Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Sometimes, streaming is good for when you just want to curl up with a feel-good movie and let your cares and concerns just melt away. These ten movies are not for that. With the recent arrival of Lars Von Trier’s provocative and unsettling Dogville to Hulu, the time has come to praise the truly disturbing offerings on streaming. You don’t have to rent these, either. They’re streaming for free with a simple Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime membership. It’s never been easier to be shaken to your core by a film!
'Dogville' (2004)
Director: Lars Von Trier
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Paul Bettany, Patricia Clarkson, Lauren Bacall, James Caan
Streaming on: Hulu
When Lars Von Trier took his new film, Dogville, to the Cannes Film Festival in 2003, he caused quite a stir. Calling it the first film in his proposed “American Trilogy” (which would go on to include Manderlay, which followed the story of Nicole Kidman’s Dogville character, only re-casting her as Bryce Dallas Howard, and the still yet-to-be-made Washington). Once people saw the film, accusations of anti-Americanism (look, 9/11 was still fresh) began to fly. Because if Dogville is supposed to be about the United States, it is not a flattering portrayal. Filmed on a bare-bones sound stage, with the “houses” and trees and buildings all depicted as chalk outlines on the floor — all the better to emphasize the fable quality of the film — Dogville tells the story of Grace (Kidman), a young woman on the run from gangsters who takes refuge in the small Colorado town of Dogville. The townspeople are initially very welcoming to her, making a great show of their decency and charity. But that decency and charity only go so far, and increasingly, the warm welcome offered to grace becomes oppressive, cruel, and eventually violent. The ways that the townspeople of Dogville — played by legendary and talented actors like Lauren Bacall, Ban Gazzara, Patricia Clarkson, Chloe Sevigny, and Stellan Skarsgard — slowly turn on Grace is disturbing, as is what Grace resorts to at the end. If Von Trier was out to provoke a reaction and force people to imagine the ways in which Dogville and America are similar, he does so with high style and impeccable performances. This is a movie that will stick to you.
'Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer' (2003)
Director: Nick Broomfield, Joan Churchill
Starring: Aileen Wournos
Streaming on: Amazon Prime, Hulu, Netflix
If you’ve seen Charlize Theron’s Oscar-winning performance in Monster, you know the story of Aileen Wournos, the rare female American serial killer. But you don’t know the whole story, up close and personal, until you have seen Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer. This film is the follow-up to Nick Broomfield’s Aileen Wournos: The Selling of a Serial Killer, which focused on the exploitation of Wournos’s infamy by those around her. This film, released the same year as Monster, goes right up to Wournos’s execution, while asking potent questions about whether she is of sound mind enough to be executed. Wournos’s story is sad, but she will fight your efforts to sympathize with her at every step. There are no easy answers here.
'Christine' (2016)
Director: Antonio Campos
Starring: Rebecca Hall, Tracy Letts, Michael C. Hall
Streaming on: Netflix
The tragic true story of news reporter Christine Chubbuck, who committed suicide on the air in 1974. Rebecca Hall gives the performance of her career, delving into Chubbuck’s frustrations, her depression, and her simmering rage at the local news business (and by extension the world) for being obsessed with — and ravenous for — human misery.
'Compliance' (2012)
Director: Craig Zobel
Starring: Dreama Walker, Ann Dowd, Bill Camp
Streaming on: Hulu
It’s an uneven film that in its weaker moments plays like a souped up “What Would You Do?” But when it’s working, Compliance is a chilling portrayal of unquestioning deference to authority, even when “authority” is so nebulous as to be practically nonexistent. Ann Dowd’s performance as a malevolently banal middle manager is terrifying in its utter plausibility.
'Full Metal Jacket' (1987)
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Starring: Matthew Modine, Vincent D’Onofrio, R. Lee Ermey
Streaming on: Netflix
Stanley Kubrick’s penultimate film (it would be 12 more years until he made Eyes Wide Shut) takes a look at the Vietnam War through the lens of utter derangement, dehumanization, and insanity. And that’s all before the soldiers get out of boot camp. R. Lee Ermey’s nightmare vision of a drill sergeant is meant to bore into your head, and by the time Private Pyle has finally been driven over the edge, Vincent D’Onofrio’s inhuman mask of violent hatred is positively haunting.
'The Neon Demon' (2016)
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Starring: Elle Fanning, Christina Hendricks, Keanu Reeves, Jena Malone, Bella Heathcote, Abbey Lee
Streaming on: Amazon Prime
The modeling world doesn’t exactly get skewered in Nicolas Winding Refn’s The Neon Demon. Instead, it gets pushed to its most horrific extremes, with waking nightmares followed by events that you wish were merely nightmares. Every crazy thing that happens in The Neon Demon builds on top of the last crazy thing that happens, until a final act that is almost too deranged to be believed.
'There's Something Wrong with Aunt Diane' (2011)
Director: Liz Garbus
Streaming on: Amazon Prime
The 2009 Taconic State Parkway car crash is one of the most terrible and tragic true stories in recent memory. Director Liz Garbus (What Happened, Miss Simone?; Killing in the Name) delved into the unanswered questions about what caused Diane Schuler to drive the wrong way on the Taconic, ultimately crashing and taking the lives of herself, her daughter, her three nieces, and three people in the car she crashed into. There is a high degree of family pain and anger coursing through this story, as well as a mystery whose possible answers seem almost too incredulous to believe. Though fascinating, this isn’t a story that’s going to leave you satisfied, just profoundly unsettled.
'The Tribe' (2015)
Director: Myroslav Slaboshpytskyi
Starring: Grigoriy Fesenko, Yana Novikova, Rosa Babiy
Streaming on: Netflix
The goings on at a Ukrainian boarding school for the deaf is the setting for one of the most disturbing movies in recent memory. You’d maybe expect a film like this to teach the grim lesson that deaf teens are no less cruel or hierarchical to each other than hearing kids. But the kids in this movie go way beyond, as the film depicts drug use, prostitution, rape, and ultimately murder (oh God, that murder). This one will leave you shaken.
'Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me' (1992)
Director: David Lynch
Starring: Sheryl Lee, Ray Wise, Dana Ashbrook, Moira Kelly, David Bowie
Streaming on: Hulu
With the new series about to wrap up its run on Showtime, what better time to dive headfirst into Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, the prequel movie to the original Twin Peaks series. This movie deals with Laura Palmer before her death, and even with everything the Twin Peaks audience knew about Laura from the investigation into mer murder, watching her go through sexual abuse, rape, and being terrorized by the malevolent spirits in Twin Peaks is a harrowing and disturbing experience.
'We Need to Talk About Kevin' (2011)
Director: Lynne Ramsay
Starring: Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, Ezra Miller
Streaming on: Netflix
By now, this film has become infamous for its depiction of an uncontrollably disturbed and by many descriptions evil child, and the inability of his mother (a never-more-intense Tilda Swinton) to control him. There is, of course, far more going on in We Need to Talk About Kevin, a film that isn’t afraid to confront elemental questions of motherhood and responsibility. But once the movie’s climax snaps into motion, with Ezra Miller (giving a phenomenal performance in his own right) taking his vengeance out on his high-school classmates and ultimately his family, there are few things more disturbing on film.
