Editorials
These Are the 13 Most Disturbing Horror Movie Moments of 2017
*Keep up with our ongoing end of the year coverage here*
Another year, another plethora of horror films with some truly disturbing moments. One of my favorite parts about year-end lists is going back through all of the horror films of the year and picking out the most fucked up scenes to include on the “Most Disturbing Movie Moments” list. It may actually be my favorite list to compile at the end of every year. Does that make me depraved? Maybe. Do I care? Not really. Anyway, below are 13 of the most disturbing scenes the horror genre gifted us with in 2017. To qualify for this list the scene in question had to inspire some sort of visceral reaction in the viewer. It didn’t necessarily have to be gory or violent. It just had to provoke a strong reaction.
This year I even decided to rank them in order of level of intensity. The first entry on the list is still disturbing, but it may be something that more sensitive viewers will be able to handle. The last entry on this list is only for the most hardcore viewer. Also, for the sake of not letting readers feel left out, I only included films that saw a wide release in 2017 on this list. Films that only screened at festivals were not taken into consideration. Those films will go on 2018 lists (should they actually get a release in 2018).
***WARNING: NSFW and SPOILER-FILLED imagery & videos below.***
13. Segregating the Cereal – Get Out
It’s should come as no surprise that Jordan Peele’s Get Out has become one of the most successful horror films ever made. It is one of the most socially relevant films of the decade, horror or otherwise, and has rung true with critics and audiences alike. It isn’t an in-your-face scary movie, opting to ask the viewers questions that aren’t easy to answer rather than talk down to them with cheap “Boo!” scares. One of the more unsettling moments in the film comes after it is revealed that Chris’ (Daniel Kaluuya) girlfriend Rose (Allison Wiliams) is actually the honeypot in her family’s racist body-snatcher business. Once Chris has been detained, the film cuts to Rose sitting on her bed listening to the Dirty Dancing soundtrack as she scopes out the next black man (or woman) she will bring home to her family. While doing this, she is popping dry Froot Loops into her mouth and sipping milk from a glass. What makes this scene so disturbing is its ties to white supremacy: she is literally separating the colors from the white by refusing to mix the two. It also exhibits her stunted growth by showing her eating food like a child in her childhood bedroom while, you know, psychotically stalking black people at the same time. It’s creepy and funny all at the same time.
12. The Ghost Texter – Personal Shopper
Personal Shopper won’t be for everyone. It is a slow burn story about a (wait for it) personal shopper (Kristen Stewart) who is still dealing with the emotional trauma from the death of her twin brother. In her down time she stays at his house and makes attempts to contact him in the spirit world. Eventually, she starts receiving mysterious texts from an unknown number that she believes may belong to her dead brother. These texts start out innocently enough (Hi. How are you? You know me. How is your day?) but gradually increase in intensity. The creepiest part of the film occurs when Stewart’s character checks her phone after a few hours and sees multiple messages from the texter over the past few hours, including one from 15 minutes before where he/she/it said it would come to her apartment if she didn’t respond. Following that is a text from 3 minutes ago saying it was in the street. After that is a text from a minute ago saying it is at her front door. I’m not doing this scene any justice by describing it. Director Olivier Assayas masterfully builds suspense and terror from this sequence, sending chills down the viewer’s spine. If you haven’t seen Personal Shopper yet, seek it out immediately.
11. Father-Son Story Time – The Killing of a Sacred Deer
Nothing like some good old father-son bonding time, right? Well, if you’re Colin Farrell in Yorgos Lanthimos’ brilliant The Killing of a Sacred Deer (my very positive review, Benedict Seal’s very negative one), you may wish you had just kept your mouth shut. In an effort to get his son, who has recently been rendered paraplegic, to eat some food, Farrell’s Steven Murphy tells him a story about how he once walked into his father’s bedroom as a child and masturbated him until he ejaculated. That this monologue is told in such a blunt, matter-of-fact way makes it all the more disturbing. Don’t take parenting lessons from this guy.
10. I’ll Show You Mine if You Show Me Yours – Creep 2
Patrick Brice’s Creep 2 (review) is just as good (if not better) than its predecessor. The sequel sees serial killer Aaron (Mark Duplass), luring in another unsuspecting filmmaker in the form of Sara (Desiree Akhavan), a graduate student who hopes to make a name for herself with a YouTube series where she meets strangers on Craigslist does things for them. Towards the end of the first act, Aaron tells Sara that he intends to break down all of the barriers between them, and to do so they must see each other completely naked. Aaron the strips down in front of Sara, showing her (and us) his fully nude body. He then asks Sara to do the same, which she does. The timeliness of this scene makes it all the more disturbing. Watching this particular scene in a year when we have been plagued daily with horrific accounts of sexual assault is extremely uncomfortable. Akhavan does an excellent job of selling Sara’s strange combination of uneasy willingness and shock, making it all the more disturbing.
9. Puppetry of the Georgie – It
No, It is not the scariest movie of the year, but damn if it didn’t have some wonderful set pieces (That projector scene! That sink scene!). The creepiest of which was almost spoiled in the trailer, but they thankfully cut away before the money shot. When Bill Denbrough (Jaeden Lieberher) goes down to his flooded basement, he sees his dead brother Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott) taunting him in the corner. Eventually, Georgie’s face begins to rot and Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård) rises from the water. It is revealed that Pennywise is using Georgie as a puppet before he violently lifts the Georgie puppet up and slaps him down face-first into the water. Seeing this desecration of Georgie’s rotting corpse and the gleeful way in which Pennywise does it is one of It‘s standout moments. It sticks with you long after you’ve left the theater.
8. A Trip to the Dentist – A Cure for Wellness
Anyone with a fear of the dentist need not tune into Gore Verbinski’s beautiful (if overlong) film A Cure for Wellness (my review). In the film, Lockhart (Dane DeHaan) is sent to a mysterious wellness center to locate the CEO of the company he works for. He eventually becomes trapped there, and is subjected to some horrific experiments by Dr. Volmer (Jason Isaacs). The first procedure he undergoes is some impromptu dental surgery without anesthetic. Your jaw will surely start to hurt the moment you see the drill penetrate the enamel. A Cure for Wellness probably didn’t need to be two and a half hours long, but at least we got one memorable, cringe-worthy scene out of it.
7. A Family Murder – It Comes at Night
Anyone expecting the “it” in It Comes at Night (review) to be revealed may have walked out of the theater disappointed, but as an exercise in unbearable tension it gets the job done. Set in a future where a virus has ravaged most of humanity (we assume), the film follows Paul (Joel Edgerton), his wife Sarah (Carmen Ejogo) and their son Travis (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) as they attempt to survive. One day they hesitantly invite Kim (Riley Keogh), Will (Christopher Abbott) and their son Andrew (Griffin Robert Faulkner) into their home and allow them to stay there. Things go well for a few days before the seed of paranoia begins to grow and tensions rise. Eventually, Paul and Sarah kick out Kim, Will and Andrew when they believe Andrew to be infected. This leads to a confrontation in which Sarah kills Will and Paul kills Andrew. Kim, having just witnessed her child be murdered, begs Paul to killer her to. He obliges. It’s a truly harrowing scene that serves as the perfect capper to the slow-mounting dread that preceded it.
6. Bedside Rape, Torture and Poop – Hounds of Love
Ben Young’s psychological horror film Hounds of Love (review) will be one of the more difficult films you watch this year, but it will also be one of the best (it is easily in my top 10 horror films of the year). While the film as a whole is all kinds of disturbing, no moment sticks with you more than the one in which rebellious teenager Vicki (Ashley Cummings), who has just been kidnapped by married couple John (Stephen Maloney) and Evelyn (Emma Booth), must endure multiple rapes by the former before emptying her bowels on the bed that she is handcuffed to. It’s harrowing and heartbreaking.
5. The Snap Heard Around the World – mother!
Darren Aronofsky’s mother! (review) is probably not the film audiences thought they were going to see after witnessing its sublimely creepy trailer just one month prior. While it may not have been the home invasion horror film people were expecting, it was certainly a powerful assault on the senses. The final 20 or so minutes of mother! culminate in a vicious crowd (us) overtaking the titular matriarch’s (Jennifer Lawrence, standing in for Mother Earth) home while she is giving birth to a baby (representing Jesus). Once she gives birth, Javier Bardem’s Man (God) hands the baby over to the crowd, where they crowd-surf it to the other room. On its journey there the baby breaks its neck and the crowd proceeds to eat the baby (a very literal representation of the Eucharist). You don’t actually see the crowd digging in to the baby’s flesh (though you do see a few chunks of it being passed around), but you most certainly hear the snap of its neck when it breaks. The sound in the movie cuts out for a moment to give you time to ask the person next to you if you just heard what you think you heard (you did). It’s incredibly unsettling.
4. Incest Porn – We Are the Flesh
2017 was filled with controversial horror films, but none may be more controversial than Emiliano Rocha Minter’s We Are the Flesh (review), a Mexican trip to hell that sees siblings Fauna (María Evoli) and Lucio (Diego Gamaliel) seek food and shelter in an apocalyptic world from the crazed Mariano (Noé Hernández). Filled with cannibalism, incest and explicit sex (the film is practically a porno), We Are the Flesh will . If audiences didn’t know what kind of film they were in for, they most certainly did when Mariano forces Fauna and Lucio to have sex. And make no mistake: you see their fornication in explicit detail. The entire sequence (well, the entire film, really) is one big exercise in discomfort. It’s sickening and it’s disgusting, but it’s also very powerful.
3. A Necrophiliac Orgy – Leatherface
One sure-fire way to make it on to a list like this is to put necrophilia in your movie (just look at my list from last year where The Neon Demon most definitely earned a spot). Julien Maury’s and Alexandre Bustillo’s Leatherface (review), a sequel to Tobe Hooper’s original, may not have been particularly good but it did feature plenty of gruesome moments (despite the almost complete lack of chainsaw action). After a night of murdering, bloodthirsty lovers Ike (James Bloor) and Clarice (Jessica Madsen) have sex on top of a corpse. There really isn’t much else to about the scene, but un(?)fortunately I couldn’t find a clip of the scene. Just know that it’s really, really gross.
2. The Brazilian Wax From Hell – Raw
For a coming-of-age tale about cannibalism, Julia Ducournau’s Raw (review) is surprisingly tame when it comes to the gory details. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a few moments of pure ickiness though. Take, for example, the scene in which Alexia (Ella Rumpf) gives her sister Justine (Garance Marillier) a Brazilian wax. Not only does the cloth strip get stuck(!) on Justine’s pubic area, but Alexia loses a finger in her attempt to cut the cloth off of Justine. As if that weren’t bad enough. Justine then takes a bite out of Alexia’s severed finger. You would think it would be the finger-eating that would be the most disturbing thing about this scene, but it’s actually the extreme close-ups of Alexia trying to pull the cloth and wax off of Justine’s skin.
1. Peeling Off the Glove – Gerald’s Game
I actually took a poll on Twitter and Facebook to see which horror movie scenes other people found to be the most disturbing, and the degloving scene in Mike Flanagan’s adaptation of Stephen King’s novel Gerald’s Game (my review) received an overwhelming amount of mentions. It is understandable of course. It’s not every day you get to see a woman (Carla Gugino, in a mesmerizing performance) peel the skin off of her own hand. I was fortunate enough to see this in a theater at Fantastic Fest (the film is made for a theatrical experience if only because of this scene) and someone actually fainted during the degloving. Flanagan doesn’t hold back, showing every tendon rip in graphic detail. Just try to make it through the scene without looking away!
Which moments in horror films for 2017 did you find to be the most disturbing? Let us know in the comments below!
The great Ernest Dickerson turns seventy-five years old this month, so we’re looking back at his most memorable contribution to the horror genre – 1995’s Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight!
The film hit screens while the Tales from the Crypt series was winding down its run on television, and it stands apart with a story that feels a step or two removed from the franchise norm. That was the smart play, though, as the show’s stories – and those from the original EC comics – work best in short bites. The result is a film that holds up beautifully as a gory good time.
Now keep reading to see what I heard on the commentary for…
Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995)
Commentator: Ernest Dickerson (director), Michael Felsher (moderator)
1. Dickerson was in post-production on Surviving the Game when he got a call from his agent saying that producer Gil Adler wanted to meet about a Tales from the Crypt feature film. It went well, so Dickerson met with Joel Silver next and secured the job.
2. The original screenplay for the film came to the producers as a spec script wholly detached from the Tales from the Crypt brand. They added the Crypt Keeper (voiced by John Kassir) bookends to make it fit.
3. Dickerson was more familiar with the original EC comic books having read them as a kid, but he had watched a few episodes of the HBO series, so he knew what the current vibe was for the project.
4. Adler directed the film’s wraparound segments, meaning Dickerson never actually got to work with the creepy puppet. “Gil and the Crypt Keeper had a great relationship,” he adds, “they worked together for years.”
5. While he was new to the Tales from the Crypt family, Dickerson had previously worked as a director of photography on the Tales from the Darkside anthology series. That show is underappreciated in my humble opinion, and I will go to bat for both it and the equally underloved Monsters.
6. A big appeal of the horror genre for Dickerson is the idea of dark mysteries that challenge our imagination. For this film, that came down to the mythology being created between the characters.
7. Five executive producers are listed in the opening credits, but Dickerson says the only two he had dealings with were Silver and Richard Donner. The other three were Walter Hill, Robert Zemeckis, and David Giler.
8. Dickerson had only ever seen Billy Zane in movies with a full head of hair, so he was surprised when Zane showed up on the first day with a bald head. “He had this case, and he opened up the case that he had all these hair pieces in, and he says, ‘So which one of these do you think I should use?’” Dickerson looked at him and suggested he just go bald for the character.
9. While the bulk of the opening exteriors were filmed in a desert just outside Los Angeles, the shot of the old church at 11:26 was created on a warehouse hangar soundstage where the film’s interiors were shot.
10. When he had read the script, Dickerson pictured the character of Jeryline (Jada Pinkett Smith) “as a little, tough lady.” He had recently seen Smith in Menace II Society, and while the producers had someone else in mind for the role, he fought to get her instead.
11. Just as Zane surprised Dickerson with his hair (or lack thereof), Smith arrived on the first day with her hair dyed platinum white. He “liked the idea” but asked her to please get it tweaked so it looked more yellowish blond. “It’s definitely a statement.”
12. He had seen Brenda Bakke in the 1989 sci-fi/action film from Japan, Gunhed, and thought she’d be great here as Cordelia. The rest of us might recognize her from Death Spa or Trucks.
13. Felsher comments that the film’s setup does a good job not telegraphing who’s going to live or die, and he uses the “nice guy” (Charles Fleischer) and “the kid” (Ryan O’Donohue) as examples. “You don’t play by those rules here,” he says, and Dickerson replies that he wanted to subvert those rules. That extends to Smith as well because she’s Black, “and usually in movies like this they’re the first folks to die.”
14. Dickerson says they had forty days of filming, “which, the way I’m used to working, was a very generous schedule.” It was budgeted at around $10 million.
15. This probably won’t surprise you, but Zane improvised the bit at 26:25 after he jumps out the window and says, “Fuck this cowboy shit! You fuckin’, hodunk Podunk, well, then, motherfuckers!”
16. In the original script, the demons that The Collector (Zane) raises from the dirt actually looked more like the people they used to be. “They were more human,” but the very smart decision was made in pre-production to make them look far more unique instead.
17. The demons are killed by shooting their eyes, but Dickerson felt there should be one more element to it. “Shoot out their eyes, you gotta duck because the souls come shooting out, and if it hits ya, boom, it can kill ya.” This is a fun touch.
18. He’s been asked more than once if these demons are where Peter Jackson got the idea for how the orcs would look in his Lord of the Rings movies. “They do look like orcs.”
19. He recalls having seen Ronny Yu’s The Bride with White Hair shortly before going to work on Demon Knight, and he hoped to bring some of that staged style into his own film. An example of that in practice is Brayker’s (William Sadler) brief flashbacks to Christ on the cross.
20. Character deaths were mostly based on the idea that “each person’s downfall was going to be predicated by their weakness.” The Collector discovers someone’s weakness and then uses it against them. Cordelia wants to be loved, Jeryline wants to travel, Uncle Willy (Dick Miller) is a horndog for both liquor and ladies, Danny loves horror comics, etc.
21. Dickerson says that plenty of genre classics were in the back of his head while making the film, including Assault on Precinct 13, Alien, Aliens, and more.
22. Cordelia is possessed into a demonic form, and Dickerson’s idea for how she’d look was originally a bit different. “Since Cordelia was a prostitute, I thought that her mouth should actually be a vertical slit that was in her stomach… which would open up with teeth and a tongue.” It was nixed, he says, when “the wife of one of the producers read that and said ‘no way you’re putting that in the movie.’”
23. The key makes an appearance in the followup, Tales from the Crypt: Bordello of Blood, but it wasn’t originally meant to. Apparently, early test audiences expected it to be a more connected sequel to Demon Knight, so the filmmakers added it in to appease them. This is where I go on record saying that Bordello of Blood is a fun time. Can’t touch Demon Knight, obviously, but it’s more entertaining than its reputation suggests.
24. They had to film Uncle Willy’s bar scene “dream” twice, once with the women topless and once with them in bikinis, to have versions for both theaters and television broadcast. “Dick’s a pro.” (To be fair, Dickerson says this in regard to Miller having to endure the makeup application, but the sentiment fits both situations, so…)
25. Dickerson says he’s “always amazed at the love that people show this film,” and adds that fans bring it up to him incredibly often. This is great to hear, as we should always be telling artists how much their work means to us while they’re still alive and able to hear it.
26. Zane also suggested the gag at 1:08:21 with the sponge coming out of his mouth. The beat reminds Dickerson to praise the actor even more, adding that he was an “ally” to the director when “bad ideas” came down from the studio suits.
27. He didn’t get any pushback on killing little Danny. He did insist on one added element, though, as he wanted to immediately follow the boy exploding in the air with a shot of his bloody and torn sneaker hitting the ground below. “And the sneaker had to be a hightop.”
28. Dickerson says there’s “something kinky sexy about” Smith being covered in blood, and then the two commentators go quiet for almost two minutes out of respect for the scene. It’s a good opportunity to reflect on how Dickerson had previously mentioned Alien and Aliens as films being in the back of his head during filming, and how two scenes here reflect that – Jeryline stripping down to her underwear for the final confrontation feels like a nod to Ridley Scott’s film, while an earlier scene with Irene (CCH Pounder) and Dep. Bob (Gary Farmer) realizing they’re surrounded and choosing to blow themselves up alongside some of the demons is something of a callback to the air vent sacrifice in James Cameron’s film.
29. Asked about the film’s critical reception at the time of release, Dickerson says it received good reviews from horror-loving critics and then talks about the importance of horror in general. “Horror has always been a great way of putting out ideas, of talking about some of the things that affect us as people. Some of the best horror, like the best science fiction, talks about what it’s like to be human. Some of the best horror gets very political.”
30. The original ending would have featured The Collector showing “his true self, which is a demon made of fire.” They spent a lot of time trying to make it work, but it was “extremely difficult… back in the day of analog effects.” It was rewritten into the faceoff between him and Jeryline featuring the dancing, the crotch fire, Zane’s attempts at saying “love,” and his eventual demise from her bloody spit.
31. They both agree that a direct sequel to Demon Knight could be a lot of fun, but Dickerson says he’s unaware of any talk on the possibility.
32. Dickerson was super excited about this new Scream Factory Blu-ray in 2015, and he mentions that before its release, he had imported a Blu-ray from Germany presumably to enjoy the film in HD. He’s just like us! (Or am I the only one here who’s imported a German Blu-ray of the much maligned werewolf flick Big Bad Wolf…)
Quotes Without Context
“I was so happy to get Dick Miller for this movie.”
“There was a time when guys used to put ketchup on everything.”
“I’m a big student of Hitchcock, and the best way to make a moment of horror work is to lull the audience into a false sense of security.”
“A villain should always be the most interesting person in a movie.”
“They were a really great bunch of performers who were performing on these little leg-extension stilts wearing a diaper that had a radio-controlled tail that was being manipulated by a special effects tech right out of the frame.”
“It’s hard to direct air; it doesn’t do what you want.”
“The only censorship problem came from the producer’s wife, who didn’t want the vagina dentalis [sic] in the movie.”
“One of the executives wanted to know why the devil didn’t try to have sex with Jada.”
“It always starts with the script.”
Keep up with more horror commentary breakdowns here.
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