13 Horror Movies That Are As Gory As ‘Evil Dead Rise’

There are horror movies, and then there are the ones that make Freddy Krueger look like a Saturday morning cartoon. 1974’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre showed that audiences have an appetite for gore, a subgenre of horror flicks that focuses on violence as a visceral response – and we’re talking decapitation, guts and intestines sloppily falling out of bodies and tongues split into half by knives. 

The latest gory movie to hit the theatres is Evil Dead Rise, the fifth instalment to Sam Raimi’s beloved The Evil Dead franchise, and the new film not only takes the franchise to a brand new setting, but to brand new levels of gore too. 

In Evil Dead Rise, Beth (Lily Sullivan) visits her older sister Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland) who is struggling to raise three children alone in a small Los Angeles apartment. Their reunion is unfortunately interrupted when they find a strange book hidden in the depths of Ellie’s building, which unleashes horrid flesh-possessing demons. From glass-eating deadites to tattoo needles to the eye and legs grated like cheese, Evil Dead Rise is a bloodfest that gore lovers will want to catch when it hits theatres on 20 April 2023. 

That said, whether you’ve bought your tickets to the premiere, are testing gore out or simply want to watch films that are similar in content, here are 13 horror movies that are as gory as Evil Dead Rise. 

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Cabin Fever (2002)

Ah, Eli Roth. A glorified gore director whose works will appear a number of times on this list. Cabin Fever is Roth’s debut movie and arguably, his best movie ever made.  A group of teenagers spend what’s supposed to be a relaxing weekend away at a cabin, but a flesh-eating virus is unleashed in the water supply and they all start to experience gruesome symptoms. The director showcases his love for excessive gore and black comedy in Cabin Fever and pays homage to 70s and 80s films where most if not all of the horrors happen in a cabin in the woods. 

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Day of the Dead (1985)

Dawn of the Dead may be a classic zombie film, but Day of the Dead is without a doubt, gorier. Now, zombie movies tend to be gory to begin with but George A. Romero definitely pushed the gore of the zombie genre with Day of the Dead. Day of the Dead sees a small team of scientists, civilians and trigger-happy soldiers battle desperately to ensure the survival of the human race, but tension inside the base reaches breaking point, and the zombies are gathering outside. Deaths here are agonising and slow – at one point, a man was getting his head pulled off his body while screaming. As his head slowly separates from his body, his vocal cords are stretched so his scream gets higher and higher pitched.

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Dead Alive (1992)

Before being known for helming The Lord of the Rings franchise, Peter Jackson started his career in trashy horror movies. For many, Dead Alive is the goriest film of all time. In the movie, a man does his best to contain a zombie outbreak when his mother is bitten by a Sumatran Rat-Monkey. The final scene involves a lawn mower and zombie slaughtering. You can put the two together and imagine what a bloodbath that’ll be. 

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Evil Dead (2013)

Okay, there’s no way we’re not going to put an Evil Dead movie on the list. Fede Alvarez’s 2013 Evil Dead is the fourth instalment to Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead franchise and is 100% not for the weak. In Evil Dead, five friends head to a cabin and are haunted by demons. A character cuts off her own arm with an electric knife, while another character slices her face open with broken glass shards. There is absolutely no pause in the gore and horrendous painful acts in this movie. Better yet, it ends with blood rain too. 

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Final Destination Franchise (2000 – 2011)

If you’re a kid from the 90s and early 2000s, then Final Destination would’ve likely been your introduction to gore. This isn’t the most gory franchise to ever exist, but it’s as gory as it can get, especially when the deaths are not caused by another person or an entity. In fact, it’s just chance and circumstances that see the characters die in the most horrible ways. No roller coasters, sun tanning or even going to the gym for us. Nope, no thank you. 

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Hostel (2005)

Didn’t we tell you Eli Roth will make yet another appearance on this list? A group of travellers across Slovakia are kidnapped and placed in a hostel where clients pay for the opportunity to torture and kill the kidnapped people using any means possible. Kidnapees are bludgeoned, sliced and dismembered pretty much throughout the entire film’s runtime. 

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Piranha 3D (2010)

Alexandra Aja’s Piranha 3D takes gore over the top in this horror comedy. A loose remake of the 1978 cult favourite Piranha, Piranha 3D sees a group of strangers come together to stop themselves from being the victims of deadly piranhas who have been released after an earthquake splits a lake floor. It’s not zombie or demon-entity scary but being dinner for a swarm of piranhas is definitely not in the list of ways we’d like to go. Compared to the original 1978 film where at least a dozen people are killed and at least two dozen people suffer from gruesome wounds, Piranha 3D is believed to be even more so. 

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Saw Franchise (2004 – present)

This likely isn’t in need of an introduction. Saw changed the game when it was released and continues to do so, especially after garnering a huge cult following. Created by James Wan and Leigh Whannell, the Saw movie franchise revolves around the Jigsaw Killer (a.k.a. John Kramer), who tortures victims he believes are complacent or guilty, in order to make them appreciate their time on Earth. The Jigsaw killer tests his victims’ will to live by putting them through physical and psychological pain. If you’re looking for gore and torture porn, this is where you’ll start. 

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The Green Inferno (2013)

You know what a cannibal film can be? Absolutely gory. This Eli Roth movie sees characters Justine and Alejandro survive a plane crash in the middle of a jungle in Peru. What starts as a survivor story turns to a gory nightmare when they get abducted by a tribe of cannibals. In The Green Inferno, characters are sliced up, cooked, impaled and chopped. The movie was so gory (and controversial in other means) that it was banned in several countries.

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The Hills Have Eyes (2006)

Bob Carter and his wife Ethel, along with five other members of the family, are heading for San Diego with their camper vans. An accident strands them in the desert and while two of the men go for help, the others are forced to wait. They’re unaware that they’ve ended up stuck near the site where, decades earlier, nuclear tests gave rise to a group of cannibals who have developed a taste for human flesh. This movie by Alexandra Aja has been deemed as too gory and disturbing, but it’s intriguing shots and effective cinematography made it a stand-out remake when it was released. 

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The Human Centipede (2009)

If this doesn’t make you want to puke, then we applaud you. In Tom Six’s The Human Centipede, a deranged German surgeon kidnaps three tourists and conjoins them surgically, mouth to anus, forming the eponymous “human centipede”. This movie pushes the boundaries of gore as we know it by making its gore centre around disgusting excretion. 

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The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Film Series (1974 – 2022) 

As if the word massacre in its title isn’t enough of an indicator of how gory these movies will be. In all of the movies, victims are haunted and killed by a chainsaw-wielding antagonist aka Leatherface. This film series is absolutely brutal and dare we say – fun. Many directors, producers and screenwriters have taken a hit at the franchise, but Fede Alvarez’s 2022 version with director David Blue Garcia has been said to be the perfect mix of early 2000s gore, late 2010s slasher revival and adds legacy to the 1974 original. 

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Wrong Turn Franchise (2003 – 2021)

Franchises like Wrong Turn, Final Destination, Saw and Hostel were all out at the same time so competition on who can be the goriest and most disturbing was high. Wrong Turn is deserving to appear on the list because it’s a simple, highly enjoyable and scary no-brain throwback to 70s horror movies with a lot of jumpscares and blood. Each movie in this franchise starts off similarly where a group of people cross into a land inhabited by a hidden community of mountain dwellers who use deadly means to protect their way of life.