There have been some great Western movies over the years, but some of them are intense experiences that push the viewer into unexpected places. The Western is one of cinema’s oldest genres, and there are many films that tell a pure story of the Old West. John Wayne mastered this form of storytelling, with white-hat heroes battling evil men.
However, Clint Eastwood replaced John Wayne as the Western genre’s top actor, and with it, he brought an area of grey where the new Western protagonists were antiheroes. With this change came more violence, a touch of horror, and an intensity that John Wayne never wanted to explore in the Wild West.
No Country For Old Men (2007)
No Country for Old Men was listed as one of two Westerns that ranked in the top 10 for the New York Times best movies of the 21st century list. The Coen Brothers’ film was a revisionist Western that didn’t play the role of good guys stopping bad guys, and instead was a harsh look at a trail of bloodshed.
The good guys in No Country for Old Men were bystanders, and they never had a chance to save the day or even get close to the stone-cold killer, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem). It’s a good thing, too, since he likely would have killed them where they stood, badge or not. This was a movie about how death is coming to everyone.
It was chilling to watch Josh Brolin as Llewelyn Moss, a man who happened upon the remains of a shootout and stole money he found there. This movie had no happy ending for him, and the entire purpose was to watch as he ran until he couldn’t anymore, and then he died. Death was the main character here, and it never relented.
The Hateful Eight (2015)
The Hateful Eight is a movie that really doesn’t have any good guys. As the title mentions, there are eight people here, and they’re all stuck together at an old stagecoach stopover during a snowstorm. These are bounty hunters, prisoners, lawmen, and more, and all of them have something to hide.
Being a Quentin Tarantino film, there’s a lot of dialogue, with the characters all talking to each other and slowly unveiling secrets. There’s also a lot of violence, and no one really gets out of this one alive. The entire purpose of this is to learn what secrets each of these people is hiding and then to see how they die.
It was easy to see from the start of the movie that no one was getting out of this situation in one piece, and it was an intense story as each of them fell one by one until the bloody end.
Ravenous (1999)
While people seem to think that the intense, horror-driven Westerns were something that took off in the 2000s, there was a horror Western from 1999 that makes many that came after it look tame in comparison. Ravenous features soldiers at a military outpost who encounter a murderous cannibal.
The film is loosely based on the story of the Donner Party and Alferd Packer, the “Colorado Cannibal,” who survived by eating his five companions in the 1870s. However, unlike other films that use this true story for inspiration, this film has the hunter insatiable, and the killer has no hope of stopping.
The cast was impressive, with Guy Pearce and Robert Carlyle in the lead roles. However, Ravenous received mostly negative reviews and was a box office bomb when released. Luckily for Western horror fans, reappraisals kept it alive, and it has since become a cult classic.
Bone Tomahawk (2015)
Released in 2015, Bone Tomahawk looks like a Western, but it’s a straight-up survival horror movie. Kurt Russell stars as Sheriff Franklin Hunt, a lawman who sets out to find three people abducted by what he’s told are a tribe of troglodytes described as inbred cannibals. He soon realizes that it’s an apt description.
When Hunt leads a party to find the abducted people, he ends up in a life-or-death battle with these cannibals, as they have already killed and eaten one of them. Hunt realizes that they’re not only outnumbered, but they’re in the cannibals’ territory and have little chance to escape in one piece.
The cast is impressive, with Patrick Wilson, Matthew Fox, Richard Jenkins, Sid Haig, and more. For a brutal and bloody Western horror movie, it received mainly positive reviews, and it has become a cult classic, mainly for its intense scenes of brutality.
Sisu (2022)
One of the more recent intense Westerns, Sisu, was released in 2022. This film’s story is set near the end of World War II and follows a prospector who realizes he has to fight to defend himself from being robbed by a Waffen-SS platoon led by a corrupt officer.
This film was a co-production between Finland and the United States and was shot in Finland, which makes sense because the location of the story is focused on the area of land during the Lapland War between Finland and Germany. The basis is very similar to that of First Blood, but it has much more of a Western feel.
Critics praised Sisu, awarding it a 94% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The reviews praised the gory action scenes, with others saying it was not afraid to be nonsensical, breaking the intense, bloody scenes up with some crowd-pleasing action beats.
High Plains Drifter (1973)
John Wayne felt that Westerns should be honorable to the Old West, and that’s a big reason he was not happy to see Clint Eastwood take on the shades-of-grey antihero when he became Hollywood’s go-to Western star. This was even more evident in High Plains Drifter, where Eastwood basically played a vengeful spirit.
The film showed Eastwood arriving in town as an unnamed stranger, where he sexually assaults a woman and kills three men hired to protect the town from outsiders. However, this was only the start, as the Stranger was there to save the town from the outlaws threatening the town’s peace.
Eastwood is a man on a mission in this film, and it has all the supernatural overtones a Western horror fan could want, without coming out and saying that it’s supernatural. It’s violent, and the Stranger is in no way a good man, but by the end, he does what he needed to do to save this town.
The Nightingale (2018)
Released in 2018, The Nightingale is an Australian Western thriller directed by Jennifer Kent (The Babadook). The movie is set in 1825 in Van Diemen’s Land during the colonization of Australia. It follows a young Irish convict who wants revenge for the military personnel who raped her and killed her husband and daughter.
As expected, this is another revenge thriller, and when she finds an Aboriginal tracker to help her, she finds a way to get her revenge, while the tracker can also seek his own vengeance for the Black War against the Tasmanian people. The film was a massive success, with 15 AACTA nominations, winning six, including Best Film.
Critics praised the intensity of this Australian Western thriller for its “palpable rage” and its ability to leave a “bruising impact.”
The Proposition (2005)
The Proposition is another Western set in Australia, and this one was written by musical star Nick Cave. Guy Pearce stars as Charlie Burns, a man who leads a gang of bushrangers. However, when a gunfight with the police leads all but him and his brother to death, he ends up being offered a deal by the police.
Charlie is told that he and his brother will be freed if he can bring in his other brother, Arthur, who is a despicable man wanted for rape and murder. Charlie agrees, but things do not go as planned, even when he finds his brother (Danny Huston).
Critics loved the movie, awarding it a 96% on Rotten Tomatoes and praising its intensity and brutal, unflinching violence. The Proposition earned 11 AACTA Award nominations, with Cave winning for his musical score.
Hostiles (2017)
Scott Cooper has directed some intense thrillers, including the horror film Antlers (2021) and the historical mystery thriller The Pale Blue Eye (2022). In 2017, he brought that intense horror into a Western movie called Hostiles. Rosamund Pike stars as Rosalee, a woman whose family was attacked by a Comanche war party.
Christian Bale stars as a U.S. Army captain ordered to escort a Cheyenne war chief (Wes Studi) home to die with his family on tribal lands, and this is when he comes across the surviving Rosalee. When she joins their travel party, the three of them have to survive further attacks.
Bale received high praise for his performance, and the action was intense and surprising, with a nice message that people shouldn’t be judged by their past, or their appearance, neither as friends nor foes.
The Wild Bunch (1969)
Intense Westerns are nothing new. In fact, in 1969, a revisionist Western shocked the world with its intense scenes of violence and gore in an era that was barely getting used to Clint Eastwood’s antiheroes. This was the first Western movie that used a large amount of squibs to show blood splatter, something previously unheard of in the genre.
The movie featured an aging outlaw gang living on the Mexico-United States border who were trying to get used to the new modern world in 1913. The cast was magnificent, with William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Edmond O’Brien, Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, and more.
The opening scene of the movie saw them involved in a final robbery of silver that resulted in a gunfight that was shockingly violent, with even innocent bystanders being gunned down. Most of the gang dies in the end, and the intense Western action scenes still work today.
This story originally appeared on Screenrant
