Directed by William Friedkin • 2006 • United States, Germany
Starring Ashley Judd, Michael Shannon, Lynn Collins

Director William Friedkin received some of the best reviews of his later career for this searing psychological thriller, a relentless plunge into nightmare delusion adapted by playwri...

Directed by Andrzej Żuławski • 1981 • France, West Germany
Starring Isabelle Adjani, Sam Neill, Heinz Bennent

Andrzej Żuławski’s stunningly choreographed nightmare of a marriage unraveling is an experience unlike any other. Professional spy Mark (Sam Neill) returns to his West Berlin home to fin...

Directed by Mitchell Lichtenstein • 2007 • United States
Starring Jess Weixler, John Hensley, Josh Pais

This fiendish blend of body horror, dark comedy, and Freudian feminist statement features a pitch-perfect performance from Jess Weixler as Dawn O’Keefe, a Christian teenager who promotes chast...

Directed by David Cronenberg • 1975 • Canada
Starring Paul Hampton, Joe Silver, Lynn Lowry

Canadian auteur David Cronenberg has spent much of his career mining our fears about sex, technology, and corporeal existence, but this breakout feature is perhaps the most shocking of all his body-horror ...

Directed by Georges Franju • 1960 • France
Starring Pierre Brasseur, Alida Valli, François Guérin

At his secluded chateau in the French countryside, a brilliant, obsessive doctor (Pierre Brasseur) attempts a radical plastic surgery to restore the beauty of his daughter’s disfigured countenance—a...

Directed by Ishiro Honda • 1963 • Japan
Starring Hiroshi Koizumi, Kumi Mizuno, Kenji Sahara

Leaving behind the kaiju genre for which he was best known, Ishiro Honda took a detour into hallucinogenic science fiction with this disturbing psychological survival thriller that stands as perhaps the d...

Directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara • 1966 • Japan
Starring Tatsuya Nakadai, Machiko Kyo, Mikijiro Hira

A staggering work of existential science fiction, THE FACE OF ANOTHER dissects identity with the sure hand of a surgeon. Okuyama (YOJIMBO’s Tatsuya Nakadai), after being burned and disfigured in a...

Directed by David Lynch • 1977 • United States
Starring Jack Nance, Charlotte Stewart, Judith Anna Roberts

David Lynch’s 1977 debut feature, ERASERHEAD, is both a lasting cult sensation and a work of extraordinary craft and beauty. With its mesmerizing black-and-white photography by Frederick El...

Directed by David Cronenberg • 1979 • Canada
Starring Oliver Reed, Samantha Eggar, Art Hindle

A disturbed woman is receiving a radical form of psychotherapy at a remote, mysterious institute. Meanwhile, her five-year-old daughter, under the care of her estranged husband, is being terrorized by a...

Directed by David Cronenberg • 1981 • Canada
Starring Stephen Lack, Jennifer O’Neill, Michael Ironside

With SCANNERS, David Cronenberg plunges us into one of his most terrifying and thrilling sci-fi worlds. After a man with extraordinary—and frighteningly destructive—telepathic abilities is nabb...

Directed by Claire Denis • 2001 • France
Starring Vincent Gallo, Tricia Vessey, Béatrice Dalle

Claire Denis’s poetic take on the body-horror genre is an atmospheric reverie of blood and lust that lays bare the filmmaker’s core artistic concerns around power, desire, and delirium. Newlyweds Shane...