10 Movies I Wish I Could Unsee, Ranked

You might've seen a movie that, regardless of how good or bad it was, you felt some regret about witnessing once it was over. Unpleasant things stick in the mind, after all, because the brain is malicious and cruel, or it’s survival instinct/an evolutionary defense mechanism kicking in or something, or all of the above. Anyway, it happens for movies.

Your mileage may vary, but it could well happen with these movies. They are subjective, and what one wishes to unsee is always going to differ from person to person, but each of these movies contains at least one stomach-churning and regrettably unforgettable moment. Not all of those things will be laid out in detail, and also, some movies here are good, and some are not so good. Regret over seeing something you'll remember until the day you die can come about regardless of a movie’s quality.

'Begotten' (1989)

Begotten wants to shock and unsettle throughout, and on that front, it’s very successful. It also probably wants to confound anyone who watches it, and yeah, it gets the job done there as well, because it’s very much a hard-to-decipher film. This extends to the visuals, which are grainy, dark, and sometimes obscure, and also to the film’s storytelling style, since it all plays out without dialogue.

It's all something of a religious allegory, but doesn’t lay it on as thick as something like 2017’s Mother. It throws you in the deep end, subjects you to some horrific and confusing imagery, and then sends you on your way. Begotten is certainly an arthouse kind of film, but one of the more unpleasant and abrasive out there, being something of an endurance test to get through, even though it’s ultimately less than 75 minutes long.

'Dogtooth' (2009)

Well, anyone who’s seen Dogtooth will know why it’s here. And if you haven’t seen Dogtooth, then you might be in the dark about it, and maybe you're lucky as a result. It’s one that shows you a good many unpleasant sights, but then psychologically, it’s also tremendously unnerving and troubling, and there’s a whole twisted history you don’t really see, but might well find yourself having to think about.

Look, it’s about a pair of parents who keep their children completely separate from the rest of the world, essentially confining them to a single property and dealing with them in… uh… non-traditional ways, and raising them with some very alarming values. Calling Dogtooth confronting is a big old understatement, and you haven’t seen it all until you’ve seen this. But you also might be better off not ever seeing this. Viewer discretion is very, very, very strongly advised.

'Bone Tomahawk' (2015)

As a Western, Bone Tomahawk is about as violent as they get, and as a horror movie, it’s still up there among the most brutal of the past decade or two, at least among relatively mainstream releases. And it can definitely be categorized both ways, since Bone Tomahawk starts as a Western about a rescue party trying to locate some missing townspeople, and then they discover the captors have basically come out of a horror movie.

And once they do cross paths, then Bone Tomahawk, in turn, starts leaning into horror more. It was a brutal Western before that point, but it’s really uncompromising when the horror elements kick in. There’s also one notorious death scene in this that’s the main reason for Bone Tomahawk being included in this ranking. It’s shown plainly and the effects used are probably too believable, being the kind of thing you'll wish you could erase from your mind. The rest of the movie, though? Savage, but not quite as hard to revisit internally.

'High-Rise' (2015)

Some sicko movies are great, but then some sicko movies get things wrong, and High-Rise is one of them. It’s possible to see what it’s going for, as a piece of satirical filmmaking about certain groups of powerful people enacting violence upon those they consider beneath them, but something in the execution feels off. You can agree with what the film’s trying to say, but feel disappointed with the way it goes about saying it.

It's complicated. High-Rise would be the kind of thing where you'd say, “Hey, watch it and make up your own mind about it,” but it’s better off not watched, because it’s an assault on the senses, and all the misery, debauchery, taboo subject matter, and graphic images get so repetitive after a while. There are good ideas here, and it’s possible to imagine a version of High-Rise that’s good, but the one that exists at the moment – and was released 10 years ago now – is mostly just disappointing.

'Taxidermia' (2006)

There are several stories told in one, throughout the whole of Taxidermia, and all are confronting and shocking in their own ways. It’s about men from three different generations of the same family, with each of them living some kind of unusual life. One is a notorious pervert, the other works as an embalmer, and then the third takes part in competitive speed eating.

Funnily enough, for a movie with lots of food in it, Taxidermia is one of the last films you should watch while eating. It goes to various extremes and is frequently nauseating, but there’s some purpose to its generally shocking content, and it is well-made and certainly unique. There are a few images here that most people could likely do without ever seeing, but if you know when to look away, the rest of the movie is quite engaging or, at the very least, interesting.

'Where the Dead Go to Die' (2012)

Probably the most obscure movie here, Where the Dead Go to Dieis an absolute nightmare, and talking about it feels like passing on a curse to more potential people. So, the talking about it will stay vague, because it might be obscene to outline some of the stuff that happens here, and also, you could tell someone what this is really about and it wouldn’t sound real; wouldn’t sound like a movie someone actually made.

That someone goes by Jimmy ScreamerClauz, and he pulled no punches with this animated movie. It’s very trippy, and broken up into segments, having an oppressively unpleasant atmosphere and some very taboo subject matter, not to mention constant graphic violence featured throughout. Where the Dead Go to Die could be called art, of the challenging variety, but it’s probably too much of a challenge or endurance test for most, since it’s hard to imagine many people coming away from this one not feeling disturbed in one way or another. Or all the ways.

'The Green Inferno' (2013)

With The Green Inferno, Eli Roth seemed keen to make the most blood-drenched and sickening cannibal movie ever made, and on that front, maybe he almost succeeded? There’s one more that'll be mentioned in a bit that he wasn’t able to top (and that one does, despite its controversial elements, have certain things to offer), but in doing so, something kind of artless, dreary, and overly edgy was created.

It succeeds in being sickening, but anything else it has to say is either laid on too thick (High-Rise-style) or disappears beneath the noise, and the blood, and the guts, and the dismembered body parts. You might find yourself regretting watching The Green Inferno because it’s disturbing in bursts, and also because it’s not very good at being anything other than disturbing, so that’s at least two reasons to give it a miss and let it remain a mostly forgotten horror film.

'Sweet Movie' (1974)

Oh no, Sweet Movie. Uh… um… this one might be harder to describe than Dogtooth and Where the Dead Go to Die. It’s technically a comedy, but also a repetitive and not particularly funny one, and most of the humor is of the shock value variety. And it follows two different women who live different but comparably chaotic lives, and they're intended to represent different cultures/sets of values.

Most of the shocking content here is of the sexually explicit variety, but it’s bizarre and boundary-pushing sexual behavior, for the most part. And Sweet Movie also finds other ways to be tasteless, including incorporating some graphic images from the Second World War, seemingly just to be shocking and controversial. Whatever Sweet Movie wants to say, it can go away and try saying it to someone else. It’s just too much.

'Midori' (1992)

The best thing about Midori is that it doesn’t insist you feel miserable for too long, since it clocks in at under an hour. Some definitions of the term “feature film” say it’s anything above three-quarters of an hour long, so Midori does just qualify there. And so it’s being included here, maybe as something of a PSA to tell anyone curious about the film that they should stay away from it.

There have been plenty of great animated movies released in the past few decades, and one’s better off just watching anything else… hell, even Where the Dead Go to Die is preferable to this. Midori goes to some obscene and dark places, and nothing is off limits, particularly regarding sexual abuse and animal cruelty. You could find some value in a film trying to explore things most movies don’t touch, but also, there’s an argument to be made that some things just don’t need to be explored the way they're tackled here.

'Cannibal Holocaust' (1980)

There’s more to Cannibal Holocaust than there is The Green Inferno, though you might well feel more regret about watching the former than the latter. This movie has a reputation for being one of the most violent of all time, and perhaps even the most violent of its time, and there are still moments here that are difficult to look at all these decades later, especially the stuff that wasn’t staged (lots of the animal violence here, for instance, was notoriously done for real).

And there’s also a lot that’s been said about the staged violence, against human characters, and how real it looks. It’s non-stop as far as bloodbaths go, but Cannibal Holocaust is also forward-thinking in its presentation, and occasionally thought-provoking in the things it wants to critique and/or satirize. Whether that’s enough to make the movie actually worth tackling, even if you're someone with a strong stomach… well, it’s up to you. But don’t say you weren’t warned.