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The old adage is that revenge is a dish best-served cold. Nobody has time for that, and some film characters prefer their vengeance viand served scalding hot while shoving it down the throats of their targets, leaving crime scenes in their wake. And we’re here to enjoy the spectacle of those bloodiest revenge movies.
They’re not just for entertainment either; there are lessons to be picked up here. Revenge can be toxic, and acting on impulse based on your pride or ego can leave a bloody mess. It’s a gift that keeps on giving. While you’re at it, serve yourself a nice meal while watching the following bloodiest revenge movies dish them out hot.
John Wick
John Wick—it’s a name that has become synonymous with destructive revenge and animal rights. If you were unfortunate enough to have missed our lord and savior Keanu Reeves in his most iconic role to date, John Wick is about a retired hitman who was brought out of retirement when his dog was killed, and his car was stolen by a spoiled Russian mobster brat.
Four films later and there’s enough body count in the series to create a stadium-sized monument for Wick’s dead dog. He just kept on killing everyone remotely related to the transgressions he suffered while he was grieving.
There’s plenty of ridiculous and spontaneous fun to be had in all four movies; you never thought one dead dog would start a worldwide assassin war, did you? Take that as a lesson and take care of your dog better than yourself.
Sicario
Sicario, on the surface, appears as if it’s a typical CIA cloak-and-dagger dramatization of the US’s war on drugs. However, there’s an additional revenge plot here for one of the characters named Alejandro. One of the major cartels killed Alejandro’s wife and deaf daughter, and he happened to be a proficient Medellin cartel hitman, so the CIA found an ally in him.
Alejandro’s motives for revenge against one of the major drug cartels in Mexico aligned with the CIA’s goal of cutting down all the heads of the cartel families and reinstating Medellin as the sole power in Mexico because it was easier to deal with one big enemy than several ones.
That didn’t stop Alejandro from being a ruthless loose canon who shed every ounce of humanity left in him to torture, kill, and maim every cartel official he came across. The film doesn’t shy away from graphic violence, ranging from disturbing torture scenes to killing children. Needless to say, it was a messy affair and one of the most ambitious revenge plots in film.
Kill Bill
It’s a Quentin Tarantino movie, so the Olympic-sized pool of gore and fake blood is to be expected– welcomed even. Kill Bill is a two-part movie about an initially nameless female protagonist named the “Bride” whose wedding was interrupted by her former assassin boss. Her boss killed her husband-to-be and shot her in the head, leaving her for dead.
She woke up years later from a coma, and immediately, she decided to take revenge in the most spectacular carnage you’ll ever see in action films. The blood spatter and squirting effects were exaggerated here, to say the least.
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There’s no shortage of corpses as well since the Bride almost literally paves the way to her vengeance with the mutilated bodies of anyone involved in her ruined wedding.
Django Unchained
Another bloody Tarantino movie, Django Unchained, is unapologetically explicit with its display of hyperbolic violence, from revolvers shooting off thick limbs to dynamites vaporizing an entire human being. All that wanton body horror destruction was in the name of ongoing revenge by a Black man who used to be a slave and his savior.
At the same time, Django was also out to rescue his wife; revenge against slave owners was mostly just a bonus here though he somehow over-indulged. Django practically shut down an entire cotton plantation and massacred a whole mansion in order to save his wife and seek out his own brand of justice.
Oldboy
Oldboy is a shocking tale of the most elaborate and sickening revenge plot ever concocted in a story with plenty of heartbreaking twists.
It begins after a man is kidnapped and held in a makeshift prison for 15 years. Sure enough, he was mostly insane when he got out, but the motivation for vengeance kept him running and focused. He soon worked up the chain of perpetrators, but what he found at the top was something he’d regret chasing.
While you can count the number of deaths in Oldboy with your fingers, the graphic violence and mutilations still make it one of the bloodiest and messiest revenge plots in just about any story.
The Revenant
After getting mauled by a bear and nearly dying while witnessing a former comrade kill your son, revenge would likely be the last thing on your mind, but Hugh Glass managed to power through the entire life-threatening ordeal in The Revenant. The film is a dramatization of real-life events.
Glass, despite his half-dead state, dragged his entire bleeding and feverish body across the freezing cold– roughly 200 miles in order to survive and hunt down the man who killed his son and left him for dead. It’s an astonishing survival story with a satisfying revenge conclusion for Glass’ revenge tale.
Real-life accounts differ, however, as Glass’ actual story was about forgiveness.
Troy
The 2004 film adaptation of The Illiad, titled Troy, took way too many liberties with the original story but somehow managed to retain the core anti-revenge message. Menelaus and Agamemnon practically dragged their entire country to war, all for revenge and their pride because Helen absconded with Paris.
Thousands of deaths and a long campaign ensued. And throughout the film, there were other examples of anti-revenge themes, such as Achilles’ rage at Patroclus’ death and how Hector’s father decided the wisest course of action was to be peaceful.
Still, despite the anti-revenge message portrayed in the revenge movie veneer, Troy still holds one of the highest on-screen deaths in the history of film, and they didn’t portray those deaths lightly.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Bloody wouldn’t even begin to describe what Sweeney Todd did in London after losing his wife and getting imprisoned. In Tim Burton’s adaptation of the famous play Sweeney Todd, the titular protagonist was hellbent on a path of vengeance against the Judge who imprisoned him and kidnapped his daughter.
Along the way, he also had to commit a series of murders and to hide the bodies, he turned the victims into meat pies and sold them to the lovely people of London to fund his barber shop. This gloomy and disgusting tale of revenge is also a musical though don’t be fooled by the genre. It’s the darkest Tim Burton movie to date.
