20 Of The Goriest Movies Ever Made

In horror movies, the gore isn’t just blood and guts designed to repulse — on the contrary, it’s an effective storytelling device to convey the consequences and brutality of a scene. It’s also a beautifully disgusting art form with superstars as important as scream queens and slashers in horror films. Make-up artists like Rick Baker and Tom Savini have taken the genre from cheesy to realistically gory with a chef’s kiss.

To a true gore aficionado, the decapitations and disembowelments are just as key to the movie as the plot or casting. CGI can create everything from the fantastic to the mundane, but it still can’t generate believable gore. The best goriest movies ever made not only have terrifying, compelling stories, but buckets of practical effects blood and innards.

Updated on November 14, 2024, by Arthur Goyaz: The horror genre is constantly searching for new ways to terrify audiences, and apart from eerie scenarios and jumpscares, excessive violence has proven to be an effective way to shock viewers. This list was updated to add more gory recommendations and reflect CBR’s current formatting standards.

20 The Substance Annihilates Beauty Standards in Bloody Fashion

The Final 30 Minutes Are a Never-Ending Nightmare

Released in 2024, The Substance is already one of the goriest movies ever made. An unsuspecting viewer can be easily fooled by the film’s premise: an aging actress stumbles upon a black-market drug that generates a younger, idealized version of herself. She becomes addicted to the fame and glamour of her replicated self, gradually forgetting that they’re both one person. As the main character spirals out of control, The Substances explores truly nauseating extremes of grotesque imagery.

The film’s erratic, over-stimulated editing immerses the viewer in an escalating nightmare of self-destruction and self-hate. The Substance isn’t subtle at all, and the gory spectacle of its final 30 minutes makes it blatantly clear. Director Coralie Fargeat loves a sickening close-up, which makes the whole thing all the more difficult to watch: there’s eye-gouging, face slamming, teeth being pulled off. The camera makes it as if the viewer is inside the injuries at times, or the injury itself. And when it feels like things can’t get any worse, the blood spectacle becomes all too literal, leading The Substance towards a memorable finale.

A fading celebrity decides to use a black-market drug, a cell-replicating substance that temporarily creates a younger, better version of herself.

Director

Coralie Fargeat

Release Date

September 20, 2024

Cast

Demi Moore , Margaret Qualley , Dennis Quaid , Gore Abrams , Hugo Diego Garcia , Olivier Raynal , Tiffany Hofstetter , Tom Morton , Jiselle Burkhalter , Axel Baille , Oscar Lesage , Matthew Géczy , Philip Schurer

Runtime

140 Minutes

19 The Last House on Dead End Street Was Believed to Be a Real Snuff Film

The Death Scenes Looked Too Real at the Time

Those who dig deeper into the goriest movies ever made will eventually stumble upon The Last House on Dead Street, a low-budget gem of the 1970s. The movie follows an enraged ex-convict and filmmaker who decides to make a snuff film out of contempt for society and its insatiable taste for violence. To do that, he hires an unhinged film crew and goes after the producers and actors who betrayed him.

For a movie this old, The Last House on Dead End Street delivers plenty of gruesome and realistic practical effects when conducting scenes of violence. Its most infamous sequence features a woman having her legs dismembered by a hacksaw while she’s still alive. She’s then eviscerated with a gardening tool. The Last House on Dead End Street was so into its concept that its end credits consisted entirely of pseudonyms. This, added to the horrifying death scenes in the movie, led people to believe it was a real snuff film, resulting in a VHS urban legend.

18 Halloween II is the Goriest Movie in the Franchise

Michael Myers’ Rage is Palpable

Nearly every Rob Zombie horror movie could be on this list, but Halloween II stands out for being the goriest entry in a famously gory franchise. The infamous follow-up to the controversial 2007 remake sees Zombie free from the clutches of John Carpenter’s vision to offer an original deep-dive into the troubled psyche of Michael Myers. Some love it, some hate it, but every fan will squirm at the sight of Halloween II‘s horrifying imagery.

Halloween II features Michael’s most unforgiving killing spree yet, all shown in graphic detail. Zombie goes as far as to show Michael brutally killing a dog and eating its entrails — an act only merely implied in the original Halloween. There’s plenty of stabbing, bludgeoning, and broken bones. Different from other movies in the Halloween franchise — which feature Michael as this cold, detached killer — viewers can clearly see his anger in Zombie’s Halloween sequel.

Halloween 2

Laurie Strode struggles to come to terms with her brother Michael’s deadly return to Haddonfield, Illinois; meanwhile, Michael prepares for another reunion with his sister.

Director

Rob Zombie

Release Date

August 28, 2009

Cast

Scout Taylor-Compton , Tyler Mane , Malcolm McDowell

Runtime

1 hour 45 minutes

17 The House That Jack Built Depicts the Atrocities of a Narcissistic Killer

The Movie’s Acid Humor is as Shocking as the Gory Scenes

The House That Jack Built frames its narrative around the dark impulses of a failed architect, Jack, who’s willing to go to horrifying lengths to craft an artistic masterpiece made of a pile of corpses. Every gory scene in the movie hits like a dull thud. Lars von Trier crafts a raw, disgusting, and often darkly hilarious portrait of a man obsessed with himself. It unravels like an American Psycho without boundaries.

While the idea of a work of art made of innocent victims of a vicious killer is already creepy enough, The House That Jack Built explores in detail how the protagonist managed to gather all those corpses. He goes on to kill baby ducks, women, and even children: there’s no limit to what he can do. What makes The House That Jack Built one of the goriest movies out there is how many of the film’s horrifying scenes drag for very long: in one instance, he hunts down two small boys in front of their mother, shoots them dead, then forces the mother to have a picnic with their corpses. The audience is held hostage by the tragedy.

The House That Jack Built

The story follows Jack, a highly intelligent serial killer, over the course of twelve years, and depicts the murders that really develop his inner madman.

Director

Lars von Trier

Release Date

October 17, 2018

Cast

Matt Dillon , Bruno Ganz , Uma Thurman

Runtime

2 Hours 32 Minutes

Main Genre

Crime

16 Possessor is a Psychological Thriller That Flirts With Body Horror

Brandon Cronenberg Does Justice to the Family Name

Possessor is centered around a secret organization that uses advanced technology to “possess” the bodies of other people and force them to carry on high-profile assassinations. Andrea Riseborough is Tasya Vos, the real assassin who takes control of the body of Colin Tate, an innocent young man. As she prepares to take care of her latest assignment, Tasya fights an incessant battle against her host’s mind.

Possessor has such ghastly depictions of violence that the movie received an uncut version. The film’s initial moments already prepare the viewer for what’s to come: possessing the body of a woman, Tasya stabs a businessman multiple times in graphic detail. The practical effects of the movie look bizarrely real. The goriest scene of the movie involves a man being severely beaten and having his eye gouged out with a fire poker. Possessor is definitely not for the faint of heart.

Possessor

An agent works for a secretive organization that uses brain-implant technology to inhabit other people’s bodies – ultimately driving them to commit assassinations for high-paying clients.

Director

Brandon Cronenberg

Release Date

October 2, 2020

Runtime

103 minutes

Main Genre

Sci-Fi

15 Bone Tomahawk Delivers One of the Goriest Death Scenes Ever Made

It is Both a Classic Western and a Horror Movie

Bone Tomahawk is a great example of a movie that uses gore as a vehicle to embrace horror and escalate tension. Playing out like a standard Western, the film follows an aging sheriff and a group of gunslingers on a rescue mission into the lair of a cannibalistic tribe. Without falling into outdated cliches that depict white men as saviors and native tribes as savages, Bone Tomahawk rejects any moral compass, with “heroes” as unreliable as the mysterious tribe they hunt.

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The film is a genuine descent into madness: the closer the characters get to their targets, the closer they get to self-destruction.Bone Tomahawk goes full horror in its latter half, embracing grotesque imagery to paint the dying west red, earning the title of one of the goriest horror movies with a stomach-turning death scene: one in which an innocent man is torn in half by a cannibal’s bare hands.

Bone Tomahawk

In the dying days of the old west, an elderly sheriff and his posse set out to rescue their town’s doctor from cannibalistic cave dwellers.

Director

S. Craig Zahler

Release Date

October 23, 2015

Cast

Patrick Wilson , Kurt Russell , Sean Young , Lili Simmons , Matthew Fox , Zahn McClarnon

Runtime

132 minutes

14 Revenge Has A Promise in Its Title

Nauseating Close-Ups and Bloody Kills Define the Movie

Revenge could’ve easily gone down the path of cheap shock value with its rape-revenge premise, but this time, there’s the sensitive eye of a woman behind the camera. Coralie Fargeat touches the delicate topic with mastery, turning the thriller setup into a harrowing survival horror as a group of men assaults Jen, a young American woman, and leaves her to die in the desert. Fueled by the thrill of retribution, Jen rises from her ashes, and the prey becomes the hunter in a bloody fashion.

Revenge doesn’t subject viewers to an unnecessarily graphic sexual assault scene, but when it comes to showing the demise of its perpetrators, the movie turns into a gory ride. In one of the most hard-to-watch sequences in recent memory, a man steps on glass and is unable to move until he proceeds to slowly, painfully remove the shards from his foot. But the icing on the cake goes to Revenge‘s gory cat-and-mouse finale, when tension mounts to unbelievable extremes in a satisfying payoff.

13 Zombie Flesh Eaters Brings the Zombie Genre Back To Its Origins

The Walking Dead Kill Mercilessly

It’s difficult to talk about the goriest horror movies without mentioning Lucio Fulci at least once. The Giallo filmmaker was known for his mercilessly long, graphic gory scenes. Fulci’s determination to depict unimaginable pain perfectly fit the growing zombie genre in the 70s, and Zombie Flesh Eaters pays tribute to the roots of zombie mythology. In the film, a young woman looking for her missing father ends up on a remote island with an American journalist. They soon discover that the place is afflicted by a curse that’s causing the dead to rise.

Zombie Flesh Eaters depicts zombies as supernatural creatures, delving into the unknown through a tropical nightmare. The attention to detail in the creatures’ makeup is unparalleled, resulting in some of the most grotesque zombies ever put onscreen. The sight of the monsters is already gory enough — with limbs rotting and falling apart, and maggots crawling all over their faces — but Fulcio also delivers a range of horrifying horror deaths. There’s one scene, in particular, featuring a woman having her eye gouged out by splintered wood that will stick with viewers for a long time.

Zombie

Director

Lucio Fulci

Release Date

July 18, 1980

Cast

Tisa Farrow , Ian McCulloch , Richard Johnson , Al Cliver , Auretta Gay , Stefania D’Amario , Olga Karlatos , Ugo Bologna

Runtime

91 Minutes

12 Martyrs Features Extreme Scenes of Torture

How Much Pain Can Someone Handle?

The premise of Martyrs is simple and cruel: how much can a person endure to feel unimaginable pain, get a glimpse of what awaits them in death, and come back to tell the story? That’s the goal of the deranged cult that kidnaps Lucie. After she escapes, she stumbles upon an old childhood friend and sets out on a quest for revenge.

Martyrs‘ reputation precedes it: 99 minutes of extreme torture and graphic violence, resulting in one of the goriest movies ever. Released at the height of the New French Extremity, a film movement known for its disturbing imagery and psychologically charged violence, Martyrs channels all its rage against humanity in a narrative devoid of hope or salvation.

Martyrs

A young woman’s quest for revenge against the people who kidnapped and tormented her as a child leads her and a friend, who is also a victim of child abuse, on a terrifying journey into a living hell of depravity.

Director

Pascal Laugier

Release Date

September 3, 2008

Cast

Mylène Jampanoï , Morjana Alaoui

Runtime

99 minutes

11 The Sadness Breaks All the Boundaries of Graphic Violence

Zombies Are Fueled by the Worst Kinds of Intrusive Thoughts

One of the greatest horror movies of the past five years, The Sadness offers a fresh take on the overdone zombie genre. The movie revolves around a couple trying to reunite in Taipei amid a chaotic outbreak. Those infected with the mysterious disease will begin to cry, then give in to their most violent impulses in a chain of depravity and ghastly sadism.

The Sadness does a great job of establishing tension through anticipation of violence, constantly challenging viewers to look away from the screen. Great practical effects make for genuinely horrifying imagery, including people having boiling water poured over their heads and a bloody subway massacre. It’s a nauseating ride, perfect for those who like to watch a horror bloodbath.

10 Cannibal Holocaust Caused a Lot if Controversy Upon Release

The Atrocities Featured in the Movie Were Believed to Be Real

Long before The Blair Witch Project ignited a wave of found footage horror films, Cannibal Holocaust was doing it with grotesque precision. The 1980 Italian horror movie may be the first found footage film, and even if it’s not, it ranks as one of the best. It also has the first on-screen castration, which is one of the many reasons the director, Ruggero Deodato, was arrested on obscenity charges upon the film’s release.

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The plot involves a group of filmmakers who disappear in the Amazon rainforest while making a documentary on an indigenous tribe of cannibals. The story unfolds when their canisters of shot footage are recovered, showing them being systematically hunted, killed, and devoured by the tribe. This film is actually pretty sick and caused a lot of controversy when it was released, mostly because the gore footage is frighteningly realistic.

Cannibal Holocaust

During a rescue mission into the Amazon rainforest, a professor stumbles across lost film shot by a missing documentary crew.

Director

Ruggero Deodato

Release Date

June 21, 1985

Cast

Robert Kerman , Francesca Ciardi , Perry Pirkanen , Luca Barbareschi

Writers

Gianfranco Clerici

Runtime

95 minutes

9 Re-Animator Was Originally Given An X-Rating

Scientific Madness Taken Too Far

Horror master H.P. Lovecraft’s stories are often moody pieces with incomprehensible terrors that don’t translate well to film, with very few exceptions. As such, the 1985 film Re-Animator, based on a Lovecraft novellette, handled the transition brilliantly. It was made even better with solid gore and some of the most imaginative uses of a decapitated head ever filmed.

The simple story of a scientist who develops a serum to bring the dead back to life gets complicated and bloody when the reanimated corpses become violent zombies. This movie was so chock-full of disgusting and deviant gore that it was originally given an X-rating. The unrated version was far more popular than an R-rated cut because the fandom clearly appreciates good gore.

Re-Animator follows Herbert West, a medical student who has developed a serum that can reanimate dead tissues. When he enrolls at a New England university, his experiments lead to horrifying results, unleashing chaos and raising ethical questions as he seeks to overcome death itself.

Director

Stuart Gordon

Release Date

October 18, 1985

Cast

Jeffrey Combs , Bruce Abbott , Robert Sampson , David Gale , Barbara Crampton

Runtime

84 Minutes

8 House Of 1000 Corpses Is A Tribute To 1970s Exploitation Movies

Rob Zombie’s Most Unrelenting Carnage

Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses is a loving tribute to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the violent exploitation films of the early 1970s. Critics that panned it as derivative missed the point that it was an homage and the fact that it added to the genre. The gore in particular was both fresh and cleverly twisted. Despite its weak critical ratings, House of 1000 Corpses has since become a classic cult movie.

It’s not so much that the film has swimming pools of blood, but rather the brutal way the gore is utilized throughout. The group of friends who happen upon the Firefly family homestead are tortured and killed in extremely violent and disturbing ways. The terrifying aura is further accentuated by an amazing collection of creepy and original killers.

House of 1000 Corpses

Two young couples traveling across the backwoods of Texas searching for urban legends of murder end up as prisoners of a bizarre and sadistic backwater family of serial killers.

Release Date

April 11, 2003

Director

Rob Zombie

Cast

Sid Haig , Bill Moseley , Sheri Moon Zombie , Rainn Wilson

7 Hostel Was One Of The First Films To Be Labeled “Torture Porn”

And It Is Based on a True Story

Eli Roth’s 2005 horror film, Hostel, was the first to be labeled “torture porn” for its graphic depictions of human suffering and mutilation. The J-Splatter film Ichi the Killer, released in 2001, was retroactively added to the sub-genre, but the Japanese import was a tongue-in-cheek black comedy, while Hostel was as serious as torture-induced cardiac arrest. Hostel was inspired by a real-life website that advertised the opportunity of killing a human being.

Not only was the violence too realistic for comfort, but the film’s concept of a place where rich people pay to torture and kill people seemed terrifyingly plausible. The 1976 splatter film, Blood Sucking Freaks, had a similar theme of kidnap and torture for entertainment, but it was relatively obscure. On the other hand, Hostel was a box office smash that brought pseudo-snuff movies to a mainstream audience.

Three backpackers head to a Slovak city that promises to meet their hedonistic expectations, with no idea of the hell that awaits them.

Release Date

September 17, 2005

Director

Eli Roth

Runtime

1 hour 34 minutes

6 Terrifier Puts Slashing Back Into the Slasher Genre

Backed Up by a Consistent Streak of Grotesque Sequels

The slasher genre got pretty stale, and more sadly, bloodless with the success of films like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer. Released in 2016, the neo-classic Terrifier put the slashing back into slashers as well as the blood and gore. It also introduced the first franchise-worthy killer in a long time with Art the Clown.

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The gore in Terrifier, as well as its sequels Terrifier 2 and Terrifier 3, is nothing short of spectacular, but the kills are also refreshingly innovative. Most movie slashers have a signature weapon, like Leatherface’s chainsaw or Freddy’s razor glove, but Art the Clown has a literal bag of tricks full of killing implements. He’s just as comfortable sawing a person in half as he is eating a victim’s face or shredding them to bits with a bladed cat o’ nine tails.

Terrifier

On Halloween night, Tara Heyes finds herself as the obsession of a sadistic murderer known as Art the Clown.

Release Date

March 15, 2018

Director

Damien Leone

Cast

Jenna Kanell , David Howard Thornton

5 Evil Dead 2 Is Even More Violent Than Its Predecessor

Body Horror Blends Into Dark Comedy

The cult masterpiece The Evil Dead had so much disturbing blood and gore that it received an X rating and ended up being released without a rating. The 1987 sequel/remake had even more gore and violence, which led to the same fate of being theatrically released in its unrated version. Director Sam Raimi was contractually obligated to turn in an R-rated film, but splatter-fever got the best of him and Evil Dead 2 was awash in bloody carnage.

Film distributor DEG estimated that editing the film to a rated-R cut would leave it with a running time of just 62 minutes, so they never bothered to submit it to the MPAA and formed a shell company to release it in theaters without an official rating. The final version ran 84 minutes, which is on the short end for a feature, but at least 22 of those minutes are too violent and bloody to earn an R rating, which is two severed thumbs up for fans of gore.

Evil Dead II

The lone survivor of an onslaught of flesh-possessing spirits holes up in a cabin with a group of strangers while the demons continue their attack.

Release Date

March 13, 1987

Director

Sam Raimi

Runtime

84 minutes

Cast

Bruce Campbell , Sarah Berry , Dan Hicks , Kassie DePaiva , Ted Raimi , Denise Bixler , Richard Domeier , John Peakes , Lou Hancock , Snowy Winters , Sol Abrams , Josh Becker , Scott Spiegel , Thomas Kidd , Mitch Cantor , William Preston Robertson , Jenny Griffith , Tony Elwood , Gary Jones , David Goodman , Greg Nicotero , Sam Raimi , Tom Sullivan , Robert Tapert , John W. Walter

Production Company

Expand

4 Pieces Doesn’t Scrimp On Gore, Despite Its Low Budget

The Practical Effects Look Too Real

The first splatter film ever made was Herschell Gordon Lewis’ 1963 gore-fest Blood Feast. The plot involved a guy who killed and dismembered women to piece together a suitable body to bring an Egyptian Goddess back to life. The underrated slasher, Pieces, released in 1982, had a similar theme in which a frenzied killer uses his female victims’ body parts to complete a human “jigsaw puzzle” of his murdered mother.

Pieces is a seriously low-budget affair, but producers didn’t scrimp on the gore effects. In the opening sequence, a young boy brutally murders his mother, and there has never been a more graphic axe-to-the-head scene in a horror movie. The rest of the film doesn’t disappoint either, with gratuitous chainsaw decapitations and power tool dismemberments scattered throughout.

A frustrated Boston detective searches for the maniac responsible for mutilating a number of university coeds.

Director

Juan Piquer Simón

Release Date

September 23, 1983

Cast

Christopher George , Lynda Day George , Frank Braña , Edmund Purdom , Ian Serra , Paul L. Smith , Jack Taylor , Gérard Tichy

Writers

Dick Randall , Roberto Loyola , Juan Piquer Simón

Runtime

85 Minutes

3 The Thing Is One Of The Greatest Horror Movies Ever Made

John Carpenter at His Best

John Carpenter’s sci-fi/horror classicThe Thing was a commercial failure in its 1982 release but has since grown into a genuine cult phenomenon. The movie is definitely scary and was tragically underrated. However, it has grown in popularity thanks to the mesmerizing practical effects, portraying some of the most innovative gore of all time.

The plot revolves around a parasitic alien invader that infects biological life forms and replicates the host. If it is discovered before it fully replicates, it bursts out of the host in bloody and terrifying ways. Academy Award-winning make-up artist Rob Bottin, who has worked on everything from Star Wars to Game of Thrones, outdid himself by creating a visceral range of horrifying and gory mutations.

A research team in Antarctica is hunted by a shape-shifting alien that assumes the appearance of its victims.

Release Date

June 25, 1982

Cast

Kurt Russell , Keith David , wilford brimley , Richard Masur , T.K. Carter , David Clennon

Runtime

1 hour 49 minutes

2 Braindead Was Peter Jackson’s Attempt At Making Splatter Films

It’s a Disgustingly Fun Ride

Most people are unaware that, before Peter Jackson made the Lord of the Rings trilogy, he got his start making low-budget splatter films. His first, Bad Taste, had some delightfully sickening moments, but that was just a warm-up for the avalanche of carnage he unleashed in his 1992 zombie epic, Braindead. Released as Dead Alive in North America, the film sought to answer the question of whether it was possible to outdo the comic gore of Evil Dead 2.

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The answer was a resounding yes, as the movie packed more wholesale splatter per frame than any movie before or since. The scene in which protagonist Lionel fights off a horde of the undead with a running lawnmower alone hits the top gore quotient for a movie. Despite oozing blood from all orifices, the film’s brutality and violence were considered so lighthearted that it never ran into X-rating or banning issues like the Evil Dead films.

1 Dawn Of The Dead Improved Upon The Original In Every Possible Way

The Higher the Stakes, the More Gruesome the Deaths

Dawn of the Dead was George A. Romero’s follow-up to his zombie masterpiece, Night of the Living Dead, and improved upon the original in every conceivable way. The story was more compelling, the zombies were more terrifying, and the practical effects were gorier. In fact, the 1978 film is the gold standard for gore, establishing splatter make-up effects as a visually shocking art form.

Before Tom Savini’s innovative work on the film, the concept of gore was blood dripping off a mannequin arm or a paper mache head rolling down a hill. Savini was able to create effects that looked realistic and horrifying. Most people have never seen a head blown off by a gun, a zombie taking a chuck out of someone’s neck, or a human evisceration, but those things in Dawn of the Dead looked like what most would imagine they would be.

A nurse, a policeman, a young married couple, a salesman and other survivors of a worldwide plague that is producing aggressive, flesh-eating zombies, take refuge in a mega Midwestern shopping mall.

Release Date

May 24, 1979

Director

George Romero

Cast

Sarah Polley , Ving Rhames , Mekhi Phifer , Jake Weber , Ty Burrell , Michael Kelly , Kevin Zegers , Michael Barry

Runtime

127 minutes