The Best (and Worst) Violent Movies

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The worst:
 

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)
Take a beautiful, highly cinematic film that employed its violence with art, subtlety and tension. Remake it into a relentless, pornographic gore fest that amounts to a non-stop series of gratuitous, disgusting peaks (no valleys). So, so wrong.





Hostel (2005) and Hostel: Part II (2007)
The violence in these movies-- including one of cinema's most graphic castration scenes-- is utterly pointless, engineered to push the limits of audience tolerance and expectations rather than for any dramatic purpose. Both movies actually have ideas but squander them with how obsessed they are with making audiences sick in new and inane ways.



Fight Club (1999)
The infuriating final scene depicts two young lovebirds holding hands while gazing out a window, watching city skyscrapers implode, treating the whole apocalyptic tableau like a picturesque sunset. Doesn't seem so romantic after happening in real life, does it?





Funny Games (1997, 2007)
In theory, Michael Haneke has something important to say about the way movie audiences revel in screen violence. In execution, however-- in which death metal plays over images of a smiling suburban family, and killers stop the movie to talk to the camera-- it comes off as shallow and obnoxious, condescending and contemptuous to its audience.



Home Alone (1990)
This was a laugh riot for 7-year-olds at the time, and there are still some genuinely funny moments here. But re-watching many of these slap-sticky moments now (paint buckets to the head, Micro Machine booby-traps, hot doorknobs, iced steps) begs the question: How sadistic can one pre-teen possibly be? Fairly reminiscent of the climax of Straw Dogs, except it replaces all the horror with idiotic glee.



The Spielberg war cycle
There's an uncomfortable tendency, in movies as varied as Raiders of the Lost Ark and Saving Private Ryan, to make a spectacle of popular entertainment out of some of the 20th century's most traumatic historical events.



Hard Candy (2005)
Ellen Page is her usual amazing self in this film, just as a precocious sadist determined to avenge young girls who'd been raped. You leave cheering on her merciless retribution, but later just feel dirty and manipulated.


Contributing: Colin Alexander, Jeff Bloomer, Chelsea Hicks, Josh Jackson, Steve LaBate, Nick Marino, Ashley Melzer, Nick Purdy, Tim Regan-Porter and Valentina Tapia