EntertainmentStreamingThe best R-rated adult movies on Disney+ from Predator to LoganRelentless violence! Deforestation with big guns! Satanism! Cannibalism! Problematic attitudes! Wound detail!When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
EntertainmentStreamingThe best R-rated adult movies on Disney+ from Predator to LoganRelentless violence! Deforestation with big guns! Satanism! Cannibalism! Problematic attitudes! Wound detail!When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
Relentless violence! Deforestation with big guns! Satanism! Cannibalism! Problematic attitudes! Wound detail!
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Handout / Getty Images)
(Image credit: Handout / Getty Images)
Disneyused to be synonymous with family-friendly entertainment and cartoon animals. Sure, Scrooge McDuck was an old miser who wore no trousers and hung around with his 3 young ‘nephews’, but he was an outlier. When Disney+ launched, it largely continued this approach, with a lot of wholesome fare with an upbeat message – Frozen, for instance, is not a film likely to offend anyone. There were a fewslightlymore adult themes in more recent Star Wars films and some of the Marvel movies, but come on: it’s hardly Ingmar Bergman or George Romero.
However, since Disney started acquiring other studios and content owners like so many bits of popcorn it was munching through, a rather darker strain has emerged on Disney+. The most recent examples of this darkness are the award-magnet Banshees of Inisherin and The Menu, with Ralph Fiennes presiding over a kitchen so nightmarish, it would give Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares nightmares. They’re in my roundup of thebest new movies to watch on Disney+this month.
Yes, for adults – and kids who are adept at hacking their way past the child-safe controls Disney provides – there is now a wealth of R-rated entertainment on the streaming service with mouse ears, largely via Disney subsidiaries Fox, Searchlight, Hulu and Star. What would old Walt have made of all this?
Predator: extreme violence, persistent threat, wound detail, toxic masculinity
Predator absolutely crushes Prey in every department apart from nuance and subtlety – but those are very overrated attributes in my opinion.
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Logan: wound detail, persistent threat, generally depressing examination of ageing and death
This is an actual Marvel movie, albeit not really part of the MCU.
A grim reflection on ageing, failure, societal breakdown and death, Logan – Wolverine’s real name, for those who aren’t X-Men fans – is kind of a bummer for most of its 2-hour run time. Professor X (Patrick Stewart) is dying, most of the other X-Men (and Women) mutants are dead and shady government forces are closing in on the former Wolverine, who has lost the will to carry on the fight.
What makes this film work is that firstly it has a lot more depth than most MCU films, almost to the point where you start to worry there will be no real action. And secondly that, after various events unfold, Wolverine and a female mini-me version of him rip a load of armed mercs to bloody pulp, in a sustained, cathartic sequence of extreme violence. It’s doubtful anyone will make a better R-rated, superhero movie than Logan. The likes of Peacemaker and Deadpool have proved that skewing towards winking irony is more profitable than the dourness of this outlier.
The Fly: absolutely grotesque wound detail, persistent threat, adult themes, Jeff Goldblum’s pert butt
David Cronenberg’s bravura remake of hoary old horror flick The Fly was one of the most successful disgusting films ever made. There is one bit in particular where scientist-turned-human-fly Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) pretty much snaps a man’s arm off in grotesque, slow-motion detail, during an ill-advised barroom arm-wrestling bout.
If you’ve seen Goldblum in any other film, you will notbelievehow good he is in The Fly. And during a mid-transformation gymnastic display and a few horribly uncomfortable sex scenes with co-star Geena Davies, you will also not believe whatincrediblygood shape Jeff was in back in 1986. Goldblum should have won an Oscar for his performance in The Fly; and his ass should have as well.
The Omen 3: The Final Conflict: wound detail, infanticide, Satan worship, blasphemy, absolutely outrageous dialogue
Yep, 20th Century Fox again.
In Omen III: The Final Conflict, Neill is entirely believable as Damien, son of the Prince of Darkness. Which is just as well, because nothing else about this movie is remotely plausible. Showing the acting chops that eventually landed him that plum role in Jurassic Park, Neill somehow manages to deliver dialogue such as the following without wincing, laughing, or walking off set while firing his agent:
Fresh: cannibalism!
In this rom-com with a twist, Daisy Edgar-Jones from Normal People ‘meets cute’, as they say, with Sebastian Stan – ie: Bucky Barnes out of Captain America. She is bored with online dating, and so they commence a whirlwind romance. That sounds wholesome, doesn’t it? However, in a twist which you have to admit nobody can claim to have seen coming, Stan turns out to be… a cannibal! And he wants to eat her! No, really: literally eat her.
They say there are no taboos left in movies, but I think anything involving people eating people is always unlikely to sit well with a lot of viewers. I haven’t seen this particular film. The Daily Mail described it as ‘disgusting, depraved and dull’ – but to be fair, they say that abouteverything. Despite that, on Rotten Tomatoes Fresh is rated – yes – ‘Fresh’. It’s got an 81% positive rating.
127 Hours: amputation, threat, wound detail, watersports
James Franco: mostly armless(Image credit: Fox Searchlight/Disney)
James Franco: mostly armless
James Franco: mostly armless
(Image credit: Fox Searchlight/Disney)
When I turned on Disney+ to ‘research’ this piece, what was the very first thing I spied in the ‘New to Disney+’ section? A film that actuallymade me faintwhen I saw it at the cinema. And I’m a large bloke of 6ft1, so that must have been quite disturbing for the rest of the audience.
Based on a horrible but ultimately uplifting true story, Danny Boyle’s film sees James Franco trapped in a canyon with his arm stuck under a big rock, due to a rather hapless and poorly planned bit of potholing. Remember kids: always tell someone when you go out into the wilderness alone, as you may end up trapped under a boulder for 127 hours.
Hopefully nobody is going to get upset about spoilers here as the film is 12 years old, and the entire reason for its existence is for this one scene in particular. Long story short: several days of hallucinations, urine-drinking and regrets later, Franco decides to chop off his own arm with a penknife. Yes, those are all things you may have to do if you’re trapped in the great outdoors. It’s all fun and games until you have to sup your own urine and then cut your own arm off… with a penknife.
I actually rewatched this scene semi-recently and while there is almost no real gore, Boyle manages to make you feel every agonising moment of Franco’s auto-amputation. Watched on a TV instead of at the cinema, it at least didn’t make me pass out, this time.
Speaking of Danny Boyle, his high-speed horror movie 28 Days Later, and its similarly blood-soaked sequel, 28 Weeks Later, are also on Disney+. They’re fun for all the family – at least until various members of said family are transformed into murderous rage zombies.
And speaking of me fainting at the movies, that also happened during Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist, also during an amputation scene. I‘m happy to report that this film isnoton Disney+ (yet), though you can watch Von Trier’s similarly nauseatingThe House That Jack Builton arthouse streaming service Mubi.
127 Hours: amputation, threat, wound detail, watersports$0.99at Amazon$20.95at REI.com$39.12at Walmart
127 Hours: amputation, threat, wound detail, watersports
$0.99at Amazon$20.95at REI.com$39.12at Walmart
$0.99at Amazon
$20.95at REI.com
$39.12at Walmart
Braveheart: wound detail, adult themes, violence, homophobia
God help me, but I really am a big fan of the work of racist, misogynist, homophobic, Biblically-bearded wild man Mel Gibson. In fact I recently rewatched all theMad Max films on Prime Video– they’re great. So I was delighted to see that Braveheart is now on Disney+. It’s possibly his magnum opus when it comes to extreme violence repeated at great length, although Passion of the Christ and Apocalypto are admittedly pretty full on in that respect as well.
Resembling the grimiest parts of Monty Python’s The Holy Grail, but with all the humour gouged out, Braveheart is anextremelyviolent film. If you take a drink every time someone is impaled, stabbed, beheaded, burned or chucked out of a castle window, you will end up very drunk indeed – ironically, very much like Gibson himself! In fact, you may drink so much that you die – ironically, just like all the main characters in Braveheart do!
Dopesick: drug use, corporate irresponsibility, adult themes
Like the films above, both of which were nominated for multiple awards – and Braveheart actually won Best MovieandBest Director in 1995, somehow – Dopesick has had widespread critical acclaim. Much of that was for Michael Keaton, who plays a doctor who starts out prescribing a new type of opioid painkiller and then becomes addicted to it. Horribly, horribly addicted. Seeing his slide into junkie squalor really is not the sort of thing people would have expected to see on a Disney-affiliated channel, 10 years ago. At one point, he literally sees bugs under his skin, which is perhaps a little on the nose, but it’s more his moral disintegration that disturbs.
One quite old-school Disney thing about this mini series is that Perdue Pharma – the company responsible for the opioid in question – is portrayed asliterally evil. The actor playing the head of the company plays itsoevil, in fact, that the only comparison I can come up with is the Emperor in Star Wars. However, in a much less Disney-esque twist, it is made pretty clear at the end of the series that nobody from Perdue faced any significant consequences for ruining the lives of millions (and Michael Keaton).
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