10 Movies That Prove 2024 Was the Best Year for Sicko Cinema

To put it simply, if a movie is kind of gross, explicit, confronting, or just a bit sleazy (hell, maybe even all of the above), then it can proudly call itself a sicko movie. Sicko movies can be good or bad, but they are defined by their extremity and boundary-pushing attitudes, with a classic sicko film being something like Pink Flamingos, and more recent sicko films including the likes of Babylon and The Wolf of Wall Street.

If you raise an eyebrow at a few points during a film, and find yourself thankful that you’re not watching it with family members (RIP if you are, though), then it might well be an example of sicko cinema. And 2024 was a good year for this kind of movie, as the following releases will hopefully demonstrate. They’re ranked below, starting with the pretty sick and ending with the positively filthy.

10

‘Challengers’

Directed by Luca Guadagnino

Luca Guadagnino is well-known for making some highly sensual movies, and being unafraid to explore sexual themes and situations that can be quite upfront, yet still relatively tasteful. As such, Challengers is more on the milder side of things, as far as “sicko” movies go, but it is sexually charged throughout, and places a huge amount of emphasis on a trio of people who all become romantically linked over the course of many years.

On top of being a romantic drama (with some comedy), Challengers also succeeds as a sports movie about tennis, likening the physicality, passion, and intimacy of the sport to the sexual experiences of the main characters. It all feels visceral and works extremely well, never shying away from sex but also never getting gratuitous with it.

9

‘In a Violent Nature’

Directed by Chris Nash

There is something inherently twisted, in all honesty, about the slasher genre, with the whole appeal often coming down to watching a brutal killer chopping and murdering their way through a bunch of (usually young and attractive) people. In a Violent Nature is unapologetically another slasher movie, with a premise that boils down to what most of them boil down to, but it’s also executed in an almost arthouse/meditative way.

Following the killer pretty much the entire time, In a Violent Nature has a lot of walking, stillness, stalking, and, occasionally, graphic violence. It is unusually paced and presented, meaning some may find parts of it boring (that might well even be by design), but based on the grisliness of the murder scenes themselves, In a Violent Nature can still count itself as a moderately sick movie.

8

‘Anora’

Directed by Sean Baker

A little like Challengers, Anora is a highly sexualized movie that has a reason for going to the places it does, so calling it gratuitous might actually be a surprisingly bold claim. After all, the main character (Mikey Madison) here is a sex worker, and Sean Baker wants to immerse the audience in the world she lives in, which means being honest and direct about the kind of work she does.

But Anora isn’t just meant to titillate or provoke, as it eventually becomes a love story, then a comedic farce, and then something of an oddball thriller, and then something that leans close to genuinely heartbreaking. It’s a rollercoaster ride of a movie, and one that might offend those with more delicate sensibilities, but it’s all in service of authenticity and a powerful story.

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7

‘Megalopolis’

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

There are plenty of reasons why someone might feel a little sick while watching Megalopolis. It’s all presented in a visually bizarre, sometimes striking, and sometimes ugly-looking way, it runs for a sickeningly long amount of time (and feels a good deal longer), its trailer and some pre-release controversy might’ve put a bad taste in the mouths of some viewers, and it gets a little weird as far as sex goes.

Regarding the latter, a lot of that comes down to the strange sort of femme fatale character Aubrey Plaza plays but, to give credit where it’s due, she is one of the most consistently entertaining parts of the movie. Anyway, even if it’s not terribly good, Megalopolis is interesting, and maybe Francis Ford Coppola deserves some credit for making such a wild cinematic swing.

6

‘MaXXXine’

Directed by Ti West

While not as good as X or Pearl, MaXXXine was an interesting enough follow-up to those movies by Ti West, who once again showed that boundaries within the horror genre aren’t something he’s fearful of crossing. MaXXXine is all about the adult film industry in LA during the 1980s, and what happens when certain people associated with it start getting killed off by a mysterious murderer.

There’s a lot of Brian De Palma in here, and a little Dario Argento, too, with both those filmmakers being among the best sicko directors of the 1970s and 1980s. So, West is borrowing from the best here, and though MaXXXine can’t exactly reach the heights it aspires to, it is appropriately raunchy, explicit, and graphically violent, so it earns the right to be called pretty sick overall.

5

‘Nosferatu’

Directed by Robert Eggers

One of the final big releases of the year also happens to be one of the sickest: the latest film by Robert Eggers, Nosferatu. Originally, Nosferatu was a take on Dracula that changed certain things for copyright purposes, and has since gone on to be a recognizable name for anyone who likes a good vampire movie, with Count Orlok – the stand-in for Count Dracula – often being even more nightmarish in appearance.

And, with his take on Nosferatu, Eggers didn’t hold back, with the themes of obsession and desire leading to some fairly intense scenes of a sexual nature, and a level of violence inherent to the film that, while not over the line, is still pretty damn gnarly. It all works, though, because a film like Nosferatu should be sexually charged, dark, gritty, somber, and rather bloody.

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4

‘The Apprentice’

Directed by Ali Abbasi

Calling The Apprentice a film steeped in controversy is quite the understatement, because this movie went for broke and took no prisoners in its approach to depicting the rise of Donald Trump. It would be a brazen film if released in any year, but it was timed to come out just before the 2024 U.S. election, where Trump himself was a candidate (and ended up winning, suggesting The Apprentice did little to change things on a broad societal level).

It presents Trump in a fairly unflattering way, though it does quite openly explore how he came to be the person he is, and just what happened to give him so much power within New York City and, later on, the entire U.S. It’s a down-and-dirty movie that’s packed with shocking scenes, some gruesome surgical procedures, and intense – sometimes violent – sex, so even if it’s not really a sicko movie in a fun way, it does tick certain sicko cinema boxes.

3

‘Terrifier 3’

Directed by Damien Leone

Films don’t get much bloodier or “splattery” – for lack of a better word – than the movies in the Terrifier series, with each of the three so far getting bigger, gorier, and crazier than the last. Things have reached their peak (at least for now) with Terrifier 3, which sees Art the Clown returning to terrorize characters both old and new, never content to just kill, because he always wants to see victims suffer immensely before they perish.

In Terrifier 3, he does all his torturing and killing during Christmastime, making the film perhaps the bloodiest and most gruesome holiday movie of all time (or it’s at least a contender). It’s squishy, disgusting, sometimes quite sexually explicit (usually in a nasty way), and just an all-out assault on the senses. It’s also pretty great, in all honesty, but admittedly very much an acquired taste.

2

‘The Substance’

Directed by Coralie Fargeat

A provocative movie that beats viewers over the head with its central message, all the while proving thrilling, suspenseful, darkly funny, and gross, The Substance is one of 2024’s boldest films. It has an extreme but instantly interesting premise, following a middle-aged woman as she begins taking a mysterious substance that is supposed to restore her youth, so long as she follows a set of rules that involve – among other things – splitting her time between living in her current body and her younger one.

Rules in horror movies such as these are made to be broken, on a narrative front (as Gremlins made clear back in 1984), and so chaos ensues due to a number of things going wrong. The Substance manages to continually top itself in terms of the extreme things it’s willing to show, and discussing anything in too much detail would be sacrilegious. It’s just best to go in blind and experience every gory, twisted, explicit, and bizarre moment a movie like this has to offer.

1

‘Kinds of Kindness’

Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos

In 2023, Yorgos Lanthimos directed one of the year’s best sicko movies: Poor Things. Of course, this wasn’t the start of the sickness Lanthimos-wise, because earlier films of his, like The Lobster and (especially) Dogtooth also qualify as sicko movies. But Kinds of Kindness might well go a little further than any of his English-language movies ever have, so far as sicko qualities are concerned (again, Dogtooth might never be topped, and some would say that’s for the best).

Kinds of Kindness tells three strange stories, all featuring bizarre characters doing shocking, unpleasant, and taboo things. It’s a movie that runs for a very long time, has an unsettling energy throughout, and aims to either shock or annoy just about any conceivable person who might watch it. It’s hard to recommend, as a result, but it is, nonetheless, the epitome of sicko cinema in 2024.

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