Top 10 Movies That Caused People To Walk Out

The response to "Swiss Army Man" at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival was sort of a two-part process. At first, screenings of the surrealist comedy had to turn audiences away from packed viewing rooms... that is, until the film actually started. Then, it became more of a challenge to keep audiences in their seats, as many decided that a film starring Daniel Radcliffe of “Harry Potter” fame as a farting corpse was just too much for them to handle. To be fair, there has also been positive critical appraisal of "Swiss Army Man," but that mattered little to audience members who preferred to hit the bricks.

Do you wanna hear one REALLY good reason why audiences walked out of the 2009 art house horror flick, "Antichrist?" We have two words for you: genital. mutilation. Of course, the film's director, Lars Von Trier, is no stranger to cinematic controversy, so perhaps this was why he decided to film scenes where both Willem DaFoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg have their respective genitals mutilated in violent fashion. Audiences and critics varied between obsession and repulsion at the end results of Von Trier's work, with many screenings of the film being notable for members of the audience just not being able to handle the horror "Antichrist" set on screen.

#8: "127 Hours" (2010)

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"127 Hours" was a biopic from Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle about canyoneer Aron Ralston, who became headline news for a harrowing situation that left him trapped for days between a rock and a hard place. The film came to a head during a pivotal scene where Ralston, played by James Franco, is forced to amputate his arm in order to free himself from a huge boulder. The scene is torturous and graphic, and sent many audience members into a panic, with some theaters reporting vomiting and fainting. This is something you might expect from a horror film, but maybe not so much from a film that was marketed as “a triumphant true story.”

#7: "Raw" (2016)

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We're keeping things on the visceral tip with our next pick, specifically something of the warm and fleshy variety. The French-Belgian horror film, "Raw," raised eyebrows with its realistic and disturbing portrayal of onscreen cannibalism. The film describes the descent into madness of a vegetarian college student who is hazed and forced into eating raw rabbit. It's after this traumatic incident that she develops a taste for violence and human flesh, and it's these scenes that reportedly sent audiences into physical panic, with some becoming ill in the theater, passing out, or otherwise running the hell away from what was clearly a successfully horrific film.

Today, fans of Quentin Tarantino have grown to expect and appreciate the filmmaker's relationship with shooting onscreen violence. This wasn't exactly the case back in the early nineties, as evidenced by the powerful response to two of Tarantino's early features, "Pulp Fiction" and "Reservoir Dogs." Tarantino himself told The Guardian in 2017 how he "counted the walkouts" when "Reservoir Dogs" hit the festival circuit. "Pulp Fiction" didn't fare much better, with some audiences, perhaps unused to Tarantino's stylized vision and emphatic violence, walking out of theaters in protest. The film was even booed at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival by audiences who felt that it wasn’t deserving of the Palme d'Or, the festival's highest honor.

#5: “mother!” (2017)

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As the most recent film on our list, "mother!" was destined to be divisive, although perhaps neither director Darren Aronofsky nor star Jennifer Lawrence could've predicted exactly how split audiences would be on the film. Although some fans and critics lauded "mother!" as a challenging-yet-bold triumph, other screenings of the film were marred by walkouts and complaints. Some audience members even went so far as to demand refunds for their unpleasant experience, a move which perhaps mirrors Aronofsky's desire to provoke better than any actual scene in the finished product.

#4: "Cloverfield" (2008)

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There are many different reasons why people walk out of movies, some of which have absolutely nothing to do with the film's content. Take "Cloverfield" for example, a throwback to old school monster movies with a very modern twist: the found footage shooting style. Many audience members were actually enjoying "Cloverfield" during its big time box office opening back in 2008, but still found themselves searching for the door before the film's destructive climax. This was due to the often shaky and jarring camera work that comes part-and-parcel with the "found footage" style, an approach that left many moviegoers physically ill and nauseous.

Gaspar Noè is like many other directors on this list, in that he's unafraid of exploring even the most disturbing of subject matters within his search for artistic expression. Case in point? The brutal and unflinching rape scene in Noè's 2002 film, " Irréversible," which had audiences around the world walking out of screenings. The film, which is also full of physical violence and offensive language, even reportedly featured the presence of infrasound, a lowered frequency that said to subconsciously induce fear, tension, and nausea. All of these aspects make Noè's "Irréversible" a film that definitely is NOT for the squeamish.

#2: "The Blair Witch Project" (1999)

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"The Blair Witch Project" had the perfect amount of parameters to make it successful. First off, the film's viral marketing gave it a massive groundswell of hype before it even hit screens in 1999. Once audiences did catch a glimpse of "The Blair Witch Project," however, it made national news again, this time for reports of audiences walking out of the theater, or becoming physically ill. Many audiences weren't used to the "found footage" style of filmmaking back in the late nineties, or the dizzying effect it can often have - not to mention the fact that many fans were also scared witless by the film's overall execution. So call this one a win-win. Before we name our number one pick, here are a few honorable mentions! "Freaks" (1932) "The Passion of the Christ" (2004) "A Clockwork Orange" (1971)

#1: "The Exorcist" (1973)

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We come now to the Granddaddy of them all: the massive horror hit that sent audiences screaming and into a panic back in 1973. Audiences around the world cried, fainted, screamed and ran out of theaters that were screening director William Friedkin's satanic classic, with some proclaiming the film to just be pure evil. Maybe it's the combination of "The Exorcist's" amazing special effects, music, and cinematography, or perhaps the occult themes and religious allegory contained within the film that make it so scary. Whatever the reason, "The Exorcist" absolutely TERRIFED audiences, and remains a startling example of the power of film.