Gore Galore: The goriest horror films you can watch on Shudder
- Carla Davis
- Jan 14
- 3 min read
Shudder has a vast library of all types of horror films, so if gore makes you gag, you can still find plenty of great, non-gory movies. But if you dig some gore in your horror, there are a lot of great choices on Shudder.
I can personally take it or leave it. I just love a good story with relatable characters, so if that comes with lots of blood, I’m there for it. But if all a film has going for it is copious amounts of blood and gore, I probably won’t enjoy it.
Let’s dig into the gory options available currently on Shudder.
The Sadness – A virus known as “Alvin” has begun making the rounds in Taiwan, and virologists have started sounding the alarm, despite the government’s insistence that it’s just another flu. When Jim drops his girlfriend Kat off at the train station, he goes to a café, and things start to go off kilter in the craziest way possible. A blood-splattered old woman steps into the café and begins spitting mucus at people and throwing boiling hot oil at one of the employees. One by one, the other patrons beginning turning into rage zombies as well…and it only gets worse from there.
The gore level in The Sadness is off the charts, and many of the events are shocking. If you think the worst thing that could happen to a woman named Molly is to get her eye poked out with an umbrella by a psychotic business man, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Throughout the film, we follow Kat and Jim as they try to avoid raging zombies and find one another, so there is a good deal of heart in The Sadness as well as plenty of body fluids.
Yummy – Zombie flicks tend to dominate the gore market, and Yummy is a great example of how a horror/comedy can still feature realistic gore. Yummy was the first Belgian zombie movie, dealing with Alison, who travels to a plastic surgery clinic in Eastern Europe with her mother Sylvia. Alison’s boyfriend Michael joins them, though he is immediately apprehensive.
The clinic is filled with patients who have become zombies, and most of them are horribly wounded (thus the high amount of gore). Yummy is so gory that if it weren’t so campy, it might be difficult to watch.
Cannibal Holocaust – Cannibal Holocaust is very well known for its graphic content, including realistic violence and sexual assault, and the actual onscreen killing of animals. It’s definitely not for everyone. The premise is that a group of documentary filmmakers are going into the jungle to investigate a tribe of cannibals. This being more or less a found footage movie, they disappear, and a rescue mission is mounted. Obviously, this doesn’t work out the way they hoped.
The gore and violence in Cannibal Holocaust is indeed very realistic – so realistic, that director Ruggero Deodato was charged with obscenity, and many people believed the gruesome deaths in the film were real.
Bone Tomahawk – If you like a good, engrossing story with plenty of conversations being had amongst the characters, this is the film for you (and me). It’s a western, featuring Kurt Russell as Sheriff Franklin Hunt, who sets out with some compadres to find the town doctor’s assistant Samantha O’Dwyer, who has been abducted by a tribe of Troglodytes. The tribe has also kidnapped a deputy and a robber who was locked up in the town jail.
Hunt is joined by Deputy Chicory (Richard Jenkins), a gunslinger named Brooder (Matthew Fox), and Samantha’s husband Arthur (Patrick Wilson), and as they travel on horse and foot to find the missing people, there is a lot of interesting conversation. So, when the violence suddenly begins, it’s shocking. The Troglodytes are vicious, and the one particular scene that everyone who has watched the film remembers most seems to come out of nowhere.
The final 30 minutes or so of Bone Tomahawk is relentless, brutal, and very bloody.
Pieces – I knew nothing about this film until it was featured on The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs. And it’s not what I would consider a “good” movie, but the gory death count is certainly impressive and it’s good, campy fun.
The plot involves a crazed killer running around a college campus and chopping people up with a chainsaw. As it turns out, said killer is collecting body parts in an attempt to “build” his dead mother. Pieces stars Christopher George and Linda Day (George), and it deserves to be on this list because of multiple closeup views of the chainsaw cutting through flesh, as well as literal piles of body parts.
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