10 Hardest-To-Watch Movie Scenes

Referred to repeatedly as one of the hardest to watch movies ever by those that have seen this nasty little French film, there's more than one scene that could make this list - another being a particularly brutal fire extinguisher attack.

Irreversible is the fragmented story of Alex's (Monica Bellucci) rape, and the revenge her boyfriend plans to get on the perpetrator. Set in Paris over one traumatic evening, It's the scene of this terrible act that remains one of the most visceral in movie history, playing out as a ten-minute long ordeal with an unflinching single shot capturing the entirety event, showing little mercy to the victim or us as the audience, forced to watch.

What makes the film work as something other than exploitative is it's broken narrative, one that frames Alex's trauma in haunting reality. The ending sees boyfriend Marcus (Vincent Cassel) kill the wrong man, subjecting the audience to a gruelling murder conducted entirely with the aforementioned fire extinguisher. It's an intense film with absolutely zero positive payoff, functioning entirely to stipulate the horrors that lurk in terrible reality. Not recommended for light viewing.