to ask what are the most horrific/traumatising/terrifying films you have seen?

[WillyW8nker]

Doesn't have to be horror, can be psychological terror etc. Films that stayed with you and made you think.

Mine are Irreversible, the Poughkeepsie Tapes and Spoorloos (the original Dutch version of The Vanishing).

echleon, I find gore fests not real really, I find stuff that is or can be real so much more scary.

Oh yes and The Elephant man. John Hurt was amazing in it but I cried for days.

Cry Freedom very moving.. upsetting.. more so as tells a true story..but I feel everyone should watch it..

Elephant Man is one of my all time favourites. As a teen when I first saw it I just watched it over and over. Cruel but also beautiful.. but I'm a big DL fan.. so beautifully filmed and sad.

I have been petrified of clowns for 25 years because of bloody Stephen King. They're remaking IT for some ungodly reason. It's the only film that truly terrifies me.

Single While Female is pretty creepy too.

Humid

The original TCSM isn't so much a gore fest (the remake is) but it's very psychologically terrifying and disturbing.

I never got over watching Se7en especially the rape (of prostitute to death) scene.. a great film in many ways but could never bring myself to watch it again. Kevin Spacey truly evil in it.. amazing actor.. as he is in Usual Suspects too..

The Human Centipede, how that and it's further sequels.

Certain scenes of Final Destination 3!

The Road should be certificate 45

'Made the mistake of googling during a night feed and found out that Steven had died - cue two hours of sobbing until the next feed'

Steven's brother Carey became a serial killer and is in prison for the horrific rapes and murders of 2 teenage girls and 2 women.

Watership Down and The Babadook.

Last Exit To Brooklyn

Oh, and High Rise. But only because of the brutal pre-rape scene where a man drags a woman through her apartment by her heel into a bedroom while she is desperately trying to hang on to door frames, the sofa, the table. I cannot handle that sort of thing.

Hostel

Thanks alltoo, I think I'll give it a miss - I find harrowing scenes so much harder since I had kids ...

Cry Freedom is a legend in our house - my parents took me and my sister (we were both young teenagers) to see it one CHRISTMAS EVE!! I was absolutely gripped, amazing film, walked out of the cinema at the end and burst into floods of tears. But I'm so glad I saw it nonetheless.

The War Zone, it's got a horrendous rape scene that haunted me for ages.

Jude. I saw it when I was 14 and it left me traumatised.

Black Swan

the original of The Vanishing is amazingly chilling! Brilliant film but has stuck with me permanently! Beyond chilling. The re make was dire - a complete joke.
The menacing torture scene in True Romance which is why I won't watch Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill etc as am sure it was tame compared to those

The Road? I've got it right here, it's next to watch. am rather fragile and down right now (depression, anxiety) so should I give it a wide berth?

Exorcist
The Blair Witch Project
Chucky

Scum. I was exposed to it when I was a bit too young and the greenhouse scene has haunted me ever since. To this day I cannot watch anything even barely referencing anal rape and hate jokes about it. I won't watch anything that involves it at all. No one warned me about The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo DP had to switch it off because I was shaking and crying.

Cathy Come Home for me too, but for personal reasons. I was taken in to permanent care as a baby and would watch the end scene on the train station platform thinking that's how hard it must have been for my mum. (It wasn't, she was just a cow!)

I'm a bit of a wuss but absolutely no torture porn. Especially after Wolf Creek.

Also, growing up in the 80's, I'd get dropped off at my Grandparents most Saturdays with my cousins. One of my cousins, well, my aunt and uncle let him watch age inappropriate movies. So I'm 8 and my Grandad puts on Aliens!!! Still cannot watch anything in that franchise!!!

Oh and Critters. Quite funny to watch now but when I was 8? No! I used to get scared about red eyes in the darkness and sitting on the sofa

Threads for me, too. Awful. I first saw it as an impressionable teenager already terrified by the spectre of nuclear war, and for the next week or so I kept crying at the sight of flowers, grass, trees...anything, really, convinced it was all going to be a radioactive wasteland very soon. I watched it again recently thinking it must look dated by now and therefore have less of an impact, but it was worse, if anything.

Last King of Scotland
Salvador
Se7en
Threads

Lilya-4-ever, for obvious reasons

Resident Evil, i first watched this when i was about 9 because my parents went to sleep and i turned on my bedroom TV again. still traumatised.

As If I Am Not There, which is a relatively short film based on war rape in a Bosnian War Camp. Very very powerful.