbles across a videotape during a rescue mission in the Amazon rainforest. The lost film was shot by a missing documentary crew, which shows evidence of cannibalistic tribes living within the virgin forest.
1 Why It’s Pure Shock Value
The movie features truly gruesome acts of cannibalism, animal abuse, and body horror that shocked and disgusted many after its release. It was so shocking that, upon the film’s release, the Italian government arrested Deodato and charged him with obscenity.
He was then quickly charged with murder too, as the movie made it appear that four people were actually killed. These actors signed contracts instructing them to disappear for a year to maintain the illusion that they were dead, but Deodato had to ask them to appear in court, so the charges could be dropped.
