Bite (Chad Archibald, 2015)
You know when a mosquito bites you and it swells up so much that you think you're about to mutate into a hideous beast? Well, something similar happens in this Canadian film, but the protagonist is not paranoid. At the 2015 Fantasia International Film Festival, the crew handed out barf bags at the entrance, and they weren't exaggerating: two people passed out and a couple more used the bag. They came to call an ambulance, just in case.
Raw (Julia Ducournau, 2016)
This portrait of the transition from adolescence to maturity in a fantastic key left more than one disappointed, as it had been sold as an unbearable experience. Well, surprise, it's not that radical, but it is an extraordinary film that won the FIPRESCI Prize in Cannes. Mind you: there are reports that, at its first screening at the Toronto Festival, several people fainted during scenes of cannibalism.
The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973)
Perhaps we see it now, with the perspective of time, and it doesn't seem so shocking to us, but in those 70s this was a real shock for the audience. So much so that many of the spectators had different physical reactions in the room, according to some news reports of the time. The mother of all cinematographic exorcisms could not be less.
The Blair Witch Project (Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, 1999)
The innovative way in which this film used the 'found footage' resource left half the world speechless. And terrified too. But the reason why some suffered dizziness and fainting during their projections had more to do with that schizophrenic camera than with the scares that history leaves us with.
Goodnight mommy (Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz, 2014
This little Austrian film puts us inside a disturbing house, where two twins and a mother with a bandage on her face coexist in a disturbing way. As one of its directors, Severin Fiala, told Indiewire magazine, a couple of people fainted in the room in their most lurid scenes. "That's the best compliment we've received so far," he said.
Saw III (Darren Lynn Bousman, 2006)
Why the third? Ask the various ambulances that had to travel to cinemas in the United Kingdom to attend to people who had become fatal in one of the scenes of this film. Yes, we are talking about the incredibly graphic brain scene.
The Freak Parade (Tod Browning, 1932)
We don't know if she fainted or not, but a woman assured that, because of the projection of this Tod Browning classic, she suffered a miscarriage. It is not a joke! That viewer came to file a complaint against the creators of the film for the event. Would the 'outsiders' of the variety circus make such an impression on this lady?
The Passion of the Christ (Mel Gibson, 2004)
The life of Jesus, as it was transmitted to us in the Bible, was full of pain and suffering and wooden crosses that weigh a hundredweight. Mel Gibson knew how to capture all this 'via crucis' (pun intended) of the Messiah, and, well, maybe he went a bit too explicit. At the scene of the crucifixion, a woman suffered a heart attack that caused her death.
127 Hours (Danny Boyle, 2010)
There isn't much mystery to the plot of this film: a mountaineer (James Franco) gets trapped while rock climbing in the canyons of Utah. It's the true story of Aron Ralston, and just to imagine that he had to do the same as Franco in THAT scene... Creeps.
The Green Hell (Eli Roth, 2013)
We have no doubt that in 'Cannibal Holocaust' he would cause a lot of cold sweats back in the eighties. But it is in this film that winks at him that there are real testimonials from people physically affected by seeing it at the Deauville American Film Festival. This is how Roth himself told it, who described it as "the best critic in history".
