The 2000s were a great time for movies. Directors like Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, and James Cameron were doing some of their best work, and some of the movies from that time period are now considered classics. Films like Inglourious Basterds, The Departed, and Avatar will live on forever. Many of the movies made in the 2000s contained fantastic acting, special effects, and edgy humor, and those elements made put them on the cutting edge of film history.
While it’s difficult to explain exactly what makes a movie over the top, there are many films that contain exaggerated scenes that make them so unbelievable or nonsensical that they have to be considered overblown. Tarantino is known for excessive gore, for instance, while Cameron is known for doing meticulous research and making his movies as realistic as possible. These movies from the 2000s pushed movie-making to the limit and contain very over-the-top characteristics.
19 Kill Bill Vol. 1
Kill Bill Vol. 1 is one of the most interesting, extreme, and violent movies to ever hit the big screen. Directed by Quentin Tarantino, the movie focuses on The Bride, a character who is left for dead in a church by the assassin squad she used to work for. Hellbent on revenge, The Bridge fights through the pain to find Bill (David Carradine), who ordered the hit on her. Along the way, she realizes that she has a daughter and wants to save her from Bill’s evil ways.
When the movie came out in 2003, Tarantino was already known for his over-the-top films full of violence, outrageous gore, and unbelievable characters. His movies, like Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Jackie Brown, had already shown audiences that he had a creative but twisted mind. The Kill Bill movies took his style to new heights, shedding more blood and vengeance than ever before.
18 Oldboy
Oldboy is another revenge movie that uses excessive blood and guts to elicit a reaction from the viewer. Dae-su Oh (Choi Min-Sik) is an alcoholic loser who is bailed out from jail by his friend, only to be kidnapped in the street moments later. He’s held captive, drugged, and abused for 15 years, not knowing his captors or what they intend to do to him. When Dae-su is suddenly released, he wants revenge and seeks to find the bad guys that kept him locked away.
Although it doesn’t feature any Hollywood stars, Oldboy is a foreign film known around the world for its shock value. Dae-Su doesn’t hold back when it comes to punishing those who get in his way. Blood flies everywhere and director Park Chan-wook has no shame in showing viewers the goriest images imaginable. Oldboy is considered one of the best South Korean movies ever, and it currently holds an impressive 81% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
17 300
Gerard Butler stars as Leonidas, the King of Sparta, in Zack Snyder’s epic historical movie 300. When the Persian army led by King Xeres invades Sparta, Leonidas leads his soldiers into battle without any restraint. Xeres sends a messenger convoy to request the Spartans give in, and Leonidas responds by kicking the messenger into a bottomless pit. The Spartans are greatly outnumbered but have more heart and tenacity than the Persians.
300 is over-the-top because of its amazing production design. The movie is designed to look like a dark comic since it’s based on Frank Miller’s graphic novel of the same name. With a unique mix of color palettes and tones, 300 has an interesting look that hasn’t been replicated on film since its release in 2006. Gerard Butler is fantastic as Leonidas, and the whole movie is a great if not overblown, historical action drama.
16 The Cove
The Cove is a documentary unlike any you’ve seen before. Every year, a brutal ritual takes place in the ocean off the coast of Taiji, Japan. The government allows local fishermen to capture wild dolphins, slaughtering the unwanted ones and separating some from their parents along the way. Activist Ric O’Barry, who trained dolphins for the popular TV show Flipper takes on a dangerous mission: to capture footage of the practice taking place in an effort to end it for good.
The Cove is like a tense spy movie; you never know what’s coming next. O’Barry and the film crew go undercover, pretending to be naive tourists in order to get the footage they want. The documentary dives even deeper, explaining that illegal dolphin meat often ends up in local stores labeled as other fish. The film is shocking, revealing, and unbelievable. It uncovers an over-the-top world that’s real but too far-fetched to believe.
15 Requiem for a Dream
When talking about the best movies of the 2000s, Requiem for a Dream often enters into the conversation. It’s the movie that helped Jared Leto break through and become a Hollywood star. Leto plays a drug addict named Harry who hears about a huge score happening late at night. He takes his buddy along and the two plan to buy drugs onsite. Something goes awry, however, and gunshots ring out. This results in Harry becoming more desperate to get drugs, and things end up horrifically for him in the end.
Requiem for a Dream also contains a great side plot about Harry’s mother, an elderly woman confined to her home who watches game shows all day. She pictures herself as the star of the shows, winning money and flirting with the host to the adoration of the audience. The detailed hallucination scenes and grotesque ending make Requiem for a Dream an over-the-top depiction of desperation in America.
14 Let the Right One In
Let the Right One In is a Swedish horror romantic comedy based on the novel of the same name. The film is set in the early ’80s and is centered around Oskar (Kare Hedebrant), a boy who’s constantly bullied at school. He spends his free time plotting revenge against his peers, reading about murders in the newspaper, and cutting out articles of the ones he likes. When a new girl moves in next door, Oskar soon realizes she may be even more sinister than he is.
Let the Right One In doesn’t shy away from blood and contains some pretty gory scenes. Most of the movie’s sequences were shot using live special effects. Director Thomas Alfredson used CGI sparingly in the movie, with one cat attack scene using a combination of real cats, CGI, and stuffed animals. Let the Right One In is dark and disturbing with unthinkable, over-the-top themes.
13 Super Size Me
Super Size Me is a groundbreaking documentary that was released in 2004. Director Morgan Spurlock sets out to prove that fast food is insanely unhealthy by eating nothing but McDonald’s three times a day for 30 days. He measures the results and soon becomes lethargic, gains weight, and feels terrible most of the time. He also interviews food experts, doctors, and McDonald’s enthusiasts about the effect burgers and fries have on human lives.
The movie is extreme because nobody should attempt to replicate Spurlocks’s diet. Even he admits in the movie he is sick of eating McDonald’s by the end. The movie also includes over-the-top footage of animal processing plants and explains the extremes that food companies go to to produce cheap, fast food.
12 Idiocracy
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Average citizen Joe Bowers (Luke Wilson) becomes the smartest man in the world in Mike Judge’s seminal 2006 comedy Idiocracy. The Beavis And Butt-Head creator takes it to the extreme and shows the world what life would be like in the future if everyone was dumber. In the movie, Joe is frozen in time and he wakes up in an unimaginable future where nobody knows how to use their brains. As a result, Joe is the smartest person in the world because he knows the simplest things – like that plants need water to grow.
Idiocracy pictures a world where society is so dumbed down that even doctors are regular people. Justin Long plays a dimwitted doctor, while Terry Crews plays the President of the United States, but he’s basically just a strong guy who likes guns and monster trucks. Idiocracy is wildly exaggerated, making it one of the funniest sci-fi comedies out there.
11 The Hangover
Speaking of over-the-top comedies, The Hangover is easily one of the most ridiculous comedy movies ever made. After a night of heavy drinking in Las Vegas, friends Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms), and Alan (Zach Galifianakis) wake up in a trashed hotel room. Stu is missing a tooth, Alan finds a baby, and there’s a tiger in the bathroom for some reason. The worst part is the group is missing their friend Doug, who was with them the night before but is now nowhere to be seen.
As the friends retrace their steps from the night before, they find out it’s even worse than they imagined. Stu spontaneously got married while the tiger was actually taken from none other than retired heavyweight champion Mike Tyson. The scenes with excessive partying, drug use, and insane antics make The Hangover one of the most over-the-top films of the 2000s.
10 Grizzly Man
Grizzly Man is a fantastic 2005 documentary about Timothy Treadwell. For 13 summers, Treadwell lived in the Alaskan wildness with wild grizzly bears, documenting his adventures on film. Treadwell amassed almost 100 hours of footage on his own, which director Werner Herzog combined with interviews to create a fascinating movie about his subject and his furry friends. The extreme part of Grizzly Man is that Treadwell is completely unafraid of the creatures, often getting close to them, cuddling them, and treating them like his own pets.
Unfortunately, Treadwell’s adventures caught up to him. He was attacked by a hungry grizzly bear in October 2003 and died of his injuries. Still, Grizzly Man is an interesting portrait of a man who was both obsessed with fame and obsessed with doing what he could to protect the bears he loved. Grizzly Man premiered at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival and currently holds an impressive 92% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
9 Hard Candy
Hard Candy is about a young girl who exacts revenge on a man she knows is a pedophile. Hayley (Elliot Page) is a 14-year-old girl who meets a man named Jeff (Patrick Wilson) online. After some flirtatious banter back and forth, the two decide to meet at a coffee shop. Jeff invites Hayley to his house, where he attempts to get her drunk so that he can take pictures of her. However, Hayley outsmarts the photographer and spikes his drink. The mind games begin as Hayley vows to uncover Jeff as the sicko he really is.
Hard Candy is extreme because it doesn’t shy away from bleak issues like pedophilia, violence, and revenge. The movie obviously deals with some dark themes and is difficult to watch at times. Page and Wilson are excellent in their roles and the ending is particularly disturbing. If you have the stomach for an intense dramatic thriller, Hard Candy is not to be missed.
8 Inglourious Basterds
In 2009, Quentin Tarantino released Inglourius Basterds and it became an instant classic. When Nazi SS colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) hunts down and murders Jews, he earns himself the nickname “The Jew Hunter”. Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) gathers a crew of Jewish soldiers to defeat Landa and hatches a plot to trap German officers in a movie theatre and burn them alive.
Inglourious Basterds is a quintessential Tarantino movie, complete with enough blood, violence, and intense gore to make any viewer squirm. It also contains one of Tarantino’s favorite “tense moments” from all of his movies. It’s based on an over-the-top premise that only works in Tarantino’s capable hands. With witty dialogue and memorable characters, Basterds is not only extreme but extremely effective.
7 Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
British actor Sacha Baron Cohen plays Borat, a foreign reporter documenting his travels in the United States in Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. Every scene in Borat is meant to be over the top, with Cohen coming up with more and more ridiculous ways to purposely put the character in uncomfortable situations. In one scene, Borat attends a rodeo and sings the Kazakhstan national anthem poorly to the tune of “The Star Spangled Banner”. In another, he parties with fraternity boys from the University of South Carolina.
To say that Borat pushes the boundaries of offensive comedy and good taste would be an understatement. The movie portrays Borat as a simplistic, naive character who doesn’t understand cultural norms or know how to handle himself in social situations. The result is a movie where the audience is constantly shifting between cringing and laughing insanely hard.
6 Elephant
Director Gus Van Sant takes on the topic of school shootings in his 2003 film Elephant. The movie follows two lonely teenagers who plot a massacre at their school, similar to the real-life events that happened at Columbine in Colorado in 1999. Van Sant focuses on both the pain caused by the killers, and the feelings of abandonment and loneliness the two kids felt that drove them to do what they did.
Elephant is over-the-top because it’s full of tension and violence. It took on a difficult issue that was still fresh in people’s minds in the early 2000s. The extreme violence and randomness in of the attack as depicted in Elephant is a stark reminder that movies can sometimes be too much of a slice of life.
5 Saw
When Saw came out in 2004, it took the horror genre to a whole new level. Two strangers wake up in a filthy bathroom with no recollection of how they got there. Both of them are chained up and there’s a mysterious dead body on the floor. The captives find and a tape from a sadistic psychopath that encourages them to hurt each other. One man is given a hacksaw, which suggests he cuts off his limb to get free.
Throughout the film, the killer becomes more and more extreme, kidnapping more victims and telling them to play his grotesque, over-the-top games. Saw was wildly successful at the box office and it set off several sequels and spinoffs. Even 20 years later, there’s a new Saw movie coming soon.
4 Funny Games
Speaking of movies centered around sadistic games, Funny Games is a lesser-known horror movie that come out in 2007. Naomi Watts and Tim Roth play a couple who takes their son to their vacation home only to be visited by two seemingly pleasant young men. The family finds out the guys are not what they seem and soon finds themselves kidnapped in their own home. The men then make the family play psychological games to survive.
Even for a horror movie, Funny Games pushes the boundaries of good taste. For instance, the men suffocate the couple’s son and make the wife choose if she wants her husband to die fast or slow. Perhaps it was all a bit too much for audiences, as the film only made $8.2 million at the box office against a $15 million budget.
3 The Devil Wears Prada
Have you ever had a boss that was an absolute nightmare? That’s the premise behind The Devil Wears Prada. When Andy finishes college, she couldn’t be more excited to start her new gig. She’s an assistant at the trendy fashion magazine Runway, with an opportunity that most people only dream of. The problem is that her boss is Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), a notoriously difficult editor-in-chief who doesn’t care for anyone below her.
The Devil Wears Prada is a relatable movie, but it’s very over-the-top in its depiction of the workplace. Miranda expects Andy to do everything perfectly and scolds her when the smallest detail is missed. With little or no room for Andy to move up at Runway, she realizes that her personal life and relationships are more important than any job ever could be.
2 Zombieland
Zombieland is one of the most over-the-top comedy movies ever made. It’s set in a post-apocalyptic future where zombies have taken over and the survivors are left to fend for themselves. The film stars Jesse Eisenberg as Columbus, a college kid who makes up his own set of rules in order to survive the zombie attacks. Soon, Columbus meets up with a ragtag group of survivors: Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), a wise-cracking tough guy, Wichita, a cute girl who becomes Columbus’ love interest, and Little Rock, Wichita’s little sister.
Zombieland is a hilarious movie that doesn’t hold back on the over-the-top blood and guts. The zombie killing scenes are super gory but shot an edited in a funny, entertaining way. Bill Murray also makes a cameo in the movie as a fake undead version of himself. When Columbus accidentally kills the fictionalized Murray, the audience knows that everything about Zombieland was written for maximum laughs.
1 Battle Royale
Before Squid Game appeared on Netflix, there was Battle Royale. In the distant future, students are pitted against each other in a battle to the death in order to stop juvenile delinquency. One day, student Shuya Nanahara (Tatsuya Fujiwara) thinks he and his friends are being taken to a field trip. Instead, they are put to sleep and taken to a desert island with only minimalist tools to survive. The kids are expected to fight each other for resources until only one student is left.
The premise is similar to Squid Game, but Battle Royale had the idea first. The result is a bloody, over-the-top movie where violence is rampant and murder is normalized. Some of the deaths in Battle Royale come by suicide, making the film even more grim. The film is considered extreme, horrific gruesome, even by 2023 movie standards.