Best Disturbed Movies
Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of disturbed cinema — measured across 1,975 indexed frames from 27 films, against a 404,689-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.
Disturbed films over-index on sunglasses, desk lamp and skin — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.
- 1
Dressed to Kill (1980)
Brian De PalmaDP Ralf D. BodeIMDb 7.0TMDB 7.0See in full on FrameThrower →
While taking a shower, Kate Miller, a middle-aged, sexually frustrated New York City housewife, has a rape fantasy while her husband stands at the sink shaving. Later that day, after complaining to her psychiatrist Dr. Robert Elliott about her husband's pathetic performance in bed, she meets a strange man at a museum and returns to his apartment where they continue an adulterous encounter that began in the taxicab. Before she leaves his apartment, she finds papers which certify that the man has a venereal disease. Panicked, Kate rushes into the elevator, but has to return to his apartment when she realizes she's forgotten her wedding ring. When the elevator doors open, she's brutally slashed to death by a tall blonde woman wearing dark sunglasses. Liz Blake, a high-class call girl, is the only witness to the murder and she becomes the prime suspect and the murderer's next target. Liz is rescued from being killed by Kate's son Peter, who enlists the help of Liz to catch his mother's killer as Detective Marino, who's in charge of the case, is uncooperative in the investigation.
- 2
Memento (2000)
Christopher NolanDP Wally PfisterIMDb 8.4TMDB 8.2See in full on FrameThrower →
Leonard Shelby is tracking down the man who raped and murdered his wife. The difficulty of locating his wife's killer, however, is compounded by the fact that he suffers from a rare, untreatable form of short-term memory loss. Although he can recall details of life before his accident, Leonard cannot remember what happened fifteen minutes ago, where he's going, or why.
- 3
The Fly (1986)
David CronenbergDP Mark IrwinIMDb 7.6TMDB 7.4See in full on FrameThrower →
An eccentric scientist changes the world with his teleportation technology: when his experiment seems to be going well, Dr. Seth Brundle tests his machine on himself and he gets fused with the worst kind of pest on Planet Earth; The Fly. What is the price of a man playing God? Only Seth knows.
- 4
Brazil (1985)
Terry GilliamDP Roger PrattIMDb 7.8TMDB 7.7See in full on FrameThrower →
Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) is a harried technocrat in a futuristic society that is needlessly convoluted and inefficient. He dreams of a life where he can fly away from technology and overpowering bureaucracy, and spend eternity with the woman of his dreams. While trying to rectify the wrongful arrest of one Harry Buttle (Brian Miller), Lowry meets the woman he is always chasing in his dreams, Jill Layton (Kim Greist). Meanwhile, the bureaucracy has fingered him responsible for a rash of terrorist bombings, and Sam and Jill's lives are put in danger.
- 5
We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011)
Lynne RamsayDP Seamus McGarveyIMDb 7.4TMDB 7.5See in full on FrameThrower →
Eva's a mother trying to piece together her life following an incident caused by her odd child, Kevin. Once a successful writer, she's forced to take whatever comes her way, in spite of the increasingly bizarre and dangerous things Kevin says, or does.
- 6
Swallow (2020)
Carlo Mirabella-DavisDP Katelin ArizmendiIMDb 6.5TMDB 6.6See in full on FrameThrower →
Against the backdrop of insufferable domestic ennui, the soft-spoken former saleswoman and newlywed housewife, Hunter, is struggling to stretch the bars of her gilded cage, a lavish and immaculate modernist villa in New York, even though she seems to have it all. But, more and more, as sad Hunter tries, unsuccessfully, to meet her controlling family's expectations, compliance turns into submission, obedience transforms into obsession, and pica, a compulsive eating disorder, starts to take over. Now, swallowing non-nutritive objects and engaging in increasingly impossible tasks becomes Hunter's dangerous newfound addiction, and there's no telling how far she'll go to maintain a false and fleeting sense of power. Who can save Hunter from herself?
- 7
Hannibal (2001)
Ridley ScottDP John MathiesonIMDb 6.8TMDB 6.8See in full on FrameThrower →
The final chapter of the Dr. Hannibal Lecter quadrilogy, the murdering cannibal. He is presently in Italy, and works as a curator at a museum. Clarice Starling (Julianne Moore), the F.B.I. Agent who he aided to apprehend a serial killer, was placed in charge of an operation, but when one of her men botches it, she's called to the mat by the Bureau. One high ranking official, Paul Krendler (Ray Liotta) has it in for her. But she gets a reprieve because Mason Verger (Gary Oldman), one of Lecter's victims who is looking to get back at Lecter for what Lecter did to him, wants to use Starling to lure him out. When Lecter sends her a note, she learns that he's in Italy, so she asks the Police to keep an eye out for him. But a corrupt Policeman, who wants to get the reward that Verger placed on him, tells Verger where he is, but they fail to get him. Later, Verger decides to frame Starling, which makes Lecter return to the U.S., and the race to get Lecter begins.
- 8
The Matrix (1999)
Lana Wachowski, Lilly WachowskiDP Bill PopeIMDb 8.7TMDB 8.2See in full on FrameThrower →
Thomas A. Anderson is a man living two lives. By day he is an average computer programmer and by night a hacker known as Neo. Neo has always questioned his reality, but the truth is far beyond his imagination. Neo finds himself targeted by the police when he is contacted by Morpheus, a legendary computer hacker branded a terrorist by the government. As a rebel against the machines, Neo must confront the agents: super-powerful computer programs devoted to stopping Neo and the entire human rebellion.
- 9
Army of Darkness (1992)
Sam RaimiDP Bill PopeIMDb 7.4TMDB 7.3See in full on FrameThrower →
Ash is transported with his car to 1,300 A.D., where he is captured by Lord Arthur and turned slave with Duke Henry the Red and a couple of his men. When Ash is thrown into a pit, he defeats two monsters and wins respect of Arthur's army and vassals. The Wiseman points Ash as The Chosen One that will retrieve the Necronomicon but Ash is only interested in returning home. When he learns that the only way to return to his time is using the Necronomicon, Ash decides to travel to the unholy land of the Deadites. The Wiseman advises that he must say the words "Klaatu Barada Nikto" to safely get the evil book. However, Ash forgets the last word and an army of the dead resurrects to attack Arthur fortress and recover the Necronomicon. The battle between the living and the dead is about to start and the support of Henry the Red is the only way to help Ash and Arthur to defeat the army of darkness.
- 10
127 Hours (2010)
Danny BoyleDP Enrique ChediakIMDb 7.5TMDB 7.1See in full on FrameThrower →
127 Hours is the true story of mountain climber Aron Ralston's remarkable adventure to save himself after a fallen boulder crashes on his arm and traps him in an isolated canyon in Utah. Over the next five days Ralston examines his life and survives the elements to finally discover he has the courage and the wherewithal to extricate himself by any means necessary, scale a 65 foot wall and hike over eight miles before he can be rescued. Throughout his journey, Ralston recalls friends, lovers, family, and the two hikers he met before his accident. Will they be the last two people he ever had the chance to meet?
What disturbed films are made of
How much more often each element appears in a disturbed frame than in an average frame from the catalogue. A ratio, not a share — sunglasses is not in most frames, it is simply far more common here than anywhere else.
- sunglasses2.9×
- desk lamp2.8×
- skin2.1×
- dirt2.0×
- mirror2.0×
- eyes1.9×
- trench coat1.9×
- shadow1.8×
How disturbed films are shot
Weaker signals than the objects above, and worth saying so: most dramatic genres skew dark and night-heavy, so these numbers separate disturbed from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.
- 31%closeupvs 21% baseline
- 34%naturalvs 44% baseline
- 49%low keyvs 39% baseline
What breaks the pattern
Happiness (1998) is the least typical film here — it carries the least of what the rest of this list is made of. Which is either a failure of the genre label, or the most interesting film on the page.
Method
Every frame in the FrameThrower catalogue is tagged for shot size, lighting, time of day, camera angle, colour and the objects visible in it. This page aggregates those tags across 1,975 frames from 27 films carrying the disturbed label, and compares each figure to the same measurement across the whole catalogue (404,689 frames). Films are ranked by how closely they match the theme’s over-indexed elements, weighted by how distinctive each element is; one film per series. Only films with at least 20 indexed frames and 500 TMDB votes are listed.
Machine-readable: /api/list/disturbed
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