What exactly makes a movie “intense?” Is it the way you can’t stop talking about it for weeks and weeks after you’ve seen it? The way you’ll think about it extensively every once in a while, regardless of whether you liked it or not? Is it the feeling of being so enmeshed in the plot you’re watching that you forget the existence of anything else? Is it the way your pulse speeds up, or the way you can’t help but gasp out loud at the right moment? Or is it something entirely different, something you can’t quite place your finger on?
Whatever that je ne sais quoi might be for you, we’ve compiled a list of the most intense films released from 2000 until now, and a few of them will surely fit your definition and/or tastes. There were plenty of runner-ups to choose from (Parasite, anyone?), but the flicks I chose are so visually immersive, complete with stories so perfectly unfolded and revealed, it’s hard to leave the stories we’ve witnessed behind once the credits start to roll.
‘The Green Knight’ (2021)
If there’s one thing true about The Green Knight, based on the 14th-century verse-heavy saga of the same name, it’s this: The surrealism of director David Lowery’s 2021 epic will certainly go beyond anything that you’d ever expect, especially a run-of-the-mill action adventure flick featuring quest-bound armored warriors and horses. Starring Dev Patel and Alicia Vikander, MovieWeb called it an “art film falsely advertised as a fantasy epic,” and we weren’t wrong; it’s possibly why the surrealist intensity of The Green Knight might make your head spin, but in a thought-provoking way.
Let’s put it this way: Regardless of whether you end up liking the imagery-heavy, not-so-linear flick — one that feels more like a poem than a traditional narrative — it’ll be sure to stick in your head long after the credits have ended. Considering its critically acclaimed status on Rotten Tomatoes, we’re also far from an outlier when it comes to landing on the consensus that The Green Knight is a pretty great movie.
‘The Magdalene Sisters’ (2002)
Set in Ireland in the mid-1960s, The Magdalene Sisters follows the stories of young women who are sent to a Magdalene laundry — essentially an asylum for girls who were considered to be “sinful” or simply non-conforming by societal standards of the day; this broad definition ran the gamut from being too flirtatious, pregnant out of wedlock, or even intellectually or developmentally disabled. The ensemble cast of The Magdalene Sisters serves as an entrée into a prison of dogmatic horrors, all forced into de facto indentured servitude as laundry workers as they whittle their days away, ones filled with either hope or despair at any turn.
While it was critically hailed at its 2002 debut, what makes The Magdalene Sisters more intense a watch today is its prescience in a post-Roe v. Wade world. The particular Magdalene asylum featured in it bears uncomfortably striking similarities to, say, Gilead or the teachings of Aunt Lydia’s School, or even the ethos of trad wives, which echo our immediate reality and the idea of bodily autonomy in the current socio-political climate. In that sense, The Magdalene Sisters is a powerful (and terrifying) reminder of the world in which we might find ourselves regressing toward. Indeed, the brutality depicted in The Magdalene Sisters served a purpose as a feminist rallying cry over two decades ago, and it still manages to do the same today.
‘Grizzly Man’ (2005)
Grizzly Man isn’t simply a requisite documentary included on a list of intense watches: It’s a Werner Herzog masterpiece that illustrates the nearly inescapable grip of human hubris in the natural world. Told partially through found footage shot by self-styled conservationist Timothy Treadwell, a man who obsessively spent his summers over the course of a few years in Alaska embedded among a group of bears, the doc makes us wonder whether Treadwell wants to live among them or wants to actually be them — and ultimately, how this ties into the tragic fate of the film’s anti-hero.
Herzog makes no secret of what happened to Treadwell and his partner, Amie Huguenard, during their last season spent among Treadwell’s ursine tribe. That the viewer is clued into Treadwell’s untimely end makes the documentary all the more compelling; in fact, despite all conventions, this factor somehow raises the stakes.
‘Maria Full of Grace’ (2004)
Primarily remembered as the movie that launched the career of Oscar-nominated actor Catalina Sandino Moreno, 2004’s Maria Full of Grace is so much more than the sum of that particular part. Produced by HBO Films, the Spanish-language drama centers on the titular Maria, a pregnant Colombian teenager who finds that her only pathway to salvation (i.e., freedom from her poverty-stricken circumstances) is to become a drug mule, smuggling dozens of pellets filled with illegal drugs into the United States.
Harrowing as it is moving (and intense as any thriller thanks to its subject matter), Maria Full of Grace both humanizes people, like its lead, who are forced to do the most unthinkable things due to their extreme circumstances (and more so through the fault of systemic socio-economic oppression and less than through any fault of their own).
‘Uncut Gems’ (2019)
It took roughly a decade for Uncut Gems to make it to the silver screen, and for most, it was well worth the wait. Unforgivingly paced in the best conceivable way, this Safdie Brothers joint, starring Adam Sandler in an almost unanimously awards-snubbed turn as a gambler and jeweler who is put into heart-attack-inducing situations, gives Run, Lola, Run a (pardon us) run for its money.
Uncut Gems is as intense an experience as Homer’s Odyssey — that is, if the latter was an adrenaline-fueled, off-the-rails mad dash through the streets of NYC, filled with blaring, overlapping dialogue, a priceless stone, and the most chaotic, unforgettable narrative highs in recent memory.
‘Moonlight’ (2016)
Known as the underdog indie that trounced La La Land at the Oscars for Best Picture in 2016, Barry Jenkins’ coming-of-age film Moonlight almost feels like a sweeping sonata. Deeply specific in its subject matter, Moonlight tells the story of Chiron, a Black, queer kid growing up in Miami in an environment filled to the brim with homophobia and toxic masculinity, all the while chronicling his story of discovering his found family and exploring his identity, despite the odds stacked against him.
Even with its distinctive, unique subject matter, the feelings the Moonlight evokes are wholly universal, and intensely so. With race and sexuality at its core and roughly a decade since its release, Moonlight is an imperative watch, now more than ever.
‘Hereditary’ (2018)
In many ways, Hereditary is as intense a horror flick as they come, so much so that it’s nearly impossible to discuss the modern horror genre without mentioning its title or indelible ending. What anchors director Ari Aster’s contemporary classic, aside from a scene which can’t be mentioned without giving away major spoilers, is actor Toni Collette’s performance, so wrenching it feels like your heart is put through a meat grinder.
Supernatural elements and gore aside, it’s Collette that makes a genre film that explores the ideas of familial dysfunction and generational trauma so compelling. When it comes to Hereditary, set aside your expectations: What you see pales in comparison to what you’ll leave with.
‘Whiplash’ (2014)
Whatever you think of Miles Teller, Whiplash served as a truly fitting and real introduction to the talents of one of his generation’s arguably finest actors. A vehicle for J.K. Simmons, who won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor thanks to his performance as an abusive music instructor, with Teller as one of the fortunate (or unfortunate) pupils under his tutelage, Whiplash is a tale told through sweat and slaps and drumbeats.
“Are you one of those single-tear people?” is a quote that resonates with anyone who has found themselves trapped in a similar dysfunctional dynamic, or maybe recognizes that self-same interplay and the toxicity it connotes. When all is said and done, Whiplash truly questions where the fine line between passion ends and obsessive mania begins.
‘Love Lies Bleeding’ (2024)
If you want an elevator pitch for 2024’s Love Lies Bleeding, think Thelma and Louise, but gayer and on steroids — literally. (And rest assured, we mean that in the absolute best way possible.) Starring Kristen Stewart and Katy O’Brien in her major big screen debut, the movie follows Lou (Stewart), a gym manager stuck in a desert town who fatefully meets Jackie (O’Brien), the latter who dreams of becoming a world-class bodybuilder. What ensues is, as our own review described it, a love story with “fever-dream visuals and lurid performances to create a cinematic razor’s edge.”
Dreamy and dangerous, Love Lies Bleeding has the adrenaline of Pulp Fiction and the desperate despair of Requiem for a Dream, but with one key characteristic both of those films lack: hope.
‘There Will Be Blood’ (2007)
No list of the most intense watches of the 21st century (so far) would be complete without Paul Thomas Anderson’s magnum opus, There Will Be Blood. Starring Daniel Day-Lewis as Daniel Plainview, a miner who discovers oil in the middle of the California wilderness and goes on to pursue the life of an oil baron by any means necessary, and Paul Dano, who plays a pair of twins, one of whom is a land-hungry hypocritical preacher, There Will Be Blood serves as a meditation on American capitalism and its natural byproduct, maniacal greed.
The film’s score, composed by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, serves the movie by using music to heighten every tension-filled moment; it’s an astonishing achievement that the first 15 minutes of There Will Be Blood are completely devoid of dialogue, only filled with dramatic punctuations by Greenwood’s ominous orchestral punctuations. And no matter what you think of the movie in the end, one thing’s for certain: You’ll never think of a milkshake the same way again.
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
