Top 10 Most Disturbing Horror Movies

Looking for the most disturbing horror movies of all time? Well, we have made the job easier for you.

When it comes to movies, people are interested in different genres; Comedy, Action, Romance, Horror, etc. However, it is sometimes hard to pick a good movie; because not all movies are worth watching. Most of the time one ends up watching a worthless movie and wasting one’s time.

In this write-up, we have come up with the top 10 Most Disturbing Horror Movies of all time. We’ll also be exploring the fact that how these movies are different from other horror films.

So let’s dig into it.

Top Ten (10) Most Disturbing Horror Movies

So, the first movie that falls in this category is:

1.      Baskin

Directed by: Can Evrenol

Produced by: Mo Films

 Here are all the things you need to know about one of the most disturbing horror movies of all time:

• Baskin is a Turkish surrealist Horror Movie released in 2015 with a running time of 97 minutes. It was based on a short film that the same director directed in 2013 with the same name.
• The movie was first screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, on September 11, 2015.
• The film was independently financed, and shot by Mo Films in Instanbul, with a budget of around $350,000.
• It was a 28 – night shoot, with no day shot, with a month of pre-production and a post-production stage of 2 months.
• One of the actors, Mehmet Cerrahoglu, suffers from a skin condition that gives him his unique physical appearance.

Storyline

The story revolves around 5 police officers, who, one night while hanging out receive a very distressful call from a group of their colleagues. They tell them to go to a village. During their journey, strange events start taking place which included them crashing into a lake.

Upon reaching their destination, they go inside the building. There they counter very disturbing events, which included discovering a room filled with a cult of people covered in blood.

In the end, the remaining men are captured by the villain, called ‘The Father’. Where all of them are killed in a gruesome manner except one guy, the main lead, who of course, kills the villain.

Plot

What makes this movie different from other horror movies is; in the end, there’s a plot twist, which makes it a hundred times more creepy and disturbing than it really should be.

When the main character kills the villain and runs for his life, he’s able to find his way to a road where he sees a vehicle. He runs towards it in hopes of help but the driver doesn’t spot him and ends up hitting and crashing.

Then you find out that the vehicle that crashed in the same police van, that the 5 policemen were traveling in earlier. The five men, once again crash into the lake, implying that they are actually experiencing a loophole from Hell.

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2.      Raw

Directed by: Julia Ducournau

Produced by: Jean de Forêts

Here are a few things you should know about this disturbingly explicit movie:

• Raw (Grave in French) is a French Horror Drama Film, released in 2016, with a running time of 99 minutes. It is one of the most disturbing movies, particularly because of the graphic presentation of cannibalism in several parts of the film.
• It was screened in the International Critics’ Week Section at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival.
• During a screening at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival, some people from the audience received emergency medical services after fainting and getting nauseous due to the graphic scenes from the film.
• The film won a number of awards, which included the FIPRESCI Prize.
• The film had a limited theatrical release in the US starting on 10 March 2017.
• In December 2017, film critic, Mark Kermode named Raw the best film of 2017.
• It was produced under the budget of $3.8 Million.

Storyline

The story revolves around a young vegetarian girl named ‘Justine’. She starts her first year in veterinary school with her older sister. On her first night, she meets her roommate and both of them are forced to participate in a ritual that goes on for a whole week.

Eventually, Justine starts craving meat, which leads her to eat raw chicken, her sister’s finger, and even biting off her roommate’s lip. Justine’s video gets viral in which she’s crawling on all fours, biting an arm of a dead body.

Justine’s sister ends up killing her roommate and is sent to prison while Justine is sent back home.

Plot

When Justine goes back home, she finds out that what happened was neither her fault nor her sister’s. Her father shows her the marks on his chest and chunks of flesh missing on his body, explaining that Justine’s mother, was in fact, a Cannibal.

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3.      The Exorcist

Directed by: William Friedkin

Produced by: William Peter Blatty

Here’s a list of all the events you’ll be interested to know about:

• The Exorcist is an American Horror Film, released in 1973, with a running time of 122 minutes. The shooting of the movie itself was followed by a series of unfortunate events.
• The movie is based on the novel, “The Exorcist”, by William Peter Blatty.
• It was released in 24 theaters in the US and Canada in 1973.
• Some actors suffered long-term injuries due to a fire that destroyed most of the set.
• Due to the fire incident, the production took twice as long and cost more than the initial budget too.
• The viewers were traumatized after watching the film, to the point that heart attacks and miscarriages were being reported.
• It was the first Horror film to be nominated for the Academy Award Best Picture.
• It was produced under the budget of $12 Million.
• The novel this movie is based on was inspired by a real-life event. An exorcism that was performed in 1949 on an anonymous young boy, sanctioned by the Catholic Church in the US.
• The bedroom set was refrigerated to capture the natural icy breath of actors in the exorcism scene.

Storyline

The opening scene shows a Catholic priest, on an archeological dig in Iraq. He finds a sculpture that resembles a demon of an ancient origin. Later on, the same priest experiences an omen warning him that something bad is going to happen. And the scene cuts here.

An actress lives with her 12-year-old daughter in a location where she’s being starred in a movie. Strange events start taking place in her house, after playing with an Ouija board, the daughter started acting abnormally.

One night, when the actress is out, one of her associates is taking care of the heavily sedated daughter. The associate ends up dying, falling from a window, and a lieutenant is assigned to investigate this case.

Plot

The doctors end up recommending an exorcism. The actress finds out that her daughter was in fact the one who murdered the associate. After this, things escalate pretty quickly. The daughter starts speaking in different languages that she doesn’t know. And the sentence “Help me” appears on her stomach carved from inside.

The church sends two priests to perform an exorcism on the girl. They try to exorcise the demon but the spirit digs in, claiming to be the devil himself. One of the priests ends up dying and the other ends up sacrificing himself to save the girl.

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4.      Antichrist

Directed by: Lars Von Trier

Produced by: Meta Louise Foldager

Following is a list of facts about Antichrist that you should know:

• Antichrist is a psychological horror film released in 2009, with a running time of 108 minutes. This disturbing horror movie directly reflects the director’s own struggle with depression and anxiety.
• It was premiered at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.
• The movie Antichrist is dedicated to the Soviet filmmaker, Andrei Tarkovsky.
• Von Trier had an unofficially titled Depression trilogy, and Antichrist was the first film.
• Von Trier started writing this film while he was hospitalized because of depression in 2006.
• The film won a number of other awards, including, European Film Award, The Nordic Council Film Prize, etc.
• The basic idea for this movie came from an original documentary about the forests of Europe.
• The shooting carried on for a total of 40 days.
• During the premiere, several people walked out, and a minimum of 4 people fainted and got sick due to the graphic and violent scenes in the film.
• A video game called Eden was in the works. It was based on the concept of this film. However, it was canceled later on.
• The film was produced under a budget of $3.4 Million.

Storyline

The opening scene stares at a toddler climbing up to the bedroom window and falling to his death, while the parents are having sex in the apartment. The mother is obviously, heavily affected by her son’s death and spends the whole month in the hospital.

Meanwhile, the father, who is a therapist, tries exposure therapy in an attempt of saving his wife. The couple hike to an isolated cabin in the woods where the mother has previously spent time with her currently dead son.

During the psychotherapy, the wife turns into a whole different person, being increasingly grief-struck and often demanding forceful sex. The man begins to feel very threatened in the cabin. And the last straw for the husband was when he found a red fox that tells him “chaos reigns”.

Plot

The husband finds his wife’s thesis studies. He totally freaks out after seeing violently portrayed witch-hunts, and scrapbooks. The wife confesses that after some research, she began believing that all women are inherently evil.

The wife ends up attacking him and smashing something heavy on his head resulting in him being unconscious. After this, a series of very disturbing scenes are shown, which included the wife drilling a hole through the husband’s leg and burying him alive.

The wife decides that she does not yet want to kill her husband and ends up unburying him. In the end, the husband strangles his wife to death and burns her. While trying to escape, he watches as a crowd of women comes after him, with their faces blurred.

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5.      Martyrs

Directed by: Pascal Laugier

Produced by: Richard Grandpierre and Simon Trottier

Here’s a list of interesting events related to this movie:

• Martyrs is a French-Canadian psychological-horror film, released in 2008, with a running time of 99 minutes. A remake of the film, produced in America, with the same title was released in 2015.
• This horror movie was premiered at the Marché du Film, in the 2008 Cannes Film Festival.
• It was released in the theaters in France in September of 2008.
• In the beginning, the movie was rated 18+ but later on, in July 2008, it was changed to 16+.
• The director says that the film was rejected by all big studios and actors/actresses too.
• Martyrs has been associated with the New French Extremity movement.
• It was produced under the budget of €2.8 Million.

Storyline

A young girl(Lucie) manages to escape from a slaughterhouse, where she’s being held hostage and being tortured for over a year. She ends up in an orphanage, becoming friends with a young girl(Anna).  Anna soon realizes that Lucie is being terrorized by a disfigured woman and she tries to comfort her friend every time she has a nightmare.

Fifteen years go by, and Lucie ends up killing the family who tortured her when she was a kid. When Anna finds out, she tries to save a woman but Lucie kills her too. Lucie sees that disfigured woman again, and upon realizing that this insanity will never leave her, she commits suicide.

The next day, Anna finds a girl(Sarah), imprisoned in a secret underground chamber, Anna frees her and brings her back upstairs while she tries hurting herself. Soon after, Sarah is shot in the head by a group of people.

Plot

Anna is now captured by the group of people, and she meets their leader who explains to her that they belong to a secret philosophical society, and they are conducting an experiment that involves torturing young women.

Anna becomes the latest victim of the group. After some time, she starts hallucinating. This scene is followed by Anna finding out that the experiment has been successful.

Anna whispers something in the leader’s ear, after which, the leader kills herself too.

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6.      Megan Is Missing

Directed by: Micheal Goi

Produced by: Mark Gragnani

Interesting facts about this horror film:

• Megan is Missing is a very disturbing psychological horror movie, released in 2011, with a running time of 89 minutes. The fact that particularly makes this movie so disturbing is that it’s based on some real-life cases of child abduction.
• The movie itself is a low-budget independent feature, so it was shot under the budget of $30,000-$35,000.
• Moreover, the movie did not find distribution until it was given a limited theatrical release by Anchor Bay Films in 2011.
• The movie was banned in New Zealand in October 2011, by the Office of Film and Literature Classification.
• The script was written in a short period of 10 days, and the set was completely wrapped up in a week.
• A public warning was later issued after many critics called the overall experience traumatizing.

Storyline

Two 14-year-old best friends, Megan and Amy, disappear. Investigators began gathering webcam footage to look for clues. They see in one of the footage, that Megan, who is a popular high school student, is a drug addict. Due to this, she’s not on good terms with her mother. Whereas Amy has an amazing relationship with her parents, but despite her friendship with Megan, she is a victim of bullying.

Megan invites Amy to a party. As seen in the footage from that night, Amy is assaulted after refusing to have sex with one of the guys at the party. Later on, Megan apologizes for the bad experience.

One of Megan’s friends gives her a social media handle of a 17-year-old boy (Josh), who’s not from their school. He doesn’t reveal himself on the video chat. Megan agrees to meet him at a party. But the boy doesn’t show up and later apologizes to Megan.

Plot

Amy goes over to Megan’s house, where she’s introduced to that guy over a video call. The guy convinces Megan to meet him behind a diner. Later on, it’s revealed that the last footage of Megan is from the camera of that diner. And in that footage, you can see that she is being grabbed by her wrist by a man.

Amy immediately suspects that Josh has done this. She talks to Josh online and he begins threatening her by showing her pictures of Megan being tortured. Amy is kidnapped by Josh too, and both of them are murdered by him in a gruesome way.

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7.      The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It

Directed by: Micheal Chaves

Produced by: James Wan and Peter Safran

Here are the things you need to know about this disturbing horror movie:

• The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It is an American Horror film, released in 2021, with a running time of 112 minutes. The movie serves as the eighth installment in the conjuring universe.
• The movie is based on the real-life murder trial of Arne Cheyenne Johnson, that took place in 1981.
• This movie was shot under the budget of $39 Million.
• It was supposed to be released in 2020, but the release got delayed due to the pandemic.
• The movie was released on 4 June 2021 in the US by Warner Bros. Pictures, and New Line Cinema.
• Moreover, the movie was streamed in 3 Million households, just 17 days after its release.

Storyline

The opening scene shows two demonologists, Ed and Lorraine Warren, performing an exorcism on a kid(David) with his family in the same room. During the exorcism, Arne (David’s sister’s boyfriend) invites the demon to enter his body instead of David. Nobody’s able to witness the transport except Ed, who at the time goes unconscious because of a heart attack.

Arne ends up murdering his landlord, by stabbing him 22 times, blaming it on his demonic possession. It resulted in Warrens finding out the actual reason behind David’s possession. Ed and Lorraine travel to Massachusetts, where Lorraine gets a vision of Arne trying to kill himself, but she stops him from doing so.

The Warrens return to their home, where Ed is possessed and tries to kill his wife, but is stopped by a friend.

Plot

Lorraine finds her way to the tunnels, to put an end to these possessions. Ed, still possessed, follows his wife to the tunnels and tries to kill her with a sledgehammer.

Lorraine, on the other hand, tries to remind his husband of their love, hoping that it would help him regain consciousness, and succeeds. Ed destroys the evil, saving his wife and Arne.

Arne ends up going to jail, but serves only five years, and marries Debbie in prison.

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8.      In My Skin

Directed by: Marina de Van

Produced by: Laurence Ferenc

The movie was released on 4 December 2002, but the production of the movie itself remains a mystery since no details from the set were revealed to the media.

In My Skin is a French disturbing horror movie, released in 2002, with a running time of 93 minutes. The story revolves around a woman who gets into self–mutilation.

Storyline

Esther, who has an ideal life, hurts her leg at a party one night without even realizing it. Later on, whilst being alone in the bathroom, she inspects the wound and decides to visit a doctor. The doctor patches up the wound and seems pretty concerned with the fact that she didn’t feel the injury.

The next day, her boyfriend (Vincent), finds about the injury. He also worries about the fact that she didn’t feel anything. Later at work, Esther cuts herself with Metal pieces and tells her friend (Sandrine) about it.

The next day, Esther gets promoted. She attends a dinner with her colleagues; one of her arms gets out of control, and she begins stabbing herself with a steak knife. After a while, she leaves the table with the knife.

Plot

Esther checks herself into a hotel room and uncontrollably begins to cut and chew different parts of her body. She continues by crashing her car in the woods to explain the injuries. She meets her boyfriend in the ambulance and he immediately suspects that something is wrong.

The next day, instead of going to work, she purchases a knife and a camera and checks into another hotel. There, she continues to cut parts of her body, including her face.

The ending scene shows Esther getting ready the next day, inspecting a piece of flesh that she cut from her body, putting it in her bra, and quickly leaving the room.

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9.      A Serbian Film

Directed by: Srdan Spasojevic

Produced by: Srdan Spasojevic and Dragoljub Vojnov

Some interesting facts about A Serbian Film:

• A Serbian Film is a Serbian Horror Film, released in 2010, with a running time of 104 minutes. This movie itself is said to be a snuff film.
• The movie was banned in Spain, and when it was screened in an adult’s only film festival, the director of the festival was charged with exhibiting child pornography.
• The movie was banned in other states including, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea.
• The film was shown in Austin, as part of the 2010 South by Southwest, on 15 March 2010 for the very first time.
• The edited version of the movie was released in UK cinemas, on 10 December 2010 in which several minutes of the original footage was removed.

Storyline

A semi-retired porn star, Milos, lives with Marija, his wife, and Petar, his six-year-old son. A former co-star, Lejla, wants Milos to star in an independent pornographic art film, directed by Vukmir, an independent pornographer. Milos is hesitant at first since he wasn’t provided with any details about the film. However, later on, considering the financial state of his family, he agrees.

The shooting takes place at an orphanage, where Milos sees a young girl(Jeca) who is being scolded by her mother for disgracing her dead father. After that, Milos is forced to have sex with Jeca’s mother, in front of Jeca. Milos gets furious and leaves, after which, he’s approached by a female doctor sent by Vukmir.

Milos wakes up on his bed with blood all over him, not being able to recall anything that happened. He returns to the orphanage only to find a number of tapes. After seeing them, he discovers that he was drugged and manipulated into raping Jeca’s mother. The footage included the murder of his friend, Lejla.

Plot

Upon seeing further footage, Milos finds out that his wife was raped by his brother, and Milos himself was tricked into raping his own son. The footage included Milos killing his brother, and Vukmir.

Milos recalls that he has locked his wife and his son in the basement. He returns home and unlocks his family. Milos and Marija mutually decide that the three of them should die together.

After the three of them had died, a new film crew enters the room where one of the guys unzip his pants and is advised to “start with the little one”.

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10.      Pig

Directed by: Adam Mason

Produced by: Adam Mason, Andrew Howard, Patrick Ewald, and Michael J. Sarna

Here’s a list of some facts about pigs, that will leave you amazed.

• Pig is a short horror film, released in 2010, with a running time of 80 minutes. The film wasn’t made to be sold; it was just streamed on a few platforms.
• The movie was produced under the budget of only $3000.
• The whole movie was filmed in one continuous shot.
• Since no script was written, the entire movie was improvised.
• The audience was so disturbed by the film, that the director made sure the movie wasn’t available for the public anymore.
• The movie isn’t available on any platform. In fact, the only present footage of the film is the trailer.

Storyline

The opening scene shows a man who recaptures one of his escaped victims and murders her. He brings the dead body back to his camp which is located in a desert.

Here, you can see another woman who’s chained up and seemingly tortured. You can also see a pregnant woman in a cage, who is mentally handicapped and referred to as a baby.

There’s a third victim too, who’s shown as a chained-up guy tortured to his core.

Plot

The man releases his third victim, to use him as target practice. The man and ‘baby’ hunt the third victim and kill him; followed by performing some hideous acts on his dead body, which included pushing a screwdriver up his anus.

Later on, you can see the dead body of the woman from the opening scene, while her liver is being cooked over a fire to be eaten by the man and the ‘baby’.

Wrapping Up

So here you go, guys! These were some of the best and the top 10 Most Disturbing Horror Movies that you should definitely watch. Most of these horror movies are also available on Netflix.

 

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