If there is something Halloween have in common with movies is how gory and twisted the world is. Think about it, every once a year, you style your favorite characters and spook people. Have you ever thought that maybe the character that they pose during Halloween is something they’ve always hidden in themselves? Or an identity that they can be free to channel openly during the month of October? Yes, sounds messed up, right? Well, it’s the same way that goes when I watch movies that has the most shocking twist and disturbing scenes. Hence, the super intense thought sentences to the start of this article.
Cover image credit: (left) A24, (right) IMDB.
Image via Collider, credit: Warner Bros
When it comes to watching movies, I have a soft spot for choosing a movie that an insane plot twist and sometimes disturbing (depends on the level of it). Let’s give an example of the highest grossing R-Rated movie so far, The Joker(2019). Todd Phillips’ direction in this brilliant film takes its spin on the darker side of mental illness and what the Joker (played by Joaquin Phoenix) has to go through. I remember leaving the theater feeling so overwhelmed with emotions of sadness and how cruel the world actually is. For any movie to have that kind of negative impact on me and for many, it shows how disturbing it is to the point I don’t know if I can watch it for the second time. Don’t get me wrong, The Joker overall is such a brilliant piece from its cinematography, acting, and the built-up story line but I may need to prepare myself to watch it a second time. Only goes to show the effect one has when watching this movie.
Let’s not even delve into the TV series called Black Mirror. You can never binge watch this series and if you did, you might just be a tad creepy. If you’ve watched it, you’ll know.
That’s the beauty about movies at times. It moves you in ways that you never thought you could feel, act or do. When it comes to totally messed up movies, it might just move you in the most f**ked up way possible and I say this with no filter and hesitation.
*THERE ARE SPOILERS IN THIS LIST!*
1. The Stanford Prison Experiment
Most psychology students definitely would have heard of this real life experiment that was carried out by the American psychologist, Professor Philip Zimbardo and creator of the Stanford Prison experiment. The experiment itself is so messed up because it’s where Zimbardo conducted an environment where he hires college students that pretend to be either prisoners or guards. They will need to be in this experiment for a certain amount of weeks, however, due to power getting to the pretend guards mind and the thinking the pretend prisoners to be as real, they had to stop the experiment.
In this movie, you can see how the human mind changed when you’re being put to a role and stuck through it. The amount of torture the prisoners goes through as well as that sense of leadership from the guards certainly created lots of reasons why this true story film is controversial.
2. Us
By now you would know Jordan Peele’s iconic Us movie that hit cinemas everywhere earlier this year. From winning an Academy award for Original Screenplay for the mind-blowing movie, Get Out, Jordan Peele is no stranger to producing even more twisted movies. With the film Us – which stars Lupita Nyong’o and Jordan Peele himself – delves into the mistaken identity, doppelgangers and a whole lotta keeping yourself on the edge of your seat throughout the entire movie. This ambitious horror film sends a complete shocker to the viewers with its creepy portrayal of the characters, modernized iconic scenes from movies and music videos too.
In an interview with Empire podcast, Jordan Peele breaks down on the some of the behind messages of Us. “This movie’s about maybe the monster is you. It’s about us, looking at ourselves as individuals and as a group.” Goosebumps just reading this.
3. Fractured
This newly released Netflix film, Fractured features a wife and daughter who disappear from the emergency room after the injured daughter fell at a gas station. This is where the husband/father (played by Sam Worthington) becomes convinced that the hospital is hiding something. The man panics and frantically searched for the entire hospital if that means holding important authority figure captives to save her wife and daughter. But what is so messed up is the ending part. It makes you question, is life but a reality or a dream?
The guy who directed The Machinist, Brad Anderson takes us all through an intense journey filled with conviction that the hospital really up to no good. After watching it, you’ll feel hmmm literally fractured.
4. Lolita
Lolita is inspired by a novel that was written by Russian-American, Vladimir Nabokov. It was one of the best books for several times but its storyline is nothing but straight up cringy. The controversial movie tells about a classic tale of a man’s inappropriate obsession with a beautiful young girl. Like super young but looks mature. So the man marries the young girl’s mother to take advantage of his so called step-daughter.
Many would cringe and not up for this movie, but according to NYMAG review by David Denby he describes that people are responding to pathos and heartbreak, to suffering and noble, unhappy love instead of Nabokov’s disturbing joke about romantic obsession. Well, if Nabokov was joking about a story like this, you know it’s creepy in ways and forms.
5. Gerald’s Game
Gerald’s Game is one of Stephen King’s classic stories. You know it’s bound to be twisted as heck. It starts of as when a woman accidentally kills her husband during a kinky game gone wrong. She was handcuffed to her bed with no hope of rescue, she then begin hearing voices and seeing strange vision including her late husband who she thought is still alive. You also get to learn on the conversations she has with herself and about her dark past via flashbacks through her relationship with her father.
This psychological horror thriller film centers the whole shoot on her bed being tied with dialogues that you need to pay attention to. The ending of the film would make you imagine and understand why things happened the way they are.
6. Boy In the Striped Pyjamas
Set during the Holocaust and World War II period, 8 year old Bruno and his family leave Berlin to take up residence near the concentration camp where his father has just become commandant. As Bruno feels bored and lonely, he takes a stroll behind his house where he meets a Jewish boy (in striped pyjamas, prison clothes) about his age through a barbed-wire fence that separates them. Because of the Jewish and German roots, the boys begin a forbidden friendship that is oblivious to people surrounding them.
Though this may seem like a touching friendship type of movie, the ending is where it gets so dark and disturbing twist. The German boy digs a hole under the fence, puts on the Jewish uniform in the quest to help look for the Jewish boy’s father. Unfortunately, both boys were stucked in the gas chamber – which was used to murder Jewish people at that time- making it too late for the father to tell the guards to stop their action and in turn, saving their son.
7. American Psycho
American Psycho takes a role where it’s almost like The Joker where this film examines the element of what makes a man a monster. Set in New York City in 1987, a handsome, and young Patrick Bateman (played by Christian Bale), lives a second life as a gruesome serial killer by night.
The gruesome murders of what he did to those people is certainly mind boggling but the distinction of the whole thing from murdering about 40 people, getting chased by cops and storing body parts in his apartment is the fact there was no evidence of his wrongdoing, although he admitted it. Everyone was left to wonder if it’s all in Bateman’s head or perhaps he is questioning everything he’s done to compensate for his deep inner pain.
8. Hereditary
Being a film that has earned great reviews, Hereditary talks about when the matriarch of the Graham family passes away, the daughter and grandchildren begins to unravel cryptic and increasingly terrifying secrets about the grandmother’s past. Toni Collette stars in this supernatural psychological horror film raises the bar with her portrayal of emotional agony of losing someone to being in the heat of trying to reconnect back with her family through a supernatural calling.
The ending of the film does not fail to disappoint in terms of of cult came to being with wanting the eldest male child, Peter to take the reigns as the prince Paimon as it’s called to take over the kingdom, in a sense. It’s clear that the grandmother was in a cult attempting to grant Paimon a body in return for wealth or power and prepare Peter’s body. Also prepare for some scenes with jump scares and creepy noise.
9. Devil
Screenplay by M.Night Shyamalan, Devil takes on five strangers who are trapped in an elevator ride in a Philadelphia office tower with each having a dark past to bear with. In order to be out of the elevator, they need to face the revelation of their secrets. As the story goes, frightening events turned into terror when they begin to realize that one of their number is Lucifer himself.
It all takes the dialogue between the passengers and the movement and physical action from the elevator ride that makes it an exciting and suspenseful movie altogether. According to Screenrant review of the Devil it says “What Shyamalan has crafted feels more like his Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs days, rather than the frowned-upon latter half of his work portfolio. Devil reminds me of a time when the M. Night just wanted to tell entertaining stories that bent genre conventions, rather than stories that served as thin veils for his preachy or egotistical sermons.”
10. Human Centipede
This takes the icing on the whole entire cake for one of the totally messed up and twisted AF movies out there. It centres on two pretty but ditzy American girls who are on a road trip to Europe but got trapped at a highway after their car broke down. They decided to take shelter in an isolated villa and wake up the next day, in a makeshift hospital along with a Japanese man.
What is so f**ked up about this film is where psychotic German surgeon has a fantasy “experiment” to connect human together surgically, mouth to anus, thus forming a “human centipede”. They would show how gory the scene is. It was even reported that this horror and thriller film was banned in the UK and branded satanic in Australia. Death threats were made against the director Tom Six. Human Centipede is not for the faint of heart.
Hope this Halloween would leave you feeling it’s only just a dream instead of the real reality of how messed up things are *evil grin*. HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYONE!