Movies So Chaotic You’ll Forget The World Is On Fire

Some of my favorite movies this festival season have broken my brain. What makes a movie good is debatable. However, if it made your jaw drop and you immediately had to find a friend afterward, then it was effective. These are the kind of movies I live for! I respect chaos and mayhem on any budget and am always happy to see it. Even if it melts part of my brain, I’m happy to be shaken out of my own problems. I can’t do anything about the dumpster fire that is our world. However, I can find movies that will distract us because they are pure chaos. Hopefully these mind-melting, jaw-dropping, and sometimes confusing movies give you a couple of moments of escapism.

I present to The Midnight Society: Movies So Chaotic You’ll Forget The World Is On Fire.

Malignant (2021)

Where You Can Watch: HBOMax

Halloween horror

A woman finds herself, and her questionable wig, at the center of a gruesome killing spree. The kills are creative, the hairpiece is wild, and the reveal is sickening. If you don’t get serotonin from watching Gabriel shut a police station down, then are you even living? This movie came out of the gate serving chaos and not caring about our feelings. I didn’t know I needed a campy giallo until Akela Cooper told me I did. I’m happy with that because this is now one of my favorite James Wan films. I have lost countless hours thinking about everything that happens from the jail cell to the credits. Anything we can do, this team can do backward. I lived!

May the Devil Take You (2018)

Where You Can Watch: Netflix

A woman looks for answers when her dad falls into a weird coma. She finds a lot of chaos instead and we get a lot of bizarre visuals. I had to watch this movie twice because I kept forgetting to read the subtitles when the shit pops off in the villa. These unsettling, unhinged, and unholy visuals were giving me enough of a story to disturb my soul. It felt like I had been dropped into one of the survival horror games that raised me and I was not ready. My brain could barely process that feeling and had no room for more information or whatever my personal concerns about life were. This is the movie I think of when I see Timo Tjahjanto’s name. If you’re a finisher then May The Devil Take You Too is currently on Shudder.

The Sadness (2021)

Where You Can Watch: Shudder

A couple tries to find their way back to each other during a chaotic outbreak that has turned everyone homicidal. This movie is filled with blood, intestines, out-of-pocket old people, and two leads that I was truly rooting for. I’m not sure if any other movie hitting Shudder this year will give us so much carnage. There are no dull moments in this movie and it’s pretty close to being perfect. My only issue is the way sexual assault, and threats of sexual violence, takes center stage when we begin to follow the leading lady. I cannot stress that content warning enough. Before that, and between those moments, there is truly violent chaos that you can’t take your eyes off of.

Sorry to Bother You (2018)

Where You Can Watch: Netflix

A telemarketer finds out that success comes at a very heavy price. We all went into this because the cast is stacked with favorites and the trailer made it seem like it would be a comedy. And we did laugh as our brains melted and we wondered how we got where this movie went. I like this movie but can’t explain how we get from point A to horsemen. I let it go as I stared into space wondering if I would ever be the same again. This is a cooler chaos than the other films on the list. Your nightmares will be more fun but you’ll also feel like you knocked back a bunch of hard drugs for breakfast. You can’t see this and still think about the things that plagued you before the midpoint of this movie.

Bonus Pick

As Above, So Below (2014)

Where You Can Watch: VOD

A group of people go into Paris’ catacombs and find themselves in a chaotic and stressful hell. I was starting to think I was done with cave horror and found footage movies when I saw this. Turns out, I wasn’t and had the anxiety to prove it as I watched this shit unravel! If you missed it while it lived on Netflix forever, then I recommend you rent it. It’s chaos on chaos and will make you leave your troubles at the door. Whenever people try to talk to me about The Descent, I shake my head and change the conversation to As Above, So Below. I thought about this chaotic movie the whole 30 minutes I was in Paris because it’s that twisted.

Tell me some of your chaotic favorites at misssharai!

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