In the conversations about the most disturbing movies in the collection, I feel like Benny's Video (1992) doesn't get enough credit.
People often cite Salo and Come and See as the most disturbing, and for the most part I agree, but for both of these I think there's a slight disconnect between the audience and the horror on screen. Both of these films depict scenarios that average person could never possibly experience, and I think there's a level of emotional detachment that comes with that. Ordinary people don't know what it's like to be on the wrong end of a genocide or to be trafficked into some rich people's depraved sex dungeon.
Benny's video, by contrast, depicts a situation that feels much more close to home. The majority of the film takes place in a teenage boy's bedroom and shows a situation that could very easily happen to your average middle class family. We've all either been or have known an edgy teenage boy at some point in our lives, and it's easy to see how a situation like this could've happened to you or someone you know. The horror is so much worse because we can picture it. There's that scene where he's eating dinner with his parents, and they haven't found out yet, and there's just this unbearable tension that hangs in the air. We've all had moments where we tried to hide things from our parents (granted, nothing quite THAT bad), and scenes like this draw on very real anxieties that the average person can understand and it just makes you want to throw up.
But I don't know. what do you guys think?