There’s a time and a place for comfort movies, but there are also movies designed to stress the audience out. These movies are often psychological thrillers or crime dramas which can elevate the pulse. Of course, this only works when the filmmakers are intelligent enough to fully immerse the audience in the world of a story.

For many people, watching a movie at the end of a long day is the perfect way to unwind, but choosing the wrong movie can make everything much worse. Stressful movies like Uncut Gems and Black Swan tend to linger in the mind. Even if they are masterpieces, audiences might need a long break before watching them again, since they aren’t the most relaxing to sit through.

10

Uncut Gems (2019)

Adam Sandler Shows Off His Dramatic Chops

The Safdie brothers raised a few eyebrows when they cast Adam Sandler in Uncut Gems. The comedian didn’t seem like a natural fit for a pulse-raising crime thriller, but he proved the doubters wrong with a performance that carries a frantic story through the streets of Manhattan.

Uncut Gems is an incessant thrill ride that maintains an exhausting pace. The Safdies swirl the camera around the characters, creating an unsettling atmosphere that pairs nicely with an overbearing score. Uncut Gems‘ ending is the only let-up from the anxiety-inducing horrors, but it’s a devastating finale that doesn’t leave room for any catharsis.

9

Free Solo (2018)

The Documentary Is More Stressful Than Fiction

Free Solo is a documentary about Alex Honnold’s attempt to become the first person to climb El Capitan in Yosemite National Park without a rope, and it’s just as gripping and stressful as any fictional story. In fact, the knowledge that Honnold’s life is actually in danger makes each tumbling rock and each misplaced foothold far more frightening.

Free Solo doesn’t need much embellishment on its true story to be extremely stressful. Honnold’s matter-of-fact reflections on his colleagues who have died attempting less challenging climbs and his pragmatic conversations with the movie’s directors about camera angles that would obscure his body hitting the ground do the job.

8

Whiplash (2014)

Jazz Music Never Seemed So Disturbing

On the surface, Whiplash is a story about a young drummer striving to reach his full potential, but it’s also a movie about abusive relationships and shattered dreams. Miles Teller and J. K. Simmons combine to create a stressful image of obsession that probes into the nature of great art, and the sacrifices people are willing to make to become truly great.

Whiplash‘s punchy soundtrack serves as the perfect accompaniment to one long anxiety attack, with a driving drumline that echoes the syncopated beating of the main character’s heart. Damien Chazelle does offer some false moments of calm, however, but these only act as brief respites that deepen the impact of the shocking abuse and violence.

7

Cape Fear (1991)

Scorsese Knows How To Make His Audience Squirm

Cape Fear isn’t usually listed among Martin Scorsese’s best movies, but this merely speaks to the rare quality of his filmography. For many other directors, the tense crime thriller would represent a career high. For Scorsese, it’s just one of many movies with a reputation for shredding its audience’s nerves, much like Shutter Island and After Hours.

Robert De Niro continued his long-running partnership with Scorsese in Cape Fear, playing a twisted villain who seems to take pleasure in tormenting a lawyer who he blames for his many years of incarceration. The most stressful scenes come when Max Cady starts to take an interest in the lawyer’s teenage daughter. She may be unaware of his true intentions, but the audience is left without any doubts.

6

Das Boot (1981)

Wolfgang Petersen’s Claustrophobic Nightmare Isn’t For Everyone

Movies that stick to a single location can often keep audiences on edge, but Das Boot is even more claustrophobic than most. While other directors like to explore the untapped potential of their locations, finding new angles and using intelligent blocking to make one space seem bigger than it is, Wolfgang Petersen restricts the camera’s movements to accentuate the confines of the submarine.

Adding to the suffocating tension of Das Boot, Petersen limited his cast’s exposure to sunlight during filming. This gives his actors the gaunt, pallid appearance of a real submarine crew. Of course, these filmmaking tricks would all be for nought if not for Das Boot‘s similarly disquieting story, as the submarine becomes a pressure cooker for conflicting personalities.

5

Nightcrawler (2014)

The Dark Setting Reflects The Protagonist’s Soul

Jake Gyllenhaal is often at his best when he gets to play the bad guy, and his sociopathic protagonist in Nightcrawler is as bad as they come. Lou Bloom discovers the lucrative world of freelance pH๏τojournalism, scouring the Los Angeles night with a police radio in his car and a camera ready to record the devastation and violence he witnesses on the streets.

Lou’s perspective is a dark place to be, and director Dan Gilroy gives the audience little respite from his unsettling world. As Lou falls deeper into criminality and absurd power plays, Nighcrawler drags the audience along every step of the way. Ultimately, the stressful atmosphere serves to interrogate the common desire for voyeurism and violent spectacle. The most unnerving part is that the darkness in Nightcrawler exists within us all.

4

Prisoners (2013)

Villeneuve’s Complex Moral Thriller Poses Some Uncomfortable Questions

Prisoners presents a disturbing criminal case, in which two children suddenly vanish from a sleepy neighborhood. Hugh Jackman plays one of the young girls’ father, with Jake Gyllenhaal playing a dedicated detective. These two characters represent the disconnect between humanity’s desire for swift, brutal justice and the methodical, careful approach of the law.

Prisoners pits emotion against logic in the hunt for the missing girls. This creates an excruciating moral conundrum when the victim’s father takes matters into his own hands. Prisoners has no heroes, only characters desperately pursuing their own warped ideas of justice. This makes it impossible to pick sides, as it’s just as worrying and stressful to admonish a character’s actions as it is to support them.

3

Vertigo (1958)

The Master Of Suspense Is Still Terrifying Audiences

Alfred Hitchcock has been dubbed the “Master of Suspense,” and many of his best films are anxiety-inducing thrillers that are just as effective now as they were 70 or 80 years ago. Vertigo is one of his greatest and most stressful movies, following a retired detective who stumbles onto a strange investigation that forces him to grapple with his own personal demons.

The undulating landscape of San Francisco and Hitchcock’s masterful use of the dolly zoom both underline Vertigo‘s ability to make its audience feel unwell. Hitchcock has plenty of intelligent tricks to get his audience inside the tortured mind of his protagonist, feeling the same uncertainty and fear as he does. Vertigo‘s shocking ending delivers a twist that provides some relief, but this doesn’t counteract the intense stress that comes from watching Hitchcock’s masterpiece.

2

The Killing Of A Sacred Deer (2017)

Barry Keoghan Is Always A Compelling Villain

Yorgos Lanthimos’ movies each have a disturbing, otherworldly atmosphere that makes them easy to recognize. This often creates fertile ground for dark comedy, like in The Lobster and The Favourite, where Lanthimos’ slightly inhuman characters highlight the strange foibles of polite society. There’s very little comedy to take the edge off of The Killing of a Sacred Deer, however.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer is a constantly disturbing story about a mysterious young man with seemingly magical powers who gradually infiltrates and destroys a family. Lanthimos keeps the audience at arm’s length, which means that there are no answers to the obscure mysteries at the heart of the narrative. There’s also no hope of a reprieve, with Barry Keoghan’s villain acting as an embodiment of chaos and evil who can’t be swayed by appeals to his humanity.

1

Black Swan (2010)

The Psychological Thriller Blurs The Line Between Reality And Nightmares

Darren Aronofsky has built a reputation as a director of stressful movies, and Black Swan is arguably his best effort yet. Natalie Portman stars as a ballerina unraveling as she tries to handle the rigors of the role of a lifetime. Aronofsky has a talent for creating tension out of thin air, using close-ups and blurred backgrounds to create the illusion that his characters are drowning in seas of light and color.

Portman’s performance in Black Swan is outstanding. She is the key to conveying the movie’s dark, humming tension, as Aronofsky turns the screw with each scene. Before too long, it becomes hard to differentiate reality from dreams and hallucinations, both for the protagonist and the audience. Black Swan‘s ending provides the glorious final act in a perplexing tragedy, but the feelings of tension take a while to dissipate.