10 most disturbing horror movies from the past decade

6. Sinister (2012)

Sinister was a delightful surprise. I didn’t have high expectations when I went to see the film in theaters. Yet it left me feeling queasy more than once. The movie starred Ethan Hawke as a true-crime writer stuck in a rut. He can’t seem to find anything he’s passionate about and is lacking in story ideas. He and his family move to a new home, and there he sees a movie depicting the very real deaths of a family that lives there before them.

He begins to find more footage and sees a creepy supernatural entity in the background of the videos known as Bughuul. However, the most disturbing part of Sinister is the eerie Super 8 mm footage. The snuff films in this movie look so realistic that it will make your skin crawl as if you’re really watching some die in vicious and cruel ways.

5. The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)

Like Aster, Yorgos Lanthimos is a very inventive film director who tends to create wholly original and unique movies. The Killing of a Sacred Deer is a gut-wrenching psychological thriller that you will probably only want to watch one time. The film stars Nicole Kidman, Collin Farrell, and Barry Keoghan in some of their best roles to date.

Farrell plays a surgeon named Steven Murphy, who once let someone die during an operation. That person turned out to be the father of a strange teenager named Martin. Martin insinuates himself into the surgeon’s life with a plan to enact revenge. To do so, he makes his entire family deathly ill and claims it will be up to Steven to decide who lives or dies, but at least one must die, or they all will.

The movie isn’t gory or over-the-top in terms of graphic imagery. Still, the tense nature of the pacing, the performances, and the moral dilemma Steven finds himself in is challenging to watch. There’s no escape either. He ultimately blindfolds himself and spins in circles before deciding who to shoot and ends up killing his son.