I have created a shortlist of the most savage beatings in cinema (not the most violent scenes, per se), thus finally shedding some light on the eight greatest movies of all time.

Here they are.

(Note: I didn’t include clips of these films, because many of them weren’t available, and you should probably see all these movies. They’re pretty interesting, if not good.)

Irreversible

There’s a whole lot of context to the wildly disturbing scene in this wildly disturbing movie that features a rape and beating scene that lasts for minutes with no cutaway, but even in context, this gets my vote for the most disturbing beating in film. The lack of editing here forces you to watch what’s going on, independent of the reactions of characters onscreen. You don’t get to hide from the brutality of it all.

FYI: The film is in French, which might actually be more painful than the violence depicted.

Fight Club

There are two scenes in this film that could easily make this list and one that would be on the fringe. The two that would be shoo-ins would be Tyler’s beating at the hands of Lou, the owner of the bar where Fight Club occurs, and the narrator’s pummeling of Angel, played by Jared Leto. The narrator’s fight with himself was also surprisingly graphic, though it was a little too funny to be savage.

I’m picking the beating of Jared Leto as the most gruesome, due to the length, the static camera, and, most importantly, the sounds. That wet meat sound that is prevalent in the scene adds a very real element that those kung-fu sound effects don’t lend to other scenes.

The Untouchables

If you want your beating to be viewed as “savage” or “violent,” use a baseball bat. Not a tire iron, or a golf club, but a baseball bat. While only two scenes on this list employ baseball bats, many of the also-rans that just missed the cut ratchet up the pain factor with bats. Namely: Casino, Inglorious Basterds, and A Bronx Tale.

The brutality of the scene in The Untouchables is partially a result of the context. Al Capone, played by Robert De Niro, is pacing around a banquet table, lecturing his criminal compatriots. He then proceeds, while all parties are dressed in tuxedos, to beat one of them to death.

So, with that in mind, here are the nine most depressing films of the past nine years.

9. The Dead Girl

A dead body is found in a field one quiet morning, and we are thrust headfirst into the excellent but deeply soul-shattering film, The Dead Girl. This character study examines not only the events leading up to the girl’s death, but how her demise affects the people in her life as well as other people in the community, including the killer himself. The cast is fantastic, and the movie is very well-written and directed. It just leaves you feeling perfectly empty inside. Watching it will make you parents out there give your daughters that extra kiss on the forehead when you tuck them in to bed at night.

8. Antichrist

Start with a child falling out of the window of a building and end with a woman committing such depraved acts of violence against her husband that blood spurts out of his penis, and you’ve got one of the nine most depressing films of the last nine years. Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist is another bizarre accomplishment by the kooky Danish director. It deals with the grieving process, guilt, misogyny, and self-destruction that spins out of control and into full-on horror mode by film’s end. Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg give awesome performances as a couple who retreat to a cabin in the woods as they attempt to recover from the accidental death of their son. What was supposed to consist of a little R&R and some soul-searching instead becomes a living hell of depravity and biblical archetypes. Oh, and there’s a talking fox in it, which isn’t at all depressing, but I simply could not discuss this movie without mentioning that it contains a talking fox.

7. Winter’s Bone

Do you like movies about meth-cooking fathers who abandon their families, leaving them to fend off poverty and the local hillbilly gangsters for themselves? Then Winter’s Bone is the movie for you! As you can probably gather from the above description, this movie is full of sunshine and flowers and hugs. It does not include any scenes of domestic violence, and certainly at no point in the film is the heroine forced to sever the hands of her father’s corpse with a chainsaw. Nope, none of that here. It’s just happy times all around.

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