The 8 Most Disturbing Non-Horror Movies of All Time, Ranked
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Horror horrifies, just like thrillers thrill, and fantasy… fantasizes? No, it’s mostly just the horror and thriller genres that you don’t really need to define, because the word more or less summarizes it. But it’s not just the horror genre that can be frightening, obviously, because some of the most disturbing movies of all time can’t accurately be labeled works of horror in the traditional sense.
The following movies will hopefully demonstrate that, because none of them are true horror movies. Some of them blend a bunch of genres, admittedly, but so long as none of those genres or sub-genres are horror, the movie’s fair game to be included here. What you’ve got are an assortment of war, drama, sci-fi, and (even one or two) action movies that can rival the most horrifying pieces of cinematic horror out there, in terms of disturbing material.
8 'Taxi Driver' (1976)
Cape Fear is probably the closest Martin Scorsese has ever come to making a conventional horror movie (and even then, it’s arguably more of a psychological thriller, and the same can likely be said for Shutter Island), but as for movies of his that are disturbing and/or horrifying, you’ve got lots to choose from. Taxi Driver has the feeling of a nightmare for quite a bit of its runtime, so that’s why it’s going here… honorable mention to Casino, though, for its intensity and violence that wouldn’t look out of place in a slasher movie.
Taxi Driver is about a troubled man growing more troubled, not to mention disillusioned with society, so as he cares less about fitting in, his behavior becomes more antisocial. It was harrowing in 1976, and feels equally uncomfortable half a century later, with it also standing out for becoming more surreal and unsettling as it goes along (especially once you get to the final handful of scenes).
7 'They Shoot Horses, Don't They?' (1969)
It’s wild how depressing a movie about dancing can be, and it’s also wild how there is at least one person out there who doesn’t think “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” is a good title for this particular film. Oh, well. Good movies can technically have bad titles, in any event, even if this title is not bad. To backtrack a bit, the depressing qualities of They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? aren’t as surprising when taking into account the fact it takes place during the Great Depression.
The whole film’s about a dance marathon that various desperate people take part in, in the hope of winning $1500… which wasn’t a bad sum of money, when you adjust for inflation, but not worth the absolute hell everyone goes through here. It’s as relentlessly grim as dramas get, especially for the time at which it came out (even older than Taxi Driver and all, and in some ways, about as distressing).
6 'Harakiri' (1962)
Since it’s a samurai movie, some level of violence and intensity is pretty much to be expected. The extent to which Harakiri gets violent and intense, though, proves to be the surprising part and, like with the two previously mentioned movies, it also stands out for going as far as it did so many years ago. The story here is told in a series of flashbacks, with the protagonist/narrator being a man who wants to commit the act referred to in the title (also known as seppuku).
His story is what unravels why he wants to do that, and to say his past is a tragic one would be a huge understatement. The flashbacks in Harakiri are disturbing, and then the stuff going on in the film’s present also works to build up dread, eventually, so that’s a different sort of harrowing. It is a great film for sure, but not an easy one to enjoy the way you might a more conventional and action-packed samurai movie.
5 'Come and See' (1985)
Sometimes – and depending on the ranking – you’ll feel obligated to include something out of a certain fear that people will be mad if you don’t include it. It’s the case with Come and See, whenever the topic at hand is related to intense or terrifying movies that aren’t horror films, or “movies that might as well be horror movies” or whatever. Anything similar. You'll always see Come and See there. It has to be.
It’s got the feeling of being in a fever dream near the film’s start, which is already more than a little unsettling, and then as it becomes more intense an anti-war film, it starts to veer more toward outright nightmarish territory. Come and See is consistently feverish or nightmarish, or a bit of both at the same time, like the cinematic equivalent of remembering every single thing your subconscious conjures up between the hours of, say, midnight and 7:00 am, while you're suffering from food poisoning. It feels fitting to highlight especially grim war movies if you're talking about frightening non-horror films, and speaking of…
4 'The Deer Hunter' (1978)
…Here’s The Deer Hunter, which is about as effective an anti-war movie about the Vietnam War as Come and See was an anti-war movie about the Second World War. It’s not the only Vietnam War movie to stand out for feeling horrifying, since the likes of Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, and Hamburger Hill all feel more intense than a good many horror movies at certain points, though The Deer Hunter might well be the most devastating.
It’s an epic, and uses its three-hour runtime to look at the effects of war (admittedly focusing on American soldiers, first and foremost) before, during, and after time spent in combat. There’s dread in the first act, a great deal of tension in the second act, and then a whole heap of despair in the final act, so in just about every way a war movie can be terrifying, The Deer Hunter succeeds distressingly well.
3 'Oldboy' (2003)
With a little by way of action, and one particularly memorable fight scene, Oldboy feels almost like a martial arts film about revenge, but it’s probably more of a psychological drama/mystery/thriller movie about revenge. It is, appropriately, part of Park Chan-wook’s Vengeance trilogy, being the best-known of the three. It is worth giving a shout-out to Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, though, which might not be as impactful as Oldboy, but it is arguably more depressing.
It starts out feeling uneasy and head-spinning, becoming those things more viscerally as it goes along, all the way until the ending.
It’s also disturbing, but Oldboy beats it by a hair. As for you? Oldboy will pretty much beat you with a hammer, figuratively, or do something that feels like it, and not just in the scene that features a hammer. It starts out feeling uneasy and head-spinning, becoming those things more viscerally as it goes along, all the way until the ending (if you know, you know, even if you might not want to know/remember).
2 'A Clockwork Orange' (1971)
For the early stages of A Clockwork Orange, whether you're talking about the original novel or the movie, Alex is unambiguously villainous and without redeeming qualities. You might also find yourself a fan of Ludwig van Beethoven, but that is (hopefully!) where any similarities to Alex begin and end. He goes around a dystopian society committing heinous crimes, with his spree only brought to an end when he gets arrested and sent to jail.
While in jail, he agrees to be a guinea pig for an experimental treatment that’s intended to make violent individuals feel nausea when they have any dangerous thoughts, and this doesn’t make him sympathetic, but he does go from being a menace to society to feeling the people of that same society bite back, once he’s released. It’s just an awful and nightmarish world that has extreme criminals running wild and an extreme State going to uneasy lengths to punish those criminals. A Clockwork Orange is a nightmare, and especially cynical as a work of science fiction, but it does very much succeed in horrifying more than most sci-fi movies out there that can’t also count themselves as horror films (you're safe, Alien and The Thing… yes, you guys are probably scarier).
1 'Threads' (1984)
Threads is probably the closest a non-horror movie can get to feeling like a horror movie, with it not being considered as such feeling a little like calling Blood Meridian just a Western, and not some mash-up of the Western and horror genres. With Threads, though, it’s a war film that feels almost as much like a horror movie, and you could also label it as science fiction if you want, seeing as the war part of Threads is over very quickly, and much of it takes place in the future.
It’s about nuclear war, after all, so there’s a build-up to bombs being fired, and then everything gets destroyed as fast as you'd expect, with the rest of Threads then being a particularly realistic post-apocalyptic sort of movie that continually finds new ways to get utterly depressing and terrifying. You might think you're scared of the idea of a truly global nuclear war, but whatever extent of scared that is, you'll be more so after watching Threads. It’s pretty much a guarantee.
Threads
- Release Date
- September 23, 1984
- Runtime
- 112 Minutes
- Director
- Mick Jackson
- Writers
- Barry Hines
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