These Movies Are So Disturbing They'll Haunt You For Days

A shiver runs down your spine. The hairs stand up on the back of your neck. Goosebumps break out across your arms. And all the while you fight the urge to cover your eyes and scream… Oh yes, we all love watching scary movies! But if you’re in the mood to be properly – horrifically – disturbed, then these are the films you have to check out. Don’t hide behind the sofa now...

40. Unsane (2018)

It’s only right that a movie about someone being locked in a mental institution against her will should feel so claustrophobic and, well, unsettling. And to capture this queasy feel, Ocean’s Eleven director Steven Soderbergh used only an iPhone to shoot Unsane. The result? As one reviewer put it, Unsane “is effective to a deeply disturbing degree.”

39. Midsommar (2019)

Did you ever see Hereditary? That was messed up, right? Well, the guy who made that – Ari Aster – also made Midsommar. So you know when this movie is praised for being “a waking nightmare” and “genuinely disturbing,” you can probably believe the hype. Midsommar’s about a couple unwittingly becoming part of some seriously weird pagan rituals. And we’ll never look at cliffs the same way, that’s for sure. 

38. Hostel (2005)

Hostel is essentially about backpackers getting tortured. But when director Eli Roth told Quentin Tarantino the story, Tarantino reportedly thought it was the “sickest” movie plot he’d ever heard. The filmmaker also told New York magazine that Hostel was “the most horrifying entry” in the contemporary crop of “ultraviolent, get-under-your-skin movies.” And that’s coming from the guy who made Kill Bill.

37. The Blair Witch Project (1999)

Stephen King thinks The Blair Witch Project is terrifying. And if Stephen King thinks something is scary, you better believe it’s going to freak you out! Why did King react so strongly to Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez’s “found footage” horror? “The damn thing looks real” and “the damn thing feels real,” he wrote in his book Danse Macabre