The Most F'ed Up Dinner Parties in Movie History

Dinner parties are supposed to be fun. You're supposed to drink a bunch of wine, eat until you're stuffed, and have a jolly good time. But sometimes—sometimes—a motherfucker will stab you at the dinner table. If you've ever been to a family reunion, or any Thanksgiving get-together, you know tensions can run high. You definitely know the feeling of wanting to stab someone's eyes out with a fork when they ask, "So... what are you actually doing with your life?" Or, you know, if someone takes the last BBQ rib.

Many films over the years have taken cues from the awkward silences or boiling tensions of the dinner table (see: Wedding Crashers, American Beauty, etc.) and some films have gone batshit crazy with the dinner idea (see: this list). The latest dinner-party-gone-wrong film comes from Jennifer's Body director Karyn Kusama. Called The Invitation, the film follows a man named Will (Logan Marshall-Green) who gets invited to his ex-wife's and her new husband's place for a dinner party after years of not speaking to each other. What seems like a cordial reunion with friends takes a sinister turn as the hosts' intentions are revealed and the guests frantically try to leave.

Kusama masterfully builds suspense, turning a home into a death maze, and making you think twice before accepting an invitation to a dinner party. Especially if it's at the home of a former lover. Ahead of the film's April 8 release, we put together the most fucked up dinner party scenes in films. Bon appetit!

On the menu: Sautéed brains.

Price: Not much, since this is a BYOB (bring your own brain) arrangement.

Hannibal has eaten a lot of questionable meals over the years—cannibalism usually doesn't make for very appetizing dishes (except on NBC's Hannibal, which made human liver look like seared foie gras). Dr. Lecter has had many sickening feasts, but the most horrifying meal has to be the dinner scene in 2001's Hannibal, when the titular villain (played by Anthony Hopkins) drugs Ray Liotta at a 4th of July gathering, removes the top of his head, cooks a part of his brain, and FEEDS IT TO HIM. Can you think of a worse thing that could happen to you at a dinner?

On the menu: Piss, shit, vomit, and other questionable human fluids.

Price: Any sort of sanitary standards you used to have. Also, your communist past.

I made the mistake of watching this at a dinner party, which is maybe why I'm so traumatized by it. This Dušan Makavejev film is an avant-garde classic that takes a nausea-inducing turn when a new bride and winner of a virginity contest leaves her controlling husband to pursue a life of debauchery. And do trust, she gets debaucherous AF. The result was so shocking (read: pornographic and anti-communist) that actress Anna Prucnal, who plays a boat captain looking for sexual conquests, was exiled from her native Poland for participating in the film. Not only are there brutal murders in tubs of sugar, and gross chocolate-covered fights, but there are dinner scenes that include lots of vomiting, shitting, and pissing into people's mouths. I would skip this invitation, but that's just me. Who knows what kind of shit you're into.

On the menu: A nice home-cooked meal you won't even get to eat.

Price: Awkward family tensions and escalated fear of death.

You're Next, from directing/writing duo Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett, is one of the best horror films of the past decade. It takes an already awkward dinner setting (fighting siblings and their significant others) and ramps up the horror when the family gets attacked by outside assailants during their meal. An arrow shot through the window becomes the catalyst for a dinner party gone so, so wrong. None of the characters get to eat, but their empty stomachs are probably the last thing on their minds as they try to not get murdered.

On the menu: Heated conversations about politics and values with a bunch of grad students (and Johnnie Cochran?).

Price: The lives of trash humans.

Starring young Cameron Diaz, this dark comedy finds five grad students in a conundrum when they accidentally invite a neo-Nazi to dinner and, after a heated argument, stab him to death. After the first kill, they decide to make a habit of their murderous dinner party by inviting the worst kind of people over: homophobes, misogynists, rape apologists, that kinda stuff. So maybe this isn't the worst dinner party ever, but morality is heavily questioned.

On the menu: The cooked body of your wife's former lover.

Price: Deep regret.

Poor Helen Mirren. Wife to the worst dude ever (an English gangster named Albert Spica), she finds herself trapped, offended, and disgusted by her husband's thuggish ways, night after night as he takes over the dining hall of the restaurant he owns. But amidst his brashness, she spots a quiet bookish type who dines alone and becomes entangled in a secret affair with him—that is until her crook husband finds out. Spica kills the guy, but Mirren's Georgina gets the last laugh—I guess?—when she brings the body back to the restaurant's chef, makes him cook her deceased lover, and forces her husband to eat the body.

On the menu: Imaginary dinner guests and deep terror.

Price: Karma for committing robbery.

In this tense bad guy vs. bad guy thriller, a fleeing thief tricks a man into thinking he's a friend of a friend in order to enter his home and hide from the police. Little does he know, he chose the wrong house, and this "perfect host" has made a habit of hosting "dinner parties" where he ties up his guests, terrorizes them, and then, well... You'll see.

On the menu: Hot dogs.

Price: Your appetite.

No one dies or anything but holy shit this is gross as hell. BRB taking a very long break from eating hot dogs.

On the menu: Struggle space food.

Price: Your chest casually bursting open.

Nothing ruins a good dinner like an alien suddenly bursting out of your chest, I guess. The best part of this infamous alien chest-bursting scene in the Ridley Scott space thriller is that the cast didn't know what was going to happen, except that they might get some blood on their face. Their reactions are genuine, and probably mirrors the first time you saw it happen. No Tums will cure this stomach pain.

On the menu: A twisted fucking game.

Price: High risk, but you walk away with a shit ton of money if you win.

A game of "would you rather?" usually ends up being squirmish, even if the questions are hypothetical. Would You Rather takes hypothetical to reality, as people at a dinner party are required to choose between two horrifying options at each round. Try to leave and the results end up becoming fatal. From electric shocks to ice pick stabbings, this dinner gets tenser by the minute, and no one ends up having fun playing this game.

On the menu: Vanilla pudding.

Price: Unwanted special sauce in that pudding...

This gross-out fest will turn you off from vanilla pudding forever, if you're not already... turned off... by vanilla pudding... An unsuspecting guest comes over for dinner and little does he know the matriarch is a zombie. Zombie mom then squirts some bloody pus into the guest's pudding, and he continues to eat it, completely oblivious. Eww, barf. That pudding scene is definitely way grosser than the mom chewing on her own ear afterwards.

On the menu: Hella feces.

Price: Endless torture and maybe getting your tongue cut out.

This movie is two hours of pure torture, but one of the most talked-about scenes is surely the banquet during which people are forced to eat shit. Arriving 30-plus years before The Human Centipede, Salò really pushed boundaries on just how much the audience could take onscreen torment.

On the menu: Yourself.

Price: Nightmares, death.

Anyone familiar with Freddy Krueger's tactics knows that the number one rule for the Nightmare series is: NEVER FALL ASLEEP. And what do ya know, poor Greta falls asleep at the dinner table, which, is it her fault or the fault of whoever threw a boring-ass dinner? Either way, she ends up getting force-fed a replica of herself while Freddy yells "You are what you eat!" A terrible way to go, IMO.

On the menu: Sweltering Texas heat and fucked up family interrogations.

Price: Offering your blood for an old man to suck on.

The original Texas Chainsaw is all sorts of scary, but the dinner scene with Leatherface and fam is Sally's climactic moment of psychological torture. What's even scarier is what happened IRL: They shot this scene for 27 hours straight, in 110-degree Texas weather, and Sally's finger was actually cut open with a knife because the fake blood was clogged. Umm, I guess movie magic wasn't so advanced back then. Poor Sally, but mostly poor actress Marilyn Burns.

On the menu: Mashed potatoes.

Price: Extreme gag reflex.

You know the scene. Chris Elliot plays the terrifying butler with the mangled hand who gets very hands-on with the food he serves to his dinner guests. Mashed potatoes, anyone?