5 War Movies You Can Only Watch Once Because of How Disturbing They Are

While it's understandable that the war movie genre is dark to begin with, some movies are still more terrifying and depressing than others.

While we can watch Saving Private Ryan every once in a while, although it still offers an accurately horrific portrayal of life in the midst of war, there are some other movies, often old ones, that are just too much to handle.

Here are five that we find difficult to watch, let alone re-watch.

1. Threads (1984)

The events of this movie are all fictional, but that doesn't make it any less terrifying because of the main plot. 1984 lets us see what the world would be like if it were faced with nuclear war. The apocalyptic film shows Britain in the midst of the war between the United States and the Soviet Union as it is hit by a nuclear blast and left almost uninhabitable. Upon its release, the film received bad reviews, but critics changed their minds after a few years had passed.

2. Come And See (1985)

The movie is told from the perspective of a Belarusian teenager who joins the resistance group in the middle of World War II. As he becomes a part of it, young Flyora witnesses all the atrocities and terror of the Nazis in Belarus. The movie is hard to watch because of the child's perspective, which in fact helps the viewer to see how gruesome and absurd any war is.

3. Men Behind The Sun (1988)

The story at the center of this 1988 film focuses on one of the most important and darkest events in Japanese history. The infamous Unit 731 was the name of a secret biological weapon used by the Imperial Japanese Army to conduct gruesome experiments on humans. The targets were mostly Chinese and Siberian prisoners of war during World War II.

The movie received a lot of criticism, mostly because viewers and critics found the depiction of the atrocious behavior to be too explicit and insensitive.

4. Johnny Got His Gun (1971)

Johnny Got His Gun centers on Joe Bonham, an American soldier in the Army during World War I. As a result of an artillery explosion, the young man is disfigured and left deaf, blind, and mute. The movie takes us into the very dark places of a survivor who no longer sees the meaning of life. We see how the consequences of war affect people's lives, but the most chilling thing is to see Bonham so eager to end his miraculously saved life.

5. The Boy In The Striped Pajamas (2008)

Although this film is relatively new compared to the rest of the movies in the list, it doesn't mean that it's easier to handle. The movie explores one of the darkest pages in history; the time of the Holocaust. At the center of the movie are two boys who have found themselves in an unlikely friendship. One of them is an imprisoned Jewish boy and the other is the child of an SS officer.

Although the film received some critical comments for not being entirely accurate, it was highly praised for its strong storytelling and is considered to have one of the most devastating finales in the genre.