The 21st century has seen its fair share of horrors: The COVID-19 pandemic, the 2008 financial crisis, the 2013 VMAs – the past two decades haven’t been pretty. Like an annoying little sibling, art has spent the 21st century doing what it always does around its big brother life: imitating. As the disturbing events have compounded over the years, plenty of disturbing films have emerged in response. A cursory glance at Netflix or the evening news will tell you: horror is having its day. Here are the ten most disturbing horror movies of the 21st century, to prove that as bad as real life gets, art is here to prove things could always get a little worse. Imitation is the highest form of flattery, after all.
The House The Jack Built
Lars von Trier’s The House That Jack Built is a building that needs to be condemned and demolished. The plot revolves around a serial killer named Jack, who is recounting his murders to Virgil – the same shmuck who guided Dante through the Inferno in The Divine Comedy. As Jack relives the gory details, we take a trip down memory lane into his nightmare highlight reel. A failed architect in life, Jack begins to design a house made from the corpses of those he has killed. Strangers, romantic partners, children, the building materials come from a variety of unfortunate sources. Unlike classic cinema killers like Hannibal Lector, Jack isn’t a particularly charismatic or even interesting character. He’s a career loser who moonlights as a murderous lowlife, only successful at causing pain and suffering. It’s a disturbing downer of a movie featuring some particularly sadistic sequences – the portrait of a hollow life lived in pursuit of bored cruelty.
Hereditary
A horror classic in the making, Ari Aster’s Hereditary is arguably one of the most upsetting films of the 21st century. This critically acclaimed A24 masterpiece follows the unraveling of the Graham family – a group of four undone by their own bloodline. After an allergic reaction causes the death of the Graham’s youngest child, the remaining members of the family are torn apart by the grief. Their suffering allows for a dark presence to fester in their minds, one that has haunted their family line for generation. It’s a brutal and bleak metaphor for generational trauma, how children are often the unintended victims of their parents’ parents’ abuses. Heady themes aside, there’s also a soul-crushingly disturbing sequence involving a disembodied head. I won’t spoil it, but your appetite might be after you watch this movie.
Martyrs
Pascal Laugier’s Martyrs builds off the nail-biting traditions of the New French Extremity movement to fashion a horror movie that is downright abysmal. Not abysmal in a bad way, well, yes a bad way – but it’s a good piece of art! After escaping from the slaughterhouse where she was locked up and tortured for years, a young woman named Lucie flees to an orphanage and makes friends with a girl named Anna. Years later, Lucie is dead – the result of a shotgun murder/suicide performed as revenge against the seemingly normal family that she claims were her torturers. While investigating the scene, Anna realizes that her haunted friend’s worst fears were real – she was a victim of sadistic experiments undertaken in service of horrifying enlightenment. Martyrs is a story of flagellation in pursuit of divine purity – the Catholics are gonna love this one. The same spiritual doctrine inspired the director to make it, after all.
His House
Directed by Remi Weekes, His House is a slice-of-real-life horror film that provides a glimpse into the struggle of refugees. Bol and Rial fled from their war-torn home of South Sudan with their daughter in tow, but when they settle down in a run down house granted to them by the British government – their daughter is mysteriously absent. As they struggle to assimilate in a prejudiced society, the couple are haunted by a visions of evil – a dark spirit from their homeland that has followed them across the sea. The true horror of His House isn’t its purely supernatural component, but the lingering, real life trauma that the evil spirit represents. Horrible things happened in their journey across the ocean, and a terrible secret shame is soon to come to light.
When Evil Lurks
Demián Rugna’s When Evil Lurks is a downright nasty story of demonic possession, as stomach churning for modern audiences as the pea-soup vomiting of The Exorcist was in 1973. The film starts off strong with a disemboweled corpse, which leads a pair of brothers to a shack where a demon waits. They find a “Rotten,” a deformed person who has become the host to an unborn demon – super gross, highly contagious. After coming into contact with the horror, they unwittingly spread the infernal contamination to their loved ones. Oops. What makes this film so disturbing? It’s disgusting. Body horror abounds in this film as demonic possession reduces human beings to fleshy masses of living decay. Do yourself a favor and watch on an empty stomach.
In My Skin
Marina de Van’s In My Skin is a textbook example of the New French Extremity movement – a subgenre defined by its extreme use of physical and sexual violence. Now that you know what you’re in for, let’s dive in. The plot follows a regular-degular marketing professional named Esther, a painfully average woman who begins displaying an unusual obsession with her own body. After a household accident leaves her with a nasty cut, Esther is fascinated by the damage, and endeavors to recreate it on other parts of her skin. There’s no demonic possession, no killers, no ghosts – all of horror’s usual suspects are absent. Esther is a normal person with a curious compulsion to self-mutilate, not out of self-hatred, but for the satisfaction it gives. The macabre mixes with the mundane to make a horror film that leaves a mark.
The Nightingale
The Nightingale is a historical horror film by Babadook creator Jennifer Kent, revolving around a real-life colonial nightmare called The Black War. Waged against British colonists against aboriginal Tasmanians, The Black War nearly resulted in the extinction of the entire indigenous population. The story begins on the eve of the conflict, following an Irish convict named Clare who works as a servant for the colonists. After Clare is raped by a sadistic British officer who then kills her infant daughter, she enlists the help of an Aboriginal tracker to help her hunt down her assailant. It’s a deeply troubling film that features graphic depictions of sexual assault, which are soon followed by equally grisly reprisal killings. While horrific, the film refuses to shy away from the very real historical violence that plagued the area at the time. The Nightingale‘s greatest strength is its commitment to painting a truthful picture of the conflict, no matter how awful that image is to behold.
Get Out
Directed by Jordan Peele, Get Out was written in response to what Peele called the “post racial lie” that dominated American consciousness during the Obama years and beyond. The plot follows Chris Washington, a Black photographer who accompanies his white girlfriend on a trip to meet her family. After a series of uncomfortable conversations with the Armitages, Chris begins to feel a deep sense of unease after observing the strange behavior of the family’s Black servants. His worst fears are proven true when discovers that the Armitage family covets Black bodies, seeking to commandeer them for their own personal use. Peele’s film portrayed a subtler side of American racism, one that lurks behind the smiles of a seemingly progressive society.
I Saw The TV Glow
I Saw The TV Glow by Jane Schoenbrun is a rare example of “nostalgia horror,” the terror that comes from the perversion of past comforts. The plot follows Owen and Maddy, two social outcasts who bond over the mutual love of The Pink Opaque – a late-night T.V. series in circulation at the end of the millennium. After Maddy vanishes without a trace, Owen’s former best friend reappears years later, telling Owen that their favorite childhood show was more real than either their current existences. A trans allegory, the film explores the horror of mundanity – the countless little deaths that come from choosing a life that was chosen for you. “There is still time” becomes the film’s mantra, time to change the path you’re on, but phrase also serves as a warning that time eventually runs out.
Raw
Julia Ducournau’s Raw is the story of a young vegetarian’s slow descent into carnivorism. After being accepting into a cult-like veterinary school, lifelong vegetarian Justine begins experiencing an unexplained craving for flesh. First cooked, then raw, then human. It’s a body horror film about the psychosexual need to consume played out to its logical conclusion. Cannibalism, baby. Don’t knock it until you try it! Actually, please knock it. It’s, like, the thing that should be knocked above all else.
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
