Most people might not associate France with disturbing, graphically violent content that makes Hostel and Saw look tame by comparison, and yet at the dawn of the 21st century (with some predecessors), a movement was born which did just that. According to critic James Quandt at ArtForum, who coined the term associated with this filmmaking style, these movies created "a cinema suddenly determined to break every taboo."

Many of the films from the New French Extremity movement are heavily influenced by the body horror of Canadian director David Cronenberg movies, especially his earlier films like Rabid, The Brood, and Videodrome; the film Tetsuo: The Iron Man is also heavily influential. Man Bites Dog and Baise-Moi are two of the earliest New French Extremity films, whose themes often include the sudden intrusion of violence into normal life found in home invasions, car crashes, pregnancy, and birth, along with their general subversive approach. In many of the films France is in a civil war or other dystopian leadership.

9 Titane

Titane
Neon

After a car accident as a child, a young girl has a piece of titanium used to reconstruct her skull, making her part human and part machine in Julia Ducournau’s Titane. The film is about the merging of people with technology. Years pass after her car accident, and she grows up and becomes mysteriously pregnant. After going on a killing spree, the character shaves her head and breaks her nose so that she looks like a male kidnap victim she sees on television, someone kidnapped ten years ago. She meets the grieving and wounded father and convinces him that she is really his son.

The changes in her body should have alerted the father to the fact that his long-lost son was actually a pregnant woman. He is so desperate to believe this falsehood, however, that he declares his love for his son, no matter what happens, and in this way the film explores issues of redemption. The movie ends with a shock as the pregnant woman gives birth in a scene that simply needs to be seen. This film is from the director of the feminist cannibal film Raw, and shows a heavy influence of the crazy film Tetsuo: The Iron Man and its sequel, along with a bit of Cronenberg's car-crash-eroticism film Crash. Titane is outrageous and visually stunning, and the craziest film of 2021.

8 Raw

A woman looks at her body covered in blood in Raw
Focus World

The aforementioned Raw is a gory coming-of-age cannibalism tale with some dark humor added to the mix from Julia Ducournau, who went on to make Titane. Young Justine is from a family of vegetarians. She goes off to a veterinary school and is pressured into eating meat as part of a hazing ritual, and when she tastes some nasty raw animal meat, a rash covers her body. She soon discovers that she now has cravings for meat - any kind of meat, raw or fresh, alive or dead. Her older sister tries to initiate her into the ways of meat-eating, attempting to control her occasionally homicidal urges. The movie has some incredibly gross special effects and is very Cronenbergian, including a particularly nasty vivisection.

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7 Haute Tension

Haute Tension
Lions Gate Films

High Tension (Haute Tension) is the violent story of a woman being hunted down by a faceless, nameless killer predator who always seems to be able to find her. The movie hints at whom the killer might be, but we don’t learn until the rather surprising twist ending. Director Alexandre Aja was a prominent figure in the New French Extremity movement, and this 2003 film features a brutal home invasion massacre, and indeed home invasions occur in many of the new French extreme genre movies. This is one of the few French Extremity films that was successful in the United States as well, leading to Aja's hollywood career.

6 Frontiere(s)

Frontiere(s)
After Dark Films

Frontiere(s) is a great, brutal film that seems to have been heavily influenced by The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The film takes place after fascists have overtaken the government, and a crew of thieves, one of them a minority, flees Paris in search of Peace. Instead, they end up at a mansion run by a family of psychotic sadistic killer Nazis, who they must outwit if they want to survive. The film contains a plethora of blood and gore. There is a lot of political tension in this and some other films on this list, which seem to portray France in the midst of a dystopian civil war.

5 Seven Days

A man strings up a shirtless man and tortures him in Seven Days
MPI Home Video

In the 2010 film Seven Days, the young daughter of a surgeon is brutally raped and murdered. The surgeon manages to kidnap the suspect from the police, and he takes him to an isolated setting in the middle of a vast nothingness, where no screams can be heard. In his isolated house, he has created a foolproof torture chamber. For a period of seven days he tortures the pedophile, and then kills him. Obviously, this is a film filled with gratuitous torture and mutilation. The actors must be applauded for their dedication to the roles. In one scene, the surgeon lifts the pedophile by the next, choking him. We see the pedophile’s face turn blue and his veins look like they are about to burst out of his head. We can see the doctor is applying all the force he can. It was just so realistic that the scene makes one wonder if any effects were even used.

In the most gruesome scene, the surgeon performs a hideously sadistic surgery on his victim, rearranging his colon so that when the victim tries to defecate, feces drip out of a hole in his stomach. It is so unnerving and cruel, and presents the key question of the film, one which is asked in many of the best revenge movies: who is the protagonist? Who is “the good” one? Who perpetrates extreme evil on a fellow human? This film is difficult to watch because of the unrelenting nature of the torture. It is also a serious look at the nature of good and evil.

4 Man Bites Dog

Man Bites Dog
Roxie Releasing

Man Bites Dog is a hilarious, outrageously violent French film that is essentially their version of Natural Born Killers, in that it satirizes the way serial killers (and violence) are portrayed in the media. As in the Oliver Stone film, Man Bites Dog combines brutal sadistic violence with way over the top comedy. A media team with a camera follows around a serial killer; at first they just film what he does, but after a point they actually start helping him.

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It’s humorous, but creepy, disturbing, and violent as well, and some scenes are extremely intense. The killer is a witty, smooth-talking man with a good sense of humor which contrasts with the terrible things he does, and the cinéma vérité style of filmmaking brilliantly blends the grotesqueries with documentary style, in what may well be one of the earliest and best found footage movies.

3 Irreversible

A woman is violated on the ground of a red hallway in Irreversible
LionsGate FIlms Home Entertainment

Irreversible is a shocking film (almost too shocking) about rape, revenge, pregnancy, and more. Gaspar Noé, the director, delivers to the audience a confrontational film filled with sights and sounds and audio frequencies meant to disturb and nauseate the viewer. Noé did his research, and for the film’s opening scenes, the background sound is one that has been proven to cause hysteria, confusion, nausea, and worse, for purposes of warfare. That should give you an idea of how intense this film is. Irreversible is best known for two things a nine-minute brutal rape sequence with no cuts, and a head being bashed in with a fire hydrant; both scenes are extremely shocking in their own way. This is not a film for those who are easily (or even mildly) disturbed. It has a wild, indescribable style not seen in any film before this.

2 Inside

A man points a gun at someone with scissors stabbed into their hand into the wall in Inside
La Fabrique de Films

Inside (A l’interieur) is one of the highlights of the New French Extremity movement, and has gained a wide cult following since its release. A 9-month pregnant woman whose husband died 4 months prior in a car accident is preparing herself for birth when a creepy female stalker breaks into her house, with very evil intentions. Several police show up but do nothing. This is an extremely violent and shocking movie, and it is a Cronenbergian body horror film as well. It’s a real shock when we find out who the intruder is and what the intruder wants. The film is creepy, gory, scary, paranoid, and claustrophobic, and one of the best debut movies from first-time filmmakers Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo. Inside is definitely not easy to watch, but it nevertheless remains an incredible film you won’t be able to look away from.

1 Martyrs

The faces of two bloody women in the dark in Martyrs
Wild Bunch

When Martyrs came out, controversy followed it everywhere, many people stating that it is the most violent, brutal and sadistic film ever made, and it still has the reputation. The film is about suffering more than anything else, of showing people who are abused so badly that the light seems to leave their eyes. In one of the most controversial movies of recent years, Martyrs begins with an intense and typically violent home invasion where an entire family is killed. For about 90 minutes we see incredible acts of cruelty, and then there is an explanation for why a young woman has been put through so much pain; there is actually a philosophy and meaning for the sadistic acts shown. It is a dark film with an extremely nihilistic philosophy.