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An American Crime (USA - 2007)
Although this is based on a true story and is filmed in a somewhat straight forward manner, don't be fooled into thinking you'll be in for an easy ride just because this is a TV movie. The fact that it is is more an illustration of the vagaries of the distribution process than an indication of the quality of the film or the potency of the content. Ellen Page stars as a young girl who through circumstances beyond her control falls into the clutches of an unstable - no make that downright evil - neighbour who offers to look after her for a fee when her parents are away. Catherine Keener gives a scarily believable performance as the unhinged matriarch in what are pretty unbelievable circumstances. Without giving anything away the events that unfold in that house would not be out of place in the wildest exploitation horror flick and the fact that the events are true and documented in the subsequent court case is what makes this so disturbing. If you have an ounce of empathy you will suffer watching this film. |
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Bad Guy (South Korea - 2001)
An innocent young girl browsing in a bookstore comes across a wallet full of money lying on a stack of books. There's no-one around. The girl pops the wallet into her handbag. From this incident springs a lifetime of misery for the girl, which as it turns out was a set-up orchestrated by the 'bad guy' of the title. He effectively purchases the girl in exchange for no police involvment and gets her to sign her life away to him. As it turns out he's a pimp who runs a seedy whore house and the girl becomes an indentured slave and abused prostitute for rent to the citys psychopaths, drug dealers and gangsters for the rest of her days. That's certainly no picnic to witness but it's creepy that the girl oscillates between hating the guy and being devoted to him, and also that she developes an appreciation for her new occupation. 'Bad Guy' deftly illustrates how complex human psychology can be and how people have a depressing tendency to fashion the world into a grim and joyless place. |
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Dogtooth (Greece - 2007)
Imagine you wanted to set up a sociological experiment to see how impressionable and malleable children who have had no exposure to the outside world since birth would be. Could you tell them anything at all and make them accept as normal any strange rules of behaviour you may dream up? Well, ethically speaking you couldn't really do this, but if ethics weren't a consideration you could, if you found a similar-minded mate, make your own children and subject them to all sorts of odd and twisted ideas you may have toyed with. This is the premise of 'Kynodontas' - or "Dogtooth' a weirdly disturbing and disturbingly weird film from Greece that takes this idea as far as you could conceive and does so in a quietly unobtrusive way. It's disconcerting to say the least to be a fly on the wall and observe this nuclear family's often strange and sometimes depraved routines and rituals which the grown son and two daughters accept as entirely normal for the most part, and you can't help wondering what madness lies in wait around the next corner. |
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The Eyes of My Mother (USA - 2016)
This is an odd duck of a film to be sure, but one well worth your time if you're fascinated by the depths people can sink to in their dealings with their fellow humans. Set somewhere in rural America sometime in the recent past it features imagery and situations that are apt to disturb you long after the end credits, and a lead character that is both monster and victim. The extent to which she is disconnected from the real world and quite unable to comprehend genuine emotion and suffering is quite staggering, but at the same time almost inevitable given the brutal circumstances surrounding her. Kika Magalhães in the central role is mesmerising as the unhinged Francisca; she displays a strange, hypnotic acting style that compliments the bizarre goings on perfectly, and with so much left unexplained you're left to simply absorb the creeping madness slowly unfolding and wonder at the casual depravity on display. With this subject matter you could be forgiven for assuming this was bare bones filmmaking, but nothing could be farther from the truth - it's artfully done; the pristine high contrast black and white photography is beautiful and the long, slow takes add a menacing tone to the piece. It all adds up to a truly chilling experience. |
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Henry: Portrait of A Serial Killer (USA - 1986)
We've all seen a bunch of movies about serial killers - they're ten a penny these days. Some of them, like Silence of The Lambs are fairly interesting and well executed. Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster are at the top of their game but there's nothing disturbing about a film like that. We've seen it all before - it's too slick, too manufactured. The characters have eloquent dialogue - Hannibal Lecter even has a pretty monologue ready to explain the odd title and everything. That's not what the majority of serial killers are like. They're rarely if ever highly educated or brilliant in any way - most live unremarkable lives. They just don't care about anyone, and that's what Henry's like. He doesn't feel pity or remorse, or joy. He doesn't feel much of anything. He doesn't have a grudge against the people he kills. In fact he kills random people for no reason at all as far as the viewer is aware, he does it a lot and he gets away with it. And he's not a super-intelligent criminal mastermind or anything. He's just an ordinary guy who's angry at the world. He's not charming or lovable...he's not even likeable but he's our companion for every second of this film and that in a nutshell is why this film is so deeply disturbing. |
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In A Glass Cage (Spain - 1987)
If there's one subject that almost universally turns your average movie-goer's stomach it's paedophilia. Nothing seems to get our hackles up more than a paedophile as the villain of the piece. It's very easy to hate them and we as the audience are almost never asked to try to understand what goes on in the mind of your average paedophile. With 'In A Glass Cage' director Agusti Villaronga deftly treads a very fine line between exploitation and realistically portraying the protagonist's desires and motivations, and largely succeeds in trying to afford us a glimpse into one man's all consuming compulsions. Here we're dealing with a Nazi paedophile who attempts suicide near the beginning of the film but fails and ends up encased in a huge iron lung, paralysed and unable to breath on his own - hence the title. Now all of this ranks quite high on the disturb-o-meter but things take an even seedier turn when a young man takes charge of our protagonist's care and proceeds to bring him young boys for him to to witness being victimised. Dicey stuff, but for those with the stomach for such things it's morbidly fascinating, well acted and done with some style. |
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Irreversible (France - 2002)
Gaspar Noe's brutal movie about the rape and battery of a woman and it's consequences, told in a non-chronological manner and featuring some unconventional (to say the least) camerawork which may make you seasick at the beginning. But this is as nothing compared to how sick you'll be at the sheer brutality of the central rape scene. Monica Bellucci deserves a medal for her performance in this scene - it must have been really traumatising even though it was only actors doing their thing. This is the single most disturbing film I've ever seen and it stayed with me long after the end credits rolled. In fact it still pops unbidden into my head at random times years after I first saw it. The mysoginistic fervour displayed by Le Tenier (played by Jo Prestia) in the rape scene is absolutely monstrous, and all the more disturbing when you realise that there are prisons around the world full of men like this and thousands more roaming free. |
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I Stand Alone (France - 1998)
Gaspar Noe's first full length feature film gives the viewer a long look into the mind of a sociopathic butcher (played with a charged intensity by Philippe Nahon), during a period of psychic upheaval aggravated by the mundane brutalities of an uncaring society. With I Stand Alone, Gaspar Noe sets up a world that's utterly seedy and bleak, then introduces a character who leads such a grim and humorless existence that it can't fail to send the audience into a deep funk. And then, just as we're at our lowest ebb The Butcher - he has no name - snaps in such a visceral way that it almost takes your breath away. And from that point on we're forced to see the world through the eyes of a protagonist that despises the whole human race. Now that's a really scary position to be in, making this one of the more disturbing films around, and one you'd be well advised to stay away from if you're feeling a bit down. |
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Martyrs (France - 2006)
Lucie is a disturbed young woman who was kidnapped and tortured as a young girl and eventually escaped but is plagued by hallucinations of a woman she failed to save at the time whom she believes is now trying to kill her. She tracks down her kidnappers fifteen years on and a bloodbath quickly ensues. Her friend Anna who's been her protector through the years once again tries to save Lucie from harming herself but things go from bad to worse and much mayhem and carnage follows. There's not much here to seperate this from other French extreme horror films - most notably Frontieres or Haute Tension; both excellent examples of that particular genre, but about the halfway point the film takes a strange turn and becomes something altogether more interesting than violence and gore. It would be bad form for me to recount here what the film becomes because part of the appeal of it is the unravelling of a twisted mystery before your disbelieving eyes, so I'll leave it at that. Suffice to say this is one of the most interesting and disturbing films out there and very well done. If your loins are girded then sit down and prepare to be tested to your limits because Martyrs doesn't hold back in its depiction of all kinds of terrible things you wouldn't expect to see in a film intended for widespread public consumption. |
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