An animated film junkie's personal picks for the 'real' most disturbing animated films
An addendum to reddit, ofc. View my iceberg chart on where and how I find movies like Watership Down or Animal Farm on the 'upsetting'-ometer.
For now though, these are my objective picks for decent media that's also absolutely horrific.
Plague Dogs. Don't watch this with you dog. Your dog will hate you because you'll just keep hugging them and dogs don't like hugs. To me this movie is so much better at Isle of Dogs in illuminating the importance and struggles of dogs as a species. Part of what hurts so much about this story isn't just human's preexisting protection of dogs, it's how it accurately shows how quick mistreat/dispose of them as monsters for being the carnivores that they are or having trauma indicative of any animal -dogs don't exist for our pleasure. The fact that the book isn't nearly so grim and how this movie's existence makes that ending feel somehow 'fake' or insincere also doesn't help. Infinitely better and more intimate, sad and better told than Watership Down.
It's Such a Beautiful Day. Don Hertzfelt has that affect with his movies where they illicit such strong emotions out of you despite the characters being stick figures. It really is a very sad story and situation. I cried my ass off at this.
When the Wind Blows. It's everything everyone's already told you. Despite it being a fictional story and nowhere near as horrific as the real stories of survivors, it's just not fun watching two old people who sound/act somewhat like your own parents or grandparents die slowly.
Padak. God this fish movie slaps so hard. It's so genuinely good and shows you how much you can make a person care for animals even by just picturing what it'd be like in that situation where you're surrounded by reminders that you're going to die horrifically...which is saying something considering it was meant to be an allegorical film about human emotions and not even an animal-rights flick. PeTA, eat your sexist-racist hearts out you could never make something like this.
Grave of the Fireflies. As other anime-viewers have pointed out, what makes this movie more than just a super sad story is how and why it happened at all. How it's a plea for 1980s era kids to see what their parents had to go through while also a plea to those same parents to remind them that their own Greatest Generation is the same as their kids- impulsive, set on thinking they're right like Seita is. To me it never comes off as accusatory . It's about how, with or without war, childhood is a dangerous time of life and one not everyone's can or SHOULD be in control of everything just because they're an older sibling or they have 'responsibilities' now.
Barefoot Gen. Hardly need to divulge much without just trauma-dumping on you. Trauma-wise the moment that sticks with me is never the bombing-scene despite that being the part everyone knows. It's the immediate and lingering aftermath of the bomb and Gen's family dying. The part where Gen holds his baby sister and then calls out to his father, brother and sister that they need to be seeing her and not dead brings waterworks every time. Also the accurate details of the rotting or dying corpses are as horrific as they ought to be. I swear if you only watch the bomb scene you don't have any idea about how truly grim and tragic this film actually is.
The Wolf House. I wouldn't recommend this film to anyone who has acute sensory problems or schizophrenia. While I love it and it's sound design it's also that aspect of the film that's what's so intense. From the moment it starts to it's final image you know you're watching something from a deeply darked, cursed place yet the images brought forth feel like the imaginings of the victim and not the perpetrator telling the story. It's like, as if, Humbert Humbert was narrating the story of Lolita while we personally see what's in Dolores' mind- yet ALL without ever showing you any actual onscreen ab*se. Wonderful, disturbing work.
Waltz with Bashir. The ending scene. That bit. You're seeing real footage of death (of children). People who say it's somehow hypocritical of me to list this movie when I'm pretty sure Ari Foleman is not anti-Israel, but to me this is exactly the kind of dialogue needed to start this talk. Much of Waltz with Bashir feels like a jumpy but mostly basic war drama where Ari and the soldiors are just told to go places and not think of their safety. It's purposeful dissonance. And then, in the end you get the massacre scene. It shows you the reason for this dissonance. It shows you what it is this 'war' is really for and what exactly everyone has been doing. If anything's sus about this film it's frankly how no one talks about that moment.
Mad God. Gross. I love it.
Kill it and Leave this Town. Mad God and this movie both feel like nightmares that last too long and which you feel at the moment you're having them that you can never escape. Mad God feels like the kind of nightmare where you know and can follow what is happening loosely and keep following it despite knowing it's not going to get any better. Kill it and Leave this Town feels like a lucid horrific dream where every awful image and memory you've ever had comes up to haunt you and you can't help but wallow.
Runners up now that I've finished seeing all of them:
Unicorn Wars and Birdboy: The Forgotten Children. I can't for the life of me decide which one is "more" messed up; Birdboy is so much more depressing though I think it's also the inferior of the two (still good, just flawed). Unicorn Wars feels more brutal than it does disturbing, think less Come and See and more Apocalypse Now, if you know what I mean.
The Peasants. Honestly REALLY should change the ranking on my iceberg chart and put a stronger warning on it now that I've finished seeing it and made the mistake of not spoiling it for myself. This movie is from the same people who made Loving Vincent and it's about the goings on of a polish peasant woman having an affair with a married farmhand but being married off to his older father. In no short terms, she suffers a LOT in this movie and even though the ending's supposed to signify better things it doesn't feel that way. No VVitch-level retribution here. Prolly not the film to show your girlfriend.
Belladonna of Sadness. Belladonna of Sadness is technically an erotica. So the ab*se that you do see, while meant to be horrific, is also as graphic as the other smex scenes even if the former aren't nearly as drawn out, which is why it goes at the bottom of my iceberg chart. Because of this sheer volume of nope and also it's abstraction in telling it's story it feels more to me like an acid-trip but yeah there it is.
The Breadwinner. I put this one on for a rewatch after having watched Wolfwalkers with my sister in 2020 and I highkey forgot how damn brutal and sad it is. I was bawling my eyes out and said out loud "why did I rewatch this?!" several times. It's good but it hurts. Still one of Cartoon Saloon's best.
