9 Fantastic Movies Too Devastating To Watch More Than Once

It would seem that a movie only has Lars von Trier's stamp of approval if it entices and repulses the audience with equal gravity, making them strangely proud to have gotten through it, but ultimately knowing that a second viewing would absolutely destroy their day, week, and month.

His films are incredible, no doubt. There's no other director so capable of making horrific sequences echo through your brain with a peculiar blend of beauty and dread.

So although it seems that during the course of Dancer in the Dark every bad thing that could happen to a human being has, in fact, occurred right in front of your very eyes, it's presented in such a way that you can't look away.

Dancer in the Dark pulls no punches, with all but the faintest glimmers of morality and human decency going out the window about twenty minutes in. Björk gives an inspired, vulnerable performance as a naive Czech immigrant who's going blind and is trying to make enough money to get her son an operation that will keep him from suffering a similar fate.

Hope is dangled in front of her only so it can be viciously sucked away and make you yell at the screen, "Stop trusting people, you fool! All they want to do is cause you physical and emotional harm!"

But she can't hear you.