Editorials
Meagan Navarro Revisits the 10 Most Disturbing Horror Movie Moments of 2019
*Keep up with our ongoing end of the year coverage here*
Horror films seek to evoke fear in a variety of ways; some opt for creeping dread and some for unbearable tension, while others employ jump scares. And then there are those films that seek to elicit a primal sense of disgust, leaving viewers recoiling in their seats from the disturbing imagery on screen. While horror tends to be subjective, even the most hardened of horror fans are oftentimes not immune to this particular tactic.
2019 had no shortage of disturbing moments in horror, rendering audiences uncomfortable with boundary-pushing scenes. Whether it’s taboo-breaking sex or violence, we look back at the year’s ten most disturbing moments in horror.
In case it’s not apparent, there will be spoilers…
The Furies – Facial Peel
This Shudder exclusive slasher follows a kidnapped woman forced to play a deadly game where creepy masked killers hunt women. Things get incredibly gory quickly, as evidenced by this early kill. Out of the gate, a killer catches one of the women and pins her to a tree. He puts his ax to her face. The struggle to save herself means that the ax’s blade is slowly driven into her flesh until it separates her face from her skull entirely. Slow, precise, and visceral.
Pledge – Medieval Hazing
A group of college freshmen looking for acceptance and a fun party instead find pain and suffering at the hands of an elite fraternity. College hazing gets downright brutal in this horror thriller, and sometimes even medieval. One of the victims suffers a violent end when he’s held down to a table, a rat is placed on his bare stomach that’s then covered with a metal pot, and his tormentor takes a blow torch to the pot. In a desperate bid to escape being burned alive, the rat chews down into the pledge’s soft flesh.
Midsommar – Ättestupa
The Hårga people perform numerous bizarre rituals in their Midsommar celebration, though Ättestupa is the first to give the visiting outsiders a clue that something is seriously amiss. After a cheerful feast, everyone gathers at the base of a cliff. Above, an elder woman slices her palm open and smears it on a rune-carved rock before plummeting to her death below. An elderly man follows suit, only a boulder breaks his fall, and he doesn’t die upon impact; though his body is shattered and mangled. The Americans watch in horror as a group of Hårgans calmly bring over an oversized mallet to finish the job in primal fashion.
Brightburn – Wrecked
Brightburn offers up a few standout gore moments, including the cringe-worthy eye trauma moment glimpsed in the trailers. The worst of what happens to that particular victim, though, happens off-screen. It’s the drawn-out death of Uncle Noah that disturbs the most, however. Brandon picks up his uncle’s truck and drops it; Noah’s jaw collides with the steering wheel. Completely severed, Noah tries to hold his jaw back together while slowly gurgling and choking on his blood. All while Brandon watches in mild curiosity. Noah’s hand drops with his final breath, giving the viewer one last ghastly sight of carnage.
Hagazussa – Goat’s Milk
Set in the 15th century Alps, Hagazussa is a tale of foreboding isolation, paranoia, and superstition. As a child, Albun is forced to watch in horror as her mother deteriorates and dies from illness. The superstitious villagers believe them to be witches, so the death leaves her entirely alone. As an adult, Albun doesn’t have much company outside of her goats. The profound depths of her loneliness and repression are conveyed through one of the most disturbing moments of the film; the eroticized milking of her goats. It’s as illustrative as it is uncomfortable.
Knife + Heart – The Murder Weapon
A modern-day Giallo set in Paris of 1979, Yann Gonzalez created a vivid ode to grindhouse cinema. The plot sees a masked killer targeting a gay porn production company. Victims tend to die brutally in Giallo, but the brutality reaches an excruciating and shocking level here. The killer seduces his victims in clubs, engages in foreplay, and pulls out his black dildo. It hides a knife, which he then uses to penetrate his victim. The double meaning is very much intentional.
High Life – The F-Box
Claire Denis’s latest is a slow, meditative burn that refuses easy categorization, meaning it won’t appeal to everyone. Regardless, the film’s ability to disturb on a profound level applies to all viewers. Sex and violence are power aboard the deep space vessel, and Denis gets explicit. We’re given an up close and personal look at exploding heads, explicit sex and sexual violence with close-ups of blood, sweat, urine, and semen; and High Life is particularly fond of the latter. Dr. Dibs (Juliette Binoche) is determined to collect all the sperm in her bid to see a baby carried to term in space, and she uses the “Fuckbox” as a tool for that as well as relieving herself. The first introduction to it disturbs; a small boxlike room filled with leather straps and dildos, with Dibs writhing on it in sweat. No 2019 film contains as much body fluid as this one.
Lords of Chaos – Suicide
This biopic that tells of the ‘90s Norwegian black metal scene through the perspective of Mayhem cofounder Euronymous (Rory Culkin) blends horror and drama with biography. The horror is at its most prominent with the early demise of the band’s vocalist, Dead (Jack Kilmer). On stage, Dead tends to cut himself and bleed over the audience. Offstage, his self-destructive ways culminate in a graphic suicide. Dead slits his wrists and throat with his knife, then shoots himself in the head with a gun. It’s a shocking and disturbing scene rendered even more uncomfortable by how explicit director Jonas Åkerlund films it.
The Nightingale – Carroll Family Devastation
Jennifer Kent’s period set horror thriller didn’t shy away from graphic violence. Numerous rape sequences left viewers- unaware of what they were getting into- seriously shook. For all the trigger warnings and unflinching depictions of race and violence, though, it’s the early inciting event that left protagonist Clare Carroll desperate for vengeance that disturbs on a profound level. When her husband attempts to earn her freedom from the British army, in a drunken stupor no less, the soldiers visit the Carroll family home in retaliation. They take turns raping Clare in front of her husband, before murdering him. When Clare’s baby won’t stop crying, one of the soldiers bashes it against a wall, leaving both Clare and the viewer traumatized.
The Golden Glove – Grim Introductions
Based on the true crimes of serial killer Fritz Honka, The Golden Glove isn’t for the weak-hearted or weak-stomached. Writer/director Fatih Akin wants to make sure you know what you’re getting into straight away with one graphic opening. Beginning with a shot of an older woman’s leg hanging off the side of a bloodstained bed in a dingy bedroom, walls covered in nude photos of women, Fritz enters from out of frame. He drags her limp body out of bed and onto the floor with a thud. He strips her of her undergarments and pulls out a saw, proceeding to cut her down to more manageable pieces. It’s a horrible declaration of the degradation to come.
Five decades ago, Stephen King published the story of a bullied girl with telekinetic powers and forever changed the world of horror.
Carrie follows a high school misfit who seeks revenge for a hideous prank by psychically destroying her senior prom. The name Carrie White has become synonymous with the concept of a formal dance thanks to a flawless adaptation from Brian De Palma. Now fifty years after the film’s release, Mike Flanagan is putting his own stamp on the troubling story.
Rather than a feature film, the writer/director will expand King’s relatively slim debut novel into an eight-episode miniseries for Amazon Prime set to premiere on October 7.
Flanagan is no stranger to the world of Stephen King. A long-time Constant Reader, he first made waves with his daring adaptation of Gerald’s Game (2017), a novel many fans considered un-filmable. His underrated Doctor Sleep merges the disparate plot of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining with King’s original source material, and his 2024 genre-bending tearjerker The Life of Chuck faithfully executes one of the author’s most metaphysical novellas.
He’s currently mired in pre-production for an expansive adaptation of The Dark Tower series, keystone to King’s connected universe, and Warner Bros. recently announced that Flanagan will helm a new version of The Mist, King’s 1980 novella which sees a small Maine town overrun by otherworldly monsters.
Considering the vast array of the author’s previously unadapted material, an obvious question arises. Why reimagine Carrie in 2026? Noting the timeless nature of the content, Flanagan expressed his desire to bring the story of a bullied girl into modern times, mirroring his approach to Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. He explained, “The only way to approach it was to build something new out of the ingredients of Carrie. Otherwise, there’s really no purpose in trying to retread ground that’s been so beautifully walked before.”
His miniseries will maintain the novel’s bloody bookends while delivering “big surprises” along the way.
A New Prom Night Nightmare
The roughly 60-second teaser introduces Summer H. Howell as Carrie White just before the moment of catastrophe. Standing in a prom dress, she smiles at her applauding classmates with an ominous crown perched upon her head. Moments later, Carrie unleashes a rage-filled scream into the night air while promgoers rush for the exit doors. But careful examination of this scene shows Carrie wearing a different, albeit dirty dress as she seems to telekinetically punish her peers.
In an exclusive first look with Entertainment Weekly, Flanagan explains that in his version of the story, “the events of that prom are going to be completely different.” An open trunk emitting a crimson glow does hint at the pig’s blood dumped on Carrie’s head, but it’s likely Flanagan’s formal dance will be a different kind of horror altogether. Despite these changes, the series may end with the widespread destruction outlined in the source material. Unlike any previous adaptations, King’s novel ends with the near-total destruction of Chamberlain, Maine. A flaming street in Flanagan’s trailer promises similar carnage no matter what prank sparks Carrie’s deadly revenge.
The Monstrous Addition of Social Media
On the opposite end of this fiery conclusion is an extreme act of bullying that brings together the story’s main cast. King’s novel begins as Carrie gets her first period while showering in the girls’ locker room. Completely unaware of the concept of menstruation, the sheltered girl thinks she’s bleeding to death. Her classmates respond with vitriolic rage. Led by ultra-mean girl Chris Hargensen (Alison Thornton), they mock the terrified teen while pelting her with tampons. Glimpses of this disturbing event reveal that Flanagan has excised the scene’s nudity while adding a seismic update. As Carrie sobs in the shower stall, Chris and her friends film the breakdown with their phones.
Other scenes note the presence of social media, bringing King’s fifty-year-old story into the digital age.
Flanagan’s adaptation promises to explore the destructive power of social media, an often invisible entity with a potential for harm rivaling Carrie’s own powers. While King’s tormented heroine suffers in front of a small group of girls, Flanagan’s version of the incident will likely become a viral video, potentially circling the globe on social media. Similar to Katt Shea’s criminally underrated The Rage: Carrie 2, which includes elements of revenge porn exploitation, Flanagan’s modern retelling will distinguish itself by exploring the nebulous cruelty of online bullying, a force ten times more powerful than the irl pranks King first envisioned.
A Completely Reimagined White Family
In addition to modernizing these canon events, Flanagan hints at updates to Carrie’s oppressive upbringing at the hands of her mother, Margaret White (Samantha Sloyan). Dead before the novel begins, we never meet Carrie’s domineering father Ralph, known to carry a bible alongside his gun. Flanagan’s White household will be an altogether different beast. In his version of the story, Carrie and her mother have been hidden away in the unassuming home, forced out of hiding by Ralph’s unexpected death. Perhaps we will finally meet this elusive man whose shadow hangs over his wife and child. Considering the White family’s fundamentalist lifestyle, this reimagining hints at tradwife culture and a home ruled by staunch patriarchal control.
Whereas King’s Carrie has been tormented by her classmates since Kindergarten, Flanagan’s Carrie will be a wide-eyed newcomer to public school, eager to make friends and engage with her peers. We glimpse Carrie cozying up to Chris and the equally popular Sue Snell (Siena Agudong) as she navigates a new social scene. Of course, we know this kindness is part of an elaborate plot designed to lull Carrie into a false sense of camaraderie, setting up an atrocious act of public humiliation. These brief moments of feigned compassion put Sue’s own complicity into question. Will Flanagan’s version of the character find the courage to defend Carrie from vicious bullies or will she succumb to peer pressure and join in the mob mentality?
Perhaps the biggest deviation from King’s original text is the relationship between Carrie and her mother. King’s Margaret White is a horrifically abusive religious zealot whose worldview has been hardened by internalized misogyny. She shames Carrie for menstruating, locks her in a closet to “pray,” and regrets not killing her child in infancy. She’s also responsible for Carrie’s social ostracization. Known to berate her neighbors for their “sins,” Margaret forces her daughter to live by an extreme code of conduct and disallows any potential friends lest they corrupt the girl with their worldly ways.
Flanagan’s version of the character is perhaps just as much a victim as Carrie herself. Also trapped inside her home, his Margaret is overly vigilant, her own trauma manifesting as strict control. Describing a more sympathetic depiction of the iconic villain, Flanagan explains, “Our Margaret White is a woman who fiercely loves her daughter and wants to protect her from this world … [She] doesn’t know how to do that and thinks the way to protect her is to close her off; not punitively, but to create this private utopia.”
Despite this potential softening, Sloyan’s Margaret may still have a sharp edge. Though she has appeared in many Flanagan projects, from Hush (2016) to The Fall of the House of Usher (2023), she is best known for her role as the abhorrent Bev Keane in the poignant saga Midnight Mass (2021). Perhaps inspired by King’s Margaret White, Bev is pious and sadistic, willing to punish anyone who does not adhere to her warped approximation of Catholicism.
Flanagan specifically wrote Margaret with Sloyan in mind, likely remembering the actress’s eerie ability to create deceptive empathy and shift our allegiances on a dime.
Expanding Stephen King’s Telekinetic Universe
While most of King’s story deals with an unthinkable prom night in Chamberlain, Maine, large sections of the semi-epistolary novel see experts debating the nature of telekinesis. Do Carrie’s frightening abilities represent a new phase in human evolution or is the prom night carnage merely a fluke? King settles the debate with a shocking denouement in which a young mother recounts her infant daughter’s ability to dangle her crib toys in midair. We’re left to wonder if she will become another tormented girl who surprises the world with metaphysical strength.
Flanagan plans to build out this brief scene while amplifying themes of female empowerment. After introducing our main cast of characters, episode two will open with an unrelated story in which we meet another girl with the TK gene. Each subsequent chapter will expand this world, building out a roster of telekinetic young women. Considering King’s fondness for stories about powerful kids, often described as possessing “the shining,” Constant Readers will no doubt have their eyes peeled for various Easter Eggs nodding to the author’s vast catalogue.
Giving Carrie Her Own Voice
Perhaps the most striking distinction in Flanagan’s new trailer is the extent to which we hear Carrie’s voice. The sneak peek is fully narrated by the titular prom queen as she demands accountability. “I want to know why,” she explains while detailing Chris’ elaborate plan. Aside from the aforementioned coda, King’s book essentially ends with the aftermath of the prom night tragedy, leaving little time for Carrie to reflect. His shifting narrative does bring the reader into her fragile mind, though not before she’s been cowed by relentless cruelty. We watch Carrie sink into bloodthirsty revenge, but never hear a considered desire for justice or repair.
Flanagan’s original monologue allows Carrie to voice her pain and mourn the life she could have had. We’re also treated to a mug shot-style photo of Chris with a bruised and bandaged face, implying that the mean girl will have to answer for her senseless sadism.
Flanagan is known for filling his series adaptations with heartwrenching speeches that cut to the heart of his thematic intentions, and this teaser seems to follow suit. After years of fans, critics, and scholars analyzing Carrie’s pain, perhaps his modern retelling will offer the titular anti-hero a chance to finally speak for herself.
You must be logged in to post a comment.