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Well, well, well. Look who just watched Saltburn on Prime Video and now they think they’re a big shot.
It’s a fair feeling to have. The 2023 psychological thriller is a real piece of work, and getting all the way through it probably makes you feel, if not unflappable, then super difficult to flap. Well we’ve got news for you, friend: You’ll flap. You’ll flap good and hard once you watch one of these movies that make Saltburn seem like Norman Rockwell’s home movies.
The Poughkeepsie Tapes
There’s something about found footage that peels back an extra layer of separation between the viewer and the film. The Poughkeepsie Tapes takes the phenomenon even further than most examples of the genre, putting the audience behind the eyes of a monster. Watching this movie is the most uncomfortable you’ll feel on your couch this year, assuming that you don’t fracture your coccyx over the summer.
Funny Games
If The Poughkeepsie Tapes and August Underground bump up against the fourth wall, Funny Games – either the German-language original from 1997 or the American shot-for-shot remake from 10 years later – draws a little picture of you on it, then writes your name under it, then makes fun of the face that you’re making. If every other horror movie from the last 100 years was right, and man was the real monster all along, then Funny Games gets a little more specific and says that you, Steven, were the real real monster.
Goodnight Mommy
Even people who love kids have to admit that they are, from time to time, creepy and bad. The same goes for moms. For more on the potential creepiness of kids and moms, check out 2022’s Goodnight Mommy, a film that takes Naomi Watts’ capacity for screaming and really makes you question whether she’s using it appropriately. Double down by watching the even better original.
Hereditary
There are nearly 200,000 frames of footage in Hereditary, and most of them serve as their own individual explanations for why it’s considered one of the least adorable viewing experiences ever to get a wide release. Rather than go through each of them, we’ll just say this: You know that nauseous feeling you get when you think about sticking your head out of the car window, knowing that there’ll probably be something at face level that’ll spring up too quickly for you to notice and whip your gourd clean off? Anyway. Enjoy Hereditary.
Antichrist
No list of disturbing movies would be complete without a Lars von Trier entry, and the perennial favorite tends to be Antichrist, the film that he wrote while hospitalized with depression. It’s pretty much as good a way as you’re likely to find to start associating Willem Dafoe’s carnal lovemaking with the defenestration of a toddler.
Follow That Bird
Look, man. Not everything is disturbing to everyone. There’s a whole demographic out there made up of people who are too young to understand why it was weird that Oliver from Saltburn wanted to drink that bathwater so badly, or what a Sotheby’s auction is.
Maybe that’s you. Maybe you’re between the ages of four and six, you just watched Saltburn with a group of adults who either misunderstood the premise, or thought you were more worldly than you actually are, and you want to watch a movie and feel the way that the grown ups did when they watched Barry Keoghan do stuff. If so, congratulations on finding this article, and on your above-average ability to sound out the name “Keoghan” at your age.
Check out Follow That Bird. It’s about a pair of real knuckleheads kidnapping Big Bird and forcing him to perform songs for them. Big Bird gets so sad from missing his friends, his feathers turn blue. There’s a chance that watching that happen will mess you up permanently, causing flashbacks to pop up in your head at strange times in the future, like when you’re writing a listicle about disturbing movies in your 30s. For a double feature, watch the scene from The Brave Little Toaster where everybody thinks they’re about to die. Sure, you’ll spend most of your teenage years listening to The Smiths, but at least you’ll never have to wonder why.