7 Great Movies You’ll Never Want to Watch Again

Some movies are so good yet so disturbing that they can’t be watched more than once. Audiences have been shaken to the core while viewing renowned classics such as Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi masterpiece A Clockwork Orange, Steven Spielberg’s historical drama Schindler’s List, and David Fincher’s frightening thriller Se7en. Not all movies are meant to bring people joy, and those that seek to scare, move, or remind viewers about a dark time in history are the most challenging to take in. Typically, films that revolve around heavy subject material don’t make for an easy watch. Fortunately, there are plenty of grim and unsettling stories that also deserve tons of praise for their quality.

The following seven movies are all well worth watching. However, audiences should not expect to press play on them ever again.

7) Room

Room is an agonizing story about Joy (Brie Larson) and her son Jack (Jacob Tremblay), who try to adjust to normal life after being held hostage in a tiny shed for seven years. It’s simply impossible to imagine living and raising a child under such horrid circumstances. Room sugarcoats nothing about the pair’s recovery from such extreme trauma and abuse following their nerve-racking escape from captivity. The aftermath proves to be a massive struggle for Joy, whose experience takes a toll on her mental health, and Jack, who was born in the shed and understands little of the real world. Audiences should watch Room for Brie Larson’s Oscar-winning lead performance and for the film’s deep exploration of its characters. Room deals with the topics of depression, suicide, and rape, and its heavily emotional narrative is hard to view more than once.

6) Requiem for a Dream

Requiem for a Dream paints an unbelievably bleak, yet important, portrait of drug addiction from the perspectives of four characters. All of their arcs are horrible to witness, particularly that of Sara Goldfarb (Ellen Burstyn), whose tragic decline fills much of Requiem for a Dream‘s run time. A near-constant depiction of humans’ physical and mental suffering, Darren Aronofsky’s film is raw and intense from start to finish, which explains its NC-17 rating. Despite its countless distressing scenes, Requiem for a Dream is a must-watch. The film’s character-driven approach deftly captures how drugs can derail people’s lives under various circumstances. Most people who watch Requiem for a Dream won’t regret it. However, not many will be able to handle its disturbing content a second time.

5) The Long Walk 

The Long Walk, based on Stephen King’s novel of the same name, ranks among the most brutal and somber movies in recent memory. In a dystopian 1970s United States, 50 teenage boys participate in a walking competition for an enormous cash prize. The penalty for failure to maintain their pace is instant death, and almost everyone perishes in a gruesome way. The Long Walk takes time to flesh out its characters’ personalities and backstories, making their violent executions all the more devastating. Nearly everything that happens in The Long Walk is appalling. Even so, the growing friendship between Ray (Cooper Hoffman), Pete (David Jonsson), Art (Tut Nyuot), Hank (Ben Wang), and others injects a heartwarming element of humanity into the film. Viewers will be sick to their stomachs many times while watching The Long Walk, but the journey is worth the pain.

4) Killers of the Flower Moon

Killers of the Flower Moon is frequently hard to stomach as it chronicles the murders of numerous Osage Nation members in 1920s Oklahoma. The Martin Scorsese film centers on Ernest Burkhardt (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his heinous uncle William Hale’s (Robert De Niro) involvement in the killings, while Ernest’s wife Molly Burkhardt (Lily Gladstone) finds herself and her loved ones in danger of becoming the next victims. Ernest’s spinelessness, Hale’s sinister manipulation, and the violent murders of Osage members are all extremely unsettling. Although over three hours long, Killers of the Flower Moon serves as a captivating narrative about the history of the United States’ inherent greed and racism. Bolstered by top-notch acting performances and cinematography, the movie flawlessly balances style and substance. Everyone should watch Killers of the Flowermoon, though few will find it easy to revisit its sobering tale.

3) The Zone of Interest

The Zone of Interest has to be one of the most disturbing movies that doesn’t horrify audiences through visuals. Following Nazi commandant Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) and his family, who reside next to the Auschwitz concentration camp, the film never depicts the mass starvation and extermination of the prisoners. Instead, The Zone of Interest relies on peripheral sounds to convey the atrocities happening right next to the uncaring family’s home. It’s extraordinarily chilling to watch Höss, his wife, and their children comfortably go about their daily activities while screams, gunshots, and the hum of the gas chambers can be heard in the background. The Zone of Interest reaches a new level of unnerving when it comes to movies about the Holocaust. Accordingly, the movie triumphs as a highly effective portrayal of people’s complicity in evil, though it’s not the kind of picture most viewers will want to see again.

2) 12 Years a Slave 

12 Years a Slave fully deserves its Best Picture Academy Award, but its brilliance coexists with some severe brutality that’s truly hard to digest. That’s to be expected in a movie about Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a Black American enslaved for 12 years after being abducted from the free North in 1841. The story, based on Northup’s own memoir, is heartbreaking at every turn. Northup and the other enslaved individuals endure all kinds of horrific treatment, from beatings to rape, from the white plantation owners. These scenes are some of the most gutwrenching depictions of American slavery ever seen in a film. Thus, it’s hard to believe anyone would be able to experience 12 Years a Slave two or more times. Director Steve McQueen delivers a masterful piece of storytelling that puts the United States’ greatest evil on full display. Even though it’s sickening to witness, 12 Years a Slave‘s narrative is important for everyone to watch once.

1) Midsommar

Many horror movies are difficult to sit through more than once, but Midsommar is exceptionally discomforting. The film begins with a spine-chilling murder-suicide scene involving carbon monoxide poisoning and gets even more revolting from there. A grieving Dani (Florence Pugh), her boyfriend, and some friends later find themselves embroiled in a nightmarish cult while visiting the Swedish countryside. Almost every moment of Midsommar is excruciating to watch, as one unnerving scene after another builds up to some astonishing and disturbing twists near the end. Gruesome deaths and other dreadful visuals make Midsommar an incredibly uncomfortable viewing experience. Still, the movie is well worth watching for its multitude of scares and Pugh’s superb performance.

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5 Horror Movies That Are So Scary, You Can Only Watch Them Once