My top 5 most disturbing movies of all time.

I recently saw a list, online, of someone's top ten most disturbing films. Albeit I hadn't seen most of them but it made me want to check them out. So I decided to think up a list of movies that were the most disturbing to me. Sometimes a movie doesnt neccessarily have to be a horror in order to disturb you. I think it has more to do with how it upsets your mind or rather how it upsets how you view the natural balance of things to be...

1. The Unseeable(2006):
I watched this 2006 Thai horror at the Durban Film Festival and eventhough I was in a cinema full to capacity, I felt like running out. It's one of those films that builds up fear gradually but when you reach the climax you're too scared to contain yourself! At this point to Asian horror craze was just starting of. I think the reason why people were so transfixed by this film as well as other films that came out of the japanese, thai and korean film insustry is because of a cultural difference between the East and West that allows for spirits and unknown entities to be ever present, they need not be explained away nor do they exclusively haunt old, dilapidated mansions. Rather they attach themselves to people, they can exist in the newest of apartments, they utilise the newest of technologies. In the case of The Unseeable, a ghost could really be anyone and often the most unlikely character.

2. The Asian horror craze brings me to my next movie on the list...The Ring(2002)
I don't mean the Japanese version but rather the 2002, English Gore Verbinski version.
I actually have watched the Japanese Hideo Nakata version and read the origin novels by Koji Suzuki. While the novels did freak me out a little, the movie that really scared me was the english version. I think its down to the talent of the director that he created such a moody and surreal landscape in which to set this film.  A lot of remakes of asian horrors came after this, like The Grudge and Shutter, in my opinion they failed by trying to make the english version a doppelganger of the asian one. In the japanese version of the film the protaganist already transforms from a crusty male journalist, to a young single mother. the English version retains that as well as changing the setting from Japan to Seattle, USA. As well as these changes there are also changes in terms of the mythology around the haunting of the videotape. I like the aspect of investigation in the english version and quite honestly the ghost is just scarier.

3. The Human Centipede (2010):
There was a lot of hype around this movie and when I finally watched it many things disappointed me. The quality of the acting was substandard, the dialogue was so badly written I think you could hear better dialogue in a soft porn movie. And the actual story is very two dimensional and extremely implausible. However when you finally get to the scene where the three tourists are finally attached and they wake up as almost, but not quite one entity, you are so repulsed and so...disturbed that its difficult to continue watching. This movie is not going to win any awards for being a movie but the very idea it poses is enough to make your skin crawl.

4. The Elephant Man(1980):
Ok, this is not a horror movie and its actually very tragic, and thought-provoking. But let me give a little bit of context as to the first time I watched this movie. I was only 10 years old and my dad thought it would be a good idea for me to watch this classic film. He warned me not to play the rented VHS before he got home but I didnt listen. Therefore my first contact with the screen verson f John Merrick was as a monstrous, and alien being that filled my 10 year old self with dread and revulsion. However maybe that was the type of insight I needed, imagine how children during the 19th century would have reacted to the real-life figure on which the film is based, Joseph Merrick.
I also think that as a child you're so conditioned to disney happy-endings and toned down emotions that when you see something truly sad and unfair, completely unlike what you thought the reality of life was then you will be disturbed.

5. The Hills Have Eyes (2006):
I watched this for the first time at a very isolated chalet in the Limpopo province, conincidentally there was a hill, there was also very bad TV reception, so we ended up watching this on a laptop. The whole mutant community thing freaked me out but more than that the rape, the breast-feeding scene, the canibalism! this was just an all round terrifying and disturbing film. I think Alexander Aja is a really talented director, because eventhough this is a remake its proabably become more famous than the original Wes Craven film. I also watched Piranha 3D recently and was really impressed by Aja's ability to eccentuate B-grade to a level of being so bad that it becomes good.