It can be nice to have a snack while watching a movie for hopefully obvious reasons. It’s multitasking, in effect, it can help you feel more relaxed, and if the food is good, snacky, addictive, or all of the above, then it can make the movie-watching experience more pleasurable… though, to some extent, that does also depend on the movie you’ve chosen to watch.
Enter the following titles, many of them being horror movies or down-and-dirty/gritty action/thriller/sci-fi movies, all of which are best not watched while you’re eating anything. They have intense and sometimes grotesque imagery, and though they’re not all non-stop shocking sights, you’re playing some kind of food and movie-related Russian roulette if you choose to pop things into your mouth (especially substantial or filling things) while these ones are playing on screen.
10
‘Tetsuo: The Iron Man’ (1988)
The Salaryman from ‘Tetsuo: The Iron Man’Image via Kaijyu Theatre
Tetsuo: The Iron Man is ridiculous in how relentless it is, being a body horror movie with a twist, since it’s all very lo-fi and metallic, as the title might lead you to believe. Basically, it follows a guy whose life is falling apart, seeing as more and more of his body is turning to metal, and not in a way that makes him any kind of superhero or anything.
Also, Tetsuo: The Iron Man is likely to give you a headache, thanks to how loud the score and all the sound effects are, but it’s the combination of gore and hyperactive camerawork that’ll probably make you queasy. It’s not a good movie to watch if you’re squeamish, and it’s also best avoided if you have any kind of motion sickness, so best to leave the food in the pantry or fridge until the movie’s over (you don’t have to wait long, at least, since Tetsuo: The Iron Man is under 70 minutes in duration).
9
‘The Substance’ (2024)
Margaret Qualley as Sue holding a drink inside a strange-looking room while looking stylish in The Substance (2024)Image via Mubi
There were a good many gruesome and wild movies released in 2024, but none pushed things quite as far as The Substance (at least out of the ones that were also high-quality). This was almost like an epic body horror movie, playing out over the course of almost 2.5 hours and having a main character going through an immense ordeal, taking a “substance” that’s supposed to make her look younger, but has some very horrifying consequences.
Of course they’re horrifying, what with this being a horror movie, but The Substance is also kind of funny and satirical on top of being frequently alarming. It’s overwhelming and filling enough on its own. No food needed, especially because anything you do eat during this film – especially anything that’s caught up in the digestion process in The Substance’s back half – might not stay down.
8
‘Dead Alive’ (1992)
Image via Trimark Pictures
You can rely on most zombie movies to have a bit of blood and guts, what with the brains and the eating people and the undead creatures coming apart more easily, but then something like Dead Alive really goes the extra mile. This is more violent than the vast majority of zombie movies out there, and though lots of the gross stuff is funny, some of it is genuinely nauseating.
It even uses food at one point to particularly horrifying effect, because if you’ve seen the custard scene in this, you can’t unsee it; you’re a changed person after that, and a moment of silence for a hypothetical person out there who happened to be eating custard during said scene. Also, this was directed by Peter Jackson, about a decade before he went on to do some very famous fantasy movies that weren’t really horror (although mildly scary at points), so that’s kind of neat.
7
‘On the Silver Globe’ (1988)
Image via Zespół Filmowy Kadr
There are so many things that can be said about On the Silver Globe, and maybe if it had been completed, there’d be even more to discuss. It was an infamously unfinished film, but what was released is still striking and powerful stuff, while also being far from fitting for the faint of heart. It was directed by the same guy who did Possession, after all (Andrzej Żuławski), and that one’s also a lot to handle.
As for On the Silver Globe, it’s kind of an epic, albeit a weird one, as it spans a great deal of time and involves humanity trying to establish a new civilization on another planet. Nothing goes to plan, and things devolve over generations, leading to a lot of grim imagery, gruesome violence, and just an overall high level of grit and grime. It’s an exceptional sci-fi movie for sure, but also a difficult-to-recommend one.
6
‘Oldboy’ (2003)
Image via Show East
It’s pretty wild how Oldboy has become one of the most popular international movies of the century so far, considering how extreme it gets with some of its content. It always has a reason to push boundaries, and there’s not much here that feels like shock value just for the sake of being shocking, but it starts grim and claustrophobic, with a main character imprisoned and going mad for years, and then devolves further from there.
Beyond some of the gnarly combat and violent imagery, Oldboy is also stomach-churning for how its narrative unfolds.
When an early scene has him eating a live octopus, you know you’re in for a wild ride. Beyond some of the gnarly combat and violent imagery, Oldboy is also stomach-churning for how its narrative unfolds, having a particularly famous (or maybe infamous) final act that hits you with a ton of revelations that are understandably difficult to feel at ease with… to put it incredibly/overly mildly.
5
‘The Machine Girl’ (2008)
Image via Spotted Productions
So, Dead Alive had a gross custard scene, and Oldboy had a memorably disturbing scene with a live octopus, and now here’s another gruesome movie that has one of its most alarming scenes involve food: The Machine Girl. If you want to continue being a fan of tempura, then it’s advisable not to watch The Machine Girl, because there’s a part here disgusting enough to potentially turn you off that food for life.
And it’s also violent enough that you can’t really describe said scene while keeping things PG, which might make you morbidly curious to watch The Machine Girl… but you’ve been warned anyway. Elsewhere, it’s also a ridiculously gory body horror movie with blood and body parts spraying and flying around all over the place in every scene or two, but it’s the food-related stuff here that’s probably the hardest to handle.
4
‘The Boxer’s Omen’ (1983)
Another film where it’s hard to know where to even begin, The Boxer’s Omen is a fantastical horror and martial arts movie in one, plus something of a twisted sports film, but even that only goes so far. It’s hard to capture how this movie looks and feels with words, and honestly, if there were words to describe it, it’d feel dirty to type and then read those words, so maybe it’s better to just not even try.
It’s got a lot of chaotic action, sure, but The Boxer’s Omen is even more concerned with being revolting than entertaining, which is saying a lot, since it’s still pretty damn entertaining. There are sights in this one that can’t be unseen, and just about every new scene has a different thing in it to be disgusted by, making for a relentless watch packed with all sorts of horrors, ultraviolence, and grossout images.
3
‘Raw’ (2016)
A young woman raising her hand to her bleeding nose in the horror movie Raw (2016)Image via Wild Bunch
The premise of Raw already sounds quite alarming, given it’s a very dark coming-of-age sort of story about a teenage girl who’s a vegetarian, tracking the way her life falls apart after she gets a taste for raw meat. Hey, “raw” is in the title, so you kind of have to be ready for that, but then it’s the stuff that happens after the inciting incident that proves more unpredictable and disturbing.
It’s the story and the sense of things getting worse, sure, but it’s also the detail in Raw that makes it extra horrifying. On paper, some of the stuff that happens here might not sound too much worse than most horror movies, but everything feels more intense, real, and personal here in a way that’s disquieting during the milder moments and genuinely nauseating when the film really wants to go for the gut. And the jugular. And your kidney. And then your gut again. One punch after another.
2
‘Cannibal Holocaust’ (1980)
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Robert Kerman and Perry Pirkanen as Professor Harold Monroe and Jack Anders, standing in the woods and recording on a video camera in Cannibal HolocaustImage via United Artists Europa
There are some things about Cannibal Holocaust that get pretty frequently thrown around, including the notion that it’s one of the more tasteless movies out there (if you couldn’t guess from the title alone). And it is tasteless, going further than it needs to in some regards, particularly concerning acts of animal cruelty, but it’s also not just tasteless, as this film does have things to say about the media and treatment of indigenous tribes.
It’s kind of satirical at times, and also thought-provoking at other points, and then the rest of the time, it’s an assault on the senses and pretty much obscene in its violence, both the staged stuff and the animal scenes shot for real. Even those who find themselves able to snack through 99% or more of the horror movies out there might find even a small popcorn to be a bit much when it comes to watching Cannibal Holocaust.
1
‘The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover’ (1989)
Michael Gambon yells about eating a man while holding cutlery in The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover.Image via Palace Pictures
In The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, there’s a great deal of in-your-face sexual content, tons of food imagery (including some putrid and rotting food), and some infrequent but upsetting violence. Sometimes, you get a combination of some or all of the above, and there’s also a true monster of a villain here in case your stomach wasn’t tied up in enough knots – or put at sufficient unease – already.
It’s a movie that throws everything at you, but it throws it all so well, making The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover the rare movie that’ll shake pretty much anyone, no matter how much one thinks they might’ve seen it all. But it does all this for good reason, and though it’s grotesque, there’s also a ton of beauty to this film and an intelligence with which it tells its messy story, making it maximalist and just a bit of everything all at once in the best of ways.