‘Irreversible,’ the Most Upsetting Movie Ever Made, Just Got Even Darker

It’s one of the most shocking scenes in cinema history: A woman named Alex (Monica Bellucci) walks through an underpass. While walking, she witnesses a man attacking another woman. The other woman manages to get away, but Alex is brutally attacked and raped by the man instead.

You’d expect a cutaway or the camera to focus elsewhere—anywhere but the horrifying action unfolding. But in director Gaspar Noé’s Irréversible, first released in 2002, the camera doesn’t move for nine horrifying minutes. It’s almost impossible to sit through, and re-watching it, I found myself begging for time to move faster, or for anything to stop what I was seeing from continuing. It’s mortifying, but it’s also key to the film’s impact. Irréversible refuses to cut away, exposing you to the absolute worst in humanity.

The film unsurprisingly was the subject of great controversy when it came out. It wasn’t just about the rape scene, either: There’s an incredibly graphic murder, and a barrage of ugly slurs are thrown around when Marcus (Vincent Cassel) storms his way through a gay bar to find the assailant. Irréversible is a brutal story all the way through—it’s Noé at his most fearlessly confrontational.

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