Hard to watch
Movies
Not everyone will love every movie. If you’re looking for something to challenge you, then here are movies that are overly graphic or have difficult-to-watch themes.
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Antichrist
A grieving couple retreat to their cabin in the woods, hoping to repair their broken hearts and troubled marriage. But nature takes its course and things go from bad to worse.
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Four Lions
Four incompetent British terrorists set out to train for and commit an act of terror.
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Hard Candy
A mature 14-year old girl meets a charming 32-year old photographer on the Internet. Suspecting that he is a pedophile, she goes to his home in an attempt to expose him.
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Drive
A Hollywood stunt performer who moonlights as a wheelman discovers that a contract has been put on him after a heist gone wrong.
Foreign films
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Funny Games
Two psychotic young men take a mother, father, and son hostage in their vacation cabin and force them to play sadistic "games" with one another for their own amusement.
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Oldboy
After being kidnapped and imprisoned for fifteen years, Oh Dae-Su is released, only to find that he must find his captor in five days.
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Sympathy for Lady Vengeance
After being wrongfully imprisoned for thirteen years and having her child taken away from her, a woman seeks revenge through increasingly brutal means.
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City of God
Two boys growing up in a violent neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro take different paths: one becomes a photographer, the other a drug dealer.
Both Funny Games and Oldboy have had English-language remakes. Funny Games stars Naomi Watts, Michael Pitt and Tim Roth and is a shot-by-shot remake by the same director. I still prefer the original, but the US version is very good too. The same can’t be said for the remake of Oldboy.
Directors to follow…
If you are looking for more gritty or dark movies, check out those directed by Park Chan-wook, Michael Haneke, Lars Von Trier or Nicolas Winding Refn.