Anguish (1987)

Anguish is the kind of horror-thriller that doesn’t just try to scare you—it tries to unsettle the very act of watching, turning the movie theater into a pressure cooker where reality and fiction begin to bleed together. Bigas Luna builds his dread with a crafty, almost mischievous precision: tight close-ups, a layered film-within-a-film structure, and a mounting sense that you’re being boxed in right alongside the audience onscreen. Zelda Rubinstein is memorably unnerving as the domineering mother at the center of the nightmare, anchoring the film’s queasy, hypnotic vibe even when it veers into the bizarre. It’s not for the squeamish—there’s an ocular obsession that’s exactly as uncomfortable as it sounds—but if you want an adventurous, well-constructed horror oddity that plays with your nerves and your expectations, this one earns its reputation.

Anguish is clearly aiming for a clever, reality-bending horror experience—a movie that turns the act of watching into part of the nightmare—and that ambition is its biggest selling point. The problem is it often feels like a nasty eyeball-centric slasher first and a mind-game second, with gore that can come off as more punishing than purposeful. The meta tricks and escalating theater paranoia are genuinely intriguing, but the execution can be clunky and self-important, so if you’re not already on board with 80s grime and graphic violence, you’ll likely tap out. Watch it if you want an oddball, high-concept curiosity with some memorable unease; skip it if you’re hoping for refined psychological horror or subtle scares.