22 Movies That Literally Made People Pass Out

We've all suffered through movies that we found hard to watch—whether that's because they're too scary, too gross, or simply too stressful. But it's one thing to watch a film through your fingers and another to become physically ill because of whatever is happening onscreen. Believe it or not, however, the latter is a very real possibility: There have been numerous documented cases of movies that have made people pass out, get sick to their stomachs, or worse.

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In many ways, The Exorcist feels as scary now as it did over 50 years ago. But nothing quite compares to the way audiences reacted at the time: Contemporary news reports discussed viewers fainting and crying at the film, per The AV Club.

The Blair Witch Project was seriously unnerving to audiences in 1999, particularly those who weren't familiar with the found footage genre and weren't clear on how real the whole thing was. But the handheld camera footage was distressing in a different way. As The Globe and Mail reports, "Wobbly camera work in the low-budget horror film was disorienting enough to cause some audience members to throw up."

Even if you know the true story 127 Hours is based on, watching James Franco's trapped hiker amputate his arm is severely unpleasant. For some viewers, it was simply too much. In 2010, HuffPost collected some of the stories of the most extreme audience reactions, noting, "127 Hours has gotten audiences fainting, vomiting and worse in numbers unseen since The Exorcist."

Avatar was an overwhelming cinematic experience, and not always a pleasant one for audience members. In a piece for NPR, Maria Godoy said that Avatar made her sick, and that she wasn't alone. As Godoy wrote, "Reports of people suffering headaches, dizziness, eye fatigue and other visual discomforts from 3D viewing have grown alongside the use of 3D technology itself."

If you've seen Pulp Fiction, you can probably guess the moment that sent certain audience members over the edge. In a 25th anniversary piece on the hypodermic-needle-to-the-heart scene published in 2019, USA Today reported, "At the movie's New York Film Festival premiere, one viewer was so shocked by the moment that he fainted, forcing the screening to be halted."

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The incredibly controversial film Irréversible has provoked dramatic reactions among viewers, thanks to its relentlessly brutal violence, including a graphic extended scene of sexual assault. Per BBC News, at the Cannes Film Festival premiere, 250 people walked out, but that's not all: "Fire wardens had to administer oxygen to 20 people who fainted during the film."

If you suffer from vertigo, The Walk is not the movie for you. Based on the true story of high-wire artist Philippe Petit, the film is basically designed to make you feel sick. As the New York Post delicately put it when the movie was released, "The Walk is so realistic people are throwing up in theaters."

Mel Gibson's film about the final 12 hours in the life of Jesus did not sit well with some viewers, who had a tough time with the explicit depiction of torture. According to a 2004 CNN report, a woman suffered a heart attack and died during the film's graphic crucifixion scene.

It's hard to top the thrill of the chestburster scene from the original Alien, but Prometheus still had audiences on the edge of their seats with Noomi Rapace's Elizabeth Shaw performing surgery on herself to remove an alien from her stomach. According to The Daily Telegraph, watching the harrowing moment "resulted in a boy being rushed to hospital after suffering a seizure."

If you're watching a cannibal horror film, you probably know what to expect—but that doesn't mean you know exactly how you'll react. At a midnight screening of Raw at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in 2016, IndieWire reports that multiple audience members passed out, requiring the paramedics to be called.

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Frankly, any one of the Saw movies might make squeamish viewers feel a little sick, but the brain surgery scene in Saw III proved particularly nauseating. Per a 2006 BBC News article, "Staff at a UK cinema have had to call emergency services three times in one night because of a spate of people passing out during horror film Saw III."

What harm could a family film like Incredibles 2 cause? Unfortunately, quite a bit. The New York Times reported that the movie caused a man to get "lightheaded and dizzy in the theater" before suffering seizures. Theaters ended up issuing seizure warnings, noting that the use of strobe lights in Incredibles 2 could induce seizures in those with photosensitive epilepsy.

The horror film Freaks has been the subject of various controversies in the almost 90 years since its initial release. But the most shocking claim against it happened following an early test screening: A woman sued MGM, alleging that the horrifying content of the movie caused her to have a miscarriage, per The Guardian.

Like Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs has one notorious scene almost guaranteed to prompt a visceral response from audiences. The director has spoken about people being unable to handle the movie's depiction of torture, but one of the most notable walkouts came from a filmmaker known for scaring audiences himself. In a 2011 interview with The Wall Street Journal, the late Wes Craven said he walked out of Reservoir Dogs because he "[couldn't] take it," to the delight of Tarantino.

Goodnight Mommy is a deeply disturbing Austrian horror film with some scenes of extreme violence. In a 2015 interview with IndieWire, co-director Severin Fiala said, "Two people fainted. That's the best compliment we've had so far."

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At a midnight screening of the anthology horror film V/H/S during 2012's Sundance Film Festival, one moviegoer passed out, Deadline reported. The site added, "I'm told the guy who passed out–during the first particularly gruesome scene–was embarrassed and didn't want to leave but was encouraged to by his girlfriend."ae0fcc31ae342fd3a1346ebb1f342fcb

There are plenty of shockingly violent moments in the French thriller Revenge, but one scene—in which a character tries to remove a shard of glass—is almost impossible to sit through. As The Globe and Mail notes, people passing out at TIFF's midnight screenings is nothing new. (See the earlier entry for Raw.) Nevertheless, it's still worth noting that Revenge made at least one audience member feel "unwell" enough to require medical attention.

A group of teens messing recklessly with the occult is tried-and-true horror fodder, but Australian directors Danny and Michael Philippou were praised for putting a new spin on it with Talk to Me, about young people contacting the dead via a severed, embalmed hand. The film, which uses all practical effects, freaked out viewers to a degree that delighted the filmmakers, who reported to Yahoo! that "people were hyped" and "fainting" during a screening in their hometown.

The theatrical run of the low-budget, ultra-violent Terrifier 2 led to many, many reports on social media about or directly from audience members who passed out, threw up, or both. One fan posted on X that the horror flick, featuring the sadistic main character Art the Clown, caused the person behind him to faint and fall forward into his chair, while another said that the theater called an ambulance for his friend.

There was so much chatter about extreme reactions online that it started a conspiracy theory that the claims were an orchestrated campaign, leading filmmaker Damien Leone to deny it.

"To everyone saying that reports of people fainting and puking during screenings of Terrifier 2 is a marketing ploy, I swear on the success of the film it is NOT," he wrote on X. "These reports are 100% legit. I wish we were smart enough to think of that! But then again we didn't need to."

You'd think the title would be enough to prepare you, but apparently, some audiences were so stunned by the blood shed (and drank) in 1994's Interview With the Vampire that even critics were hitting the floor at a press screening, per Flavorwire. SlashFilm's Brendon Connelly also reported that, when he was working at a movie theater at the time of its release, every Saturday night screening of the Anne Rice adaptation yielded exactly two audience faints.

Titane comes from the same director as Raw, Julia Ducournau, who seems to have a knack for disorienting audiences. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that a whopping 13 people passed out at Sydney Film Festival premiere screening of the movie, which is about (among other things), a serial killer who becomes impregnated by a car. It's not the human/machine copulation that tests the strength of viewers' stomachs, but the more violent scenes, including one in which main character Alexia (Agathe Rousselle) repeatedly smashes her own face into a ceramic sink.

Viewers didn't have to leave their homes to gross themselves out with The Perfection, a psychological thriller about elite music students that debuted on Netflix in 2019 and features plenty of body horror. As reported by The Sun, much of the film—including a pretty gnarly sequence involving maggots and a graphic amputation—had audiences reporting on social media that they felt sick to the point of vomiting.