Top 30 Movies That Caused People to Walk Out

Many sequels don’t achieve the same success as the first installment, either in the box office or with critics and audiences. But this follow-up to 2019’s hit “Joker” received a backlash beyond just being a disappointing sequel. Many ticket buyers didn’t know that the film is a musical, and they weren’t happy when they found out. Even people who enjoy musicals were frustrated by the execution of the numbers. “Folie à Deux”’s attempts to subvert and deconstruct typical comic book tropes also angered fans of the original “Joker.” It proved too much for many in the audience.

Directed by David Cronenberg, this sci-fi horror film got a polarizing reception when it premiered at Cannes. Earning both mass departures and a seven-minute standing ovation, the film is set in a future in which human biology has drastically changed. Performance artist Saul Tenser[a] has the ability to grow new organs, and he and his partner Caprice do a stage routine that includes surgically removing the organs. It gets only weirder from there, with Tenser’s ability becoming a point of arousal for some characters – let’s just leave it at that. Suffice to say, this dark satire on cosmetic surgery is hard to stomach, no pun intended.

Time has been kind to this drama directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, which has become a critical darling and one of the most influential art house films. However, at the time, it received outright boos at Cannes. The film follows Anna and her friend’s trip to Rome to meet her boyfriend Sandro. When Anna mysteriously disappears, Sandro and her friend Claudia investigate. No doubt, the film’s slow pacing and lack of adherence to cinematic conventions divided early audiences. The movie’s ending also led to disappointment. Still, “L’Avventura” consistently ranks high on best-film lists, including “Sight & Sound”’s top ten greatest films ever made.

This controversial coming-of-age love story had not only many in the audience leaving, but also scandals breaking. Based on a graphic novel, the film follows introverted high schooler Adèle as she falls in love with aspiring painter Emma, and the couple’s ups, downs, and eventual break-up. The long intimate scenes, however, caused major controversy, and not just for their explicitness. Lesbian audiences were reported laughing at the unrealistic scenes, feeling they bordered on the ridiculous. The author of the graphic novel, Jul Maroh[c], also disapproved, calling the love scenes “brutal and cold.” The film went on to win the Palme d’Or, and it has many fans, but the controversy still continues.

Five police officers answer a call to an abandoned building. It’s a simple premise that belies the real ordeal of watching this Turkish film, directed by Can Evrenol. “Baskin” takes body horror to its limits, including gnarled hands, squishy intestines, and meat on hooks… lots of it. We won’t go into any further detail. Suffice it to say, the extreme gore prompted a big chunk of the audience to flee, from its uncomfortable prologue to its final twist. The audience exodus didn’t hurt the film’s home box office, ultimately. But for those with weak stomachs, there’s a good reason to stay away.

Directed by and starring Vincent Gallo[e], this film about a motorcycle racer on a cross-country trip premiered at Cannes to a lot of jeering. The film overall received mixed reviews and outright pans. Why the fuss? There is an explicit sex scene performed by actress Chloë Sevigny on Gallo that was controversial, as it appeared to be completely unsimulated. There was also a very public feud between Gallo and critic Roger Ebert. Ebert panned the movie as the worst that ever premiered at Cannes, and Gallo responded with insults. Since then, “Brown Bunny” has gained a bit of a cult following. Even Ebert revised his opinion when he saw the re-edit. All’s well that ends well.

A sixteen-year-old aspiring fashion model gets her big break in L.A., only to get sucked into a nightmarish situation rife with abuse and even murder. Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, this satire of the beauty and fashion industry proved to be a mixed bag for audiences. The film premiered to an overwhelmingly negative reception at Cannes, with boos, walkouts, and even outright yelling at the screen. Some critics also felt the blend of social commentary and supernatural horror did not gel as well as it should. Either way, it proved too much to bear for a lot of people.

No, not that one, the other “Crash,” another entry from provocateur director David Cronenberg. This Canadian erotic film follows a couple in an open marriage, who are aroused by recounting their extramarital encounters. This culminates in husband James having an affair with car crash victim Helen and developing a unique fetish for car wrecks in general. You have to see it to believe it. Indeed, those who saw it could not believe it, storming out of the theater. The graphic sex scenes were undoubtedly part of the reason, but perhaps Cronenberg’s clinical direction was also alienating. Your mileage may vary, no pun intended.

This is an exploitation horror film to end all exploitation horror films. Aging adult film star Miloš[f] agrees to a starring role in an art house film. But he soon discovers the film has horrific themes, which include drugs and shocking violations of a physical and sexual nature. “A Serbian Film”’s transgressive imagery was so difficult to watch that it was banned in several countries. Some critics even consider it the most disturbing movie ever made. The film’s director defended the film as a political allegory, but one thing’s for sure: It’s an allegory that will haunt anyone who sees it.

Directed by Lars von Trier, this horror film about a serial killer named Jack premiered at Cannes to massive outrage and controversy. It follows Jack on a journey through hell, during which he recounts his years of disgusting deeds. There is the killing of human beings, including children, which is hard to stomach as it is. But the scene depicting animal cruelty triggered a storm of consternation as well. Riley Keough’s character’s mutilation also led to several audience members departing. The ending was satisfying for some of those who stayed, but cold comfort for others. Hit the road, Jack.

Do the words “erotic historical drama” get you excited? No? Unfortunately for this film, its strange concept was not the only thing it had working against it. In spite of featuring performances from Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren, and Peter O’Toole – a part for which he was praised – the film was heavily criticized for its violence and featuring unsimulated sex throughout. If you’re wondering who specifically walked out of this one, the answer is Roger Ebert himself, who described the film as "sickening, utterly worthless, shameful trash." Although considered a cult classic by some, the film is still divisive to this day.

If “Fight Club” is anything, it’s provocative. It bizarrely manages to strike a balance between pavement-level grounded and borderline absurd, all while deftly telling the story of a man who’s been pushed over the edge of societal norms to break with reality. A movie like that is pretty weird, and needless to say, not everyone… got it. As if it wasn’t bizarre enough, the scenes of raw animalistic violence and something about getting covered in human fat were enough to push people over the edge. “Fight Club”’s awesome; it’s just not for everyone.

Leo worked hard for his Oscar, and Alejandro G. Iñárritu is a genius, but “The Revenant” is pretty much just two and a half hours of a guy trying not to die. It’s a harrowing journey that explores the limits of a man and how far he will go to not only survive, but take revenge. It has a couple scenes that are hard to watch, but the real kicker is the bear attack scene, which, like the rest of the film, strives for realism in the most gut-wrenching fashion possible. For some, watching a bear rip into Leo was just too much.

In 1974, Philippe Petit performed the daring feat of walking on a high-wire between the two towers of the World Trade Center. The 2015 film “The Walk” tried to capture this feat, and to do so shot the film in IMAX 3D. The cinematography expertly captured the sensation of tightrope walking a quarter mile above the ground, which, while impressive, is not what some audience members were expecting. Those who were not wholly comfortable with heights found the movie to be a tough watch, with many reporting motion sickness as the feat was performed.

At the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, “The Tree of Life” was met with both boos and applause, and went on to win the festival’s illustrious Palme d’Or award. Needless to say, critics were divided, as were audiences. One of the film’s stars, Sean Penn, stated that he did not find the same beauty and emotion in the final film as he did in the script, in no small part thanks to the film’s convoluted narrative. While ambitious, and by some accounts a masterpiece, many audience members just wanted a movie they could sit down with some popcorn and enjoy.

In telling the story of Jesus dying for the sins of humanity, “The Passion of the Christ” is understandably brutal. Mel Gibson’s desire to bring to life the suffering endured by Christ was off-putting to some audiences, as it spares no details with the lashing, the beating, the crown of thorns, and the crucifixion itself. One woman actually experienced a fatal heart attack while watching the climactic scene of the film. Needless to say, if you were looking for something to complement your Sunday school lesson, this might not be it.

Back in 1971, audiences were not ready for the maniacal breed of ultra-violence that Alex and his Droogs offered up in Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange.” If it wasn’t the savage beating, the vicious fights or assaults, audiences were severely put off by the stylization that some critics might argue glamorizes such violence. Those who stayed to watch the end of the film were rewarded with a discussion of free will and humanity’s baser instincts in a modern society, but it was understandably a little much for some.

John Waters created “Pink Flamingos” as his first entry into his “Trash Trilogy.” With the tagline “an exercise in poor taste,” this now cult film was an ode to the counterculture of its day and made a deliberate effort to push its audience as far as it could. The film focuses on a drag queen known as “the filthiest person alive.” If the nudity and profanity wasn’t enough to throw an audience’s day off, those who stayed to the end got to see the main character eating… well, you’ll actually have to see that for yourself.

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.

Lars von Trier is no stranger to cinematic controversy and the art house horror flick "Antichrist" is one such example. Why he decided scenes where both Willem DaFoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg have their nether regions altered in particularly gruesome fashion were absolutely necessary is anyone's guess. 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.

"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 extremely 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.”

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 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.

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 assault 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 is 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.

Featuring circus performers with real deformities, this pre-code film from the ‘30s was originally 90 minutes long, but the studio viewed the film as too shocking to be released. If you’re hoping we’re going to have some juicy footage from the extended cut here, sorry, that footage is by all accounts gone forever! In spite of the extensive cuts, some audience members still were unable to stomach the content. Sure, by today’s standards, it may not seem like it’s that big a deal, but in 1932 you can rest assured this film caused quite the stir.

“Saving Private Ryan” is now regarded as one of the greatest war films of all time, due to its harrowing depiction of the realities of World War II. The opening scene of soldiers landing on Omaha beach was so visceral and anxiety-inducing, it overwhelmed some viewers to the point of walking out of the cinema, particularly veterans. These scenes were so striking, they actually caused a PTSD hotline to become overwhelmed with calls. Whereas so many films in this genre strived for technical and cinematic achievement, “Saving Private Ryan” was entirely focused on portraying the horrors of war, and it’s this realism that left some viewers in a deep state of trauma and grief.

"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.

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.

"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.

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 TERRIFIED audiences, and remains a startling example of the power of film.