3 Films that have Disturbed Me this Year

WARNING: This post may contain spoilers for the films mentioned if you haven’t seen them. I’ll try to mark the more obvious spoiler parts but read at your own risk.

Extra warning: if you haven’t seen these films and read all of this… there are a lot of subjects (as it says in the title) that may be found disturbing. Yes, it’s bad enough to give warnings for.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am not an easy person to gross out. I’ve been obsessed with horror films and stories for years so I am highly desensitised to violence, disgusting things and the dark side of human nature. However, so far this year I have been disturbed by three films, which for some reason I watched all in the same day one after the other. And so, here they are:

3. The Human Centipede 2

Surprisingly, I wasn’t bothered at all by the first Human Centipede, with the exception of one scene. When this one was first banned before being cut a lot and then being given the highest rating, I was complaining and saying I had to see it. When I was reading about some of the worse scenes and pre-cut scenes, I thought they were cool.

Okay so, for those who don’t know, the human centipede is about some psycho guy stitching a group of people together mouth to anus to create, yep you guessed it, a human centipede. This one is a bit different from the original because it has 12 victims instead of 3 and the psycho, rather than being a mad doctor is a creepy overweight middle-aged man who lives with his mother.

[Spoilers] The parts that disturb me: First of all, masturbation scenes are only good when the guy is hot. While still entertaining, there’s still a part of me that feels wrong for watching it. The guy himself generally is just gross. But those aren’t too bad. Now the scenes of him actually doing the procedure, that’s disturbing, especially when the part where he cuts their knees. The worst part as always for me with these films is the shit, and this time was a lot worse than the first. I don’t know what made me gag more, the sounds or the visuals. The vomit that followed was not good for my stomach either. The rape scene that followed was almost as bad. So yeah, that was a very disgusting sequence for me. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, shit is one fetish I will never be into.

2. Rogue River

I didn’t actually like this film that much, but I’m glad I watched it once and the end was good. I actually don’t know why this one bothered me. So the film is about a girl who has to take a ride with this guy she meets after her car disappears… and ends up getting tortured at his house. Now, I love torture scenes, I love gory scenes, but there was something about this one I just didn’t like.

[Spoilers] Some of the actual torture scenes got to me a bit, like when boiling water was forced down her throat. I suppose the thing about some (not all) of these scenes is that they’re relatable. The way I see it anyway, everyone’s been burned at some point, it’s not hard to imagine that but worse. But the worst scene for me was when she was forced to have sex with her brother. Now, normally I don’t have a problem with incest in fiction (do I have a problem with anything in fiction?) but the way that was done… that actually was disturbing.

1. The Divide

This is a post-apocalyptic film about a group of people trapped in a basement after nuclear explosions.  This is actually a really good film and probably the most disturbing part, as often is with this type of film, and is that this is probably what would happen if this situation occurred in real life.

[Spoilers] For me the worst part again is probably the sexual element, when one of the women voluntarily becomes the sex slave of some of the men because she says that’s what would end up happening anyway, and the abuse they then give her. I also happen to find that part very stupid, I know she lost her daughter and all, but come on. The threats the men give to the other woman also bothered me. Thinking about it now, those parts are probably worse for me because I’m female too and therefore relating more with the two females in the film. Particularly the main one because I’m not that weak.