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What's the most uncomfortable movie or TV scene you've ever seen?

597 replies

CrankyFrankyHoot · 16/10/2020 18:06

Uncomfortable can mean anything, scary, sad, creepy, gory etc...

I was just watching AHS this afternoon, the Cult season and there is a scene with a nail gun (if you've seen it you'll know!).

I am really not a squeamish person but this scene just made me go cold, I was about to fast forward it before it finished.

It wasn't even the most gruesome thing I've seen on TV/a movie before but the whole idea just made me feel really uncomfortable and like I was really horrible for watching it if that makes sense?

OP posts:
Namechanged1122 · 19/10/2020 16:40

I just watched No Child of Mine - awful! I think a lot of this stuff went on in the 80's / 90's..

KenzoBaby · 19/10/2020 19:40

I remember another one. It was a documentary about a youth prison camp in Kazhakstan. All these boys were scrubbing floors with toothbrushes and then standing in line for hours. One had a sore stomach and couldn't stand, he fell over and got beaten I think. I was way too young when I saw it (Channel 4 perhaps?) and couldn't get it out of my mind. I had bad IBS as a child and could identify with the boy being in so much pain he couldn't stand up straight. I remember going off to the atlas to find out where Kazhakstan was (age about 10 I think)

savagebaggagemaster · 19/10/2020 20:03

I've said it many a time on here: Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer.
Just no need for such a film ever to be made Sad

ThunderSkies · 19/10/2020 21:58

I don’t know what depresses me more.

How awful and downright evil human beings can be to one another or how people can recreate this evilness in graphic detail for others to sit and watch for entertainment.

charliebear78 · 19/10/2020 22:16

This thread is making me pretty uncomfortable!

IHaveBrilloHair · 20/10/2020 00:00

Why are you reading it then?Confused

FitzChivarly · 20/10/2020 00:24

@Ilovegreentomatoes

Dead man's shoes and the way the men treat the mentally disabled guy is really upsetting. The film is tough to watch but very thought provoking, great acting and scenery of the yorkshire landscape.
I was reading through to see if anyone mentioned this, it really stuck with me.
MsEllany · 20/10/2020 01:45

I'll read the half of the thread I haven't later, but I have to get this down:

The Handmaid's Tale. Specifically, the part where there's a party (?) and the children are paraded out in front of the Handmaid's but obviously go and sit with their 'parents'. It made me feel sick to my stomach. I can't watch it at all, although I have read the book several times. I had to explain through heaving tears that what we'd watched is based in fact and not fiction.

The pig episode of Black Mirror disgusted me, and while I'll watch the series again, it honestly took me five years to watch any more of them. Gross.

Nocturnal Animals was an absolute shitfest of a film, and the rape/murder scenes (can't actually remember) were such a transparent effort to be arty. It fucked me off SO much - women's trauma is not art! What do you expect when it's directed by a male fashion designer though.

I can't watch cruelty to children at all on tv anymore without sobbing. I honestly don't watch the news anymore after seeing the drowned body of Alan Kurdi, the three year old Syrian boy. I'm tearing up now thinking about it. I remember seeing it as I was browsing the news at work and it took my breath away. It still does. The real world is awful.

@Nikhedonia that gimp suit thing was seriously creepy wasn't it? The weirdest thing though, was that it had nothing at all to do with the storyline and never brought it back. My husband and I watched that whole series eagerly awaiting that gimp to come back and he never did!

MsEllany · 20/10/2020 02:06

I've just read someone mention Little Boy Blue. I didn't know this film had been made. He was shot not far away from me, I think of him often, especially as I have sons of my own now. It made me cry then and I'm crying now just thinking of it.

Dita73 · 20/10/2020 02:35

Jude. I saw it once so many years ago and I will never watch it again. I’d just had my second daughter and had severe PND when I watched it which wouldn’t have helped but the children’s murder/suicide will haunt me for the rest of my life. I remember years later seeing the DVD for sale in HMV or something and I had a panic attack. Horrific

Zippetydoodahzippetyay · 20/10/2020 03:32

The rape scene in Monster. I nearly walked out at that point.

lastditchattempt20 · 20/10/2020 03:36

Couple of posters have mentioned 'murdered by my boyfriend'. I only watched the last 20 minutes or so, alone in the house with v young first DD. Called DH crying my heart out, it was so distressing knowing that it was true- is still true for so many women- and the little girl left alone in the house at the end... Still affects me.
The Hills have eyes' also came back into my mind during PND, the scene with the rape and assault on breast feeding mother and the child being taken. Added to awful intrusive thoughts.
'Seven' doesn't bother me so much, no children involved and was younger and tougher when I saw it.
Choose not to watch anything v gritty these days, mental health doesn't need any additional unnecessary challenges in the name of entertainment!

slipperyeel · 20/10/2020 07:53

To those asking why people watch brutality for entertainment, the Greeks believed that catharsis cleansed the soul and that what is dreadful in reality can become beautiful in drama.

blessedhope · 20/10/2020 08:33

FitzChivalry- Dead Man's Shoes... anyone who's seen that will know the significance of the line, 'Or you can have the mystery prize.'...
Almost unwatchably horrific.

Shane Meadows has a thing for depicting the underside of seemingly ordinary life in familiar settings- among the works of similar British directors, Mike Leigh's Naked and Ken Loach's Ladybird, Ladybird were difficult to sit through (for different reasons- and both worth it IMO)

Nikhedonia · 20/10/2020 08:46

@MsEllany I read about it online a few years ago. They were planning to have a CSI film and he was going to be the main character, but they didn't. I can't remember why they didn't ever bring him back throughout the TV series, though. Bizarre.

LeSquigh · 20/10/2020 09:53

@Clovertoast

The rape scene in This is England. It's so real, raw and horrifying.
This. Fantastic series, all of them, but this scene is brutal. When rewatching the series I had to leave the room during this part.
Oneborneverydecade · 20/10/2020 10:07

I haven't read the full thread so apologies if someone else has mentioned it but the opening scene in Lolita is very disturbing. I think I watched it as a teen. Its just so casual and normal and then urgh she's just a child

Clarich007 · 20/10/2020 10:15

Apocalypse Now.
Our local cinema was showing it last year.
Awful film that I didn't enjoy but everyone else with us thought it was brilliant.

Weirdfan · 20/10/2020 11:06

Worryingly blessedhope Mike Leigh's Naked is one of my favourite films ever, not sure what that says about me!

SlightlyJaded · 20/10/2020 11:57

@IHaveBrilloHair

I aatched a film called Trafficked, on Prime last night. Good film and obviously this happens, but v disturbing in many parts, particularly the scene with the dead girls being pulled off the back of the truck.
I thought they were drugged up rather than dead.

Almost worse

quirkychick · 20/10/2020 14:34

Two films I stopped watching part way through, were the Magdalena Sisters, it was just so brutal and relentless. I felt I had got the point without having to watch to the end, dp and I felt we'd had enough. The second was Nocturnal Animals, I stopped before what was obviously going to be the rape and murder. I just thought the whole premise was horrible, the ex husband writing a novel about the rape and murder of his ex wife and their imaginary daughter, all done in an artful way.

I am not someone who is squeamish about gore or violence, I have happily watched GoT (I have a few issues with some of the portrayals that were better in the books), Walking Dead (though I stopped soon after the Glen/Lucille moment, that felt gratuitous even by TWD standards).

I agree that the last few episodes of Outlander Season 1 were traumatic, wonderfully acted, but very hard to watch. I love Outlander, but there is altogether far too much rape as plot momentum, and that's a female author.

ricochetricochet · 20/10/2020 14:55

The bit where Betty pokes her eye out in the shower in Betty Blue. A truly disturbing film, amazing soundtrack too

bbee12 · 20/10/2020 15:44

I haven't watched it all the way through (I've been told it gets worse) but in American History X where the main character's brother curb stomps someone, even though it wasn't that graphic it really made me feel sick

2020iscancelled · 20/10/2020 15:57

Changeling - film with Angelina Jolie, there is a scene where young boys are being kept prisoner on a remote farm by a serial killer and he goes in with a massive axe and just starts chopping them up. Watched it years ago and still makes me shudder - it’s based on true events also

And

Jungle - film with Daniel Radcliffe, they are in the jungle (funnily enough) and the guy shoots a monkey for them to cook and eat. It’s just gross and I felt sick. Again, based on true story.

Roomba · 20/10/2020 16:09

A farm safety video we were shown in school, about year 6 I think. One kid drowned in a slurry pit, another was suffocated in a grain silo, one got impaled on tractor spikes... Etc. It was very traumatic!

Was that the Ten Little Indians one, where the kids were picked off one by one by terrible farmyard accidents? Run over by a tractor, drowning in a slurry pit and so on. Traumatised me for life.

I've watched a lot of disturbing films, but the 11 minute long graphic rape scene in Irreversible is definitely the worst scene I've watched.