The Most Disturbing Movies Of The Last Decade

When the history books are written, it’s a pretty safe bet that the 2010s will go down as one of the all-time great periods for cinema. That remains true even as we continue to debate the actual definition of the word. But even as strong a decade the 2010s have been for movies, they’ve been particularly good for movies designed to make viewers uneasy.

Call them horror movies, or thrillers, or skechers outlet psychological dramas with socio-sexual undertones — the movies that have brought the madness and the menace over the past decade have done so with arguably unparalleled insight and artistry. As such, it hardly seems fair to even attempt to assemble a single list of the decade’s best and bleakest, but that’s just what we’ve done here. From wildly unconventional sci-fi creepers to twisted tales of demonic possession, we’ve got a little something to unnerve even the savviest of shock-adoring cineastes. These are the most disturbing movies of the past decade.

If you’ve entered the earth-shattering rabbit hole that is Jonathan Glazer’s music video oeuvre, you already know the director has a particular penchant for pushing boundaries with unsettling imagery and ominous tones. One might even say Glazer revels in the bewildering as few directors dare. It’s only natural, then, that he’d continue weaving challenging images and disturbing themes into his feature films.

Few would argue that Glazer hadn’t already tested some serious boundaries with 2000’s searing crime drama Sexy Beast and 2004’s psychosexual nike outlet mystery Birth, but neither of those films could even begin to prepare us for how far Glazer would push things with 2013’s Under the Skin.

It’s a full-on assault on the senses from its opening moments to its last. It features a revelatory performance from Scarlett Johansson that’s about as far from the MCU as you can get. And that there’s a scene about halfway through this movie that’s so relentlessly unnerving you’ll struggle not to turn it off. Keep watching, though, because even if Under the Skin often feels like a movie you survive more than watch, crossing the finish line on this extraterrestrial odyssey is also one of the most rewarding cinematic experiences you’d ever hope to endure.

Argentinian filmmaker Gaspar Noé has made quite a reputation for himself over the years. More than just about any other director with a film on this list, Noé has made it his personal quest to shock and provoke. He broke minds and pushed viewers to the limit with the hyper-violent, emotionally punishing reverse narrative of 2002’s Irreversible, but it seems he had a different sort of head trip in mind for his third offering, 2009’s hallucinatory pseudo-afterlife drama Enter the Void.

Noé opens the action with a drug-dealing French expat with a penchant for wild hallucinogens meeting his end in a Tokyo bar. Upon death, his soul is cast free of his body and meanders through the film with an unknown goal in mind. Noé captures said soul’s every meandering, post-life moment in full-on POV mode, his camera floating in and out of moments, memories, and molecules like an omnipotent specter. And yes, that boldly stylistic approach is as breathtakingly brilliant and immersive as it is doggedly disconcerting, with Noé taking his camera/character places one might wish they’d never been. The result is a film that’s as oddly calming and thought-provoking as it is vividly adversarial — not to mention as mind-bogglingly original as any film produced in the past decade.

According to writer-director Ari Aster, his brutalist 2018 shocker Hereditary is really just a little family drama at its core. But that’s sort of like calling Jaws a charming tale of fish out of water. So yes, while we really cannot argue that Hereditary isn’t a family drama, we also want to be crystal clear that Hereditary is not just a family drama.

Still, true to Aster’s statement, Hereditary keen shoes initially presents itself as an atypical sort of indie drama about a family in grief. As the film unfolds, a deep, dark past begins to rise to the surface, and Hereditary spirals giddily into a pulse-pounding supernatural nightmare simply you have to see to believe. Just be warned that you’ll never be able to unsee Hereditary.

In case you haven’t experienced it for yourself, we’ll simply say you’ll know the precise moment when Aster flips the proverbial switch from family drama to full-blown family tragedy. You’ll know because the moment it happens is easily one of the most shocking in the history of cinema. Aster is just getting warmed up in that moment, and Hereditary is about to get darker and heavier in ways you simply cannot fathom. It’s a brutal, exhausting affair, but if you manage to stick with Hereditary, you’ll bear witness to not just one of the great horror movies of the decade, but of all time.

With Ari Aster’s Hereditary immediately raising the bar for genre filmmakers young and old, it seemed unlikely that anyone would top the film in terms of unadulterated, head-rolling shock value for the foreseeable future. Seems the only person capable of even coming close was Aster himself. While Midsommar may not quite match Hereditary in terms of shocks and scares, it may well be the better film in terms of soul-crushing emotional impact and mercilessly ominous energy.

Of course, to hear Aster tell it, Midsommar is a relatively straightforward “breakup movie.” Believe us when we say asics shoes that Midsommar is a “breakup movie” in the same way that Hereditary is a “family drama.” Which means that it’s not really a breakup movie at all.

The relationship in question belongs to Dani (Florence Pugh) and Christian (Jack Reynor), and if ever there was a couple in need of a breakup, it’s them. But nothing is ever that easy in the worlds of Ari Aster, and from the torturous opening moments of Midsommar, the director is out to turn the screws of the pair’s doomed relationship in increasingly twisted ways. By the time the couple and their pals get to the titular Swedish festival, fates are effectively sealed — though nothing can even remotely prepare you for the gory, sun-drenched mayhem Aster has in store for the rest of the film.