6. CLOVERFIELD
A giant monster's attack on New York City, captured by amateur filmmakers (or, as we like to call it, Roland Emmerich's Godzilla). It's a great concept, but we can't watch the footage we shot of our granny waving good-bye from the nursing home window without getting queasy, so forget trying to focus on some kid getting chased through a subway tunnel by Cthulhu babies.
Vom-Meter: 2 out of 5 bags. The intense running is at least broken up with lingering close-ups of Odette Yustman, Jessica Lucas, and Lizzy Caplan.
5. PI
Imagine if you could crawl into the head of that obsessively nerdy math major you shared a dorm room with freshman year only to find his thoughts were being directed by David Lynch, and you have some idea of the headache-a-thon that is Pi. Random jump cuts of ants, extreme close-ups of computer screens, math… It's enough to send you hurtling toward the restroom.
Vom-Meter: 3 out of 5 bags. But mostly because the math made our heads hurt.
4. UNITED 93
The Bourne Supremacy director Paul Greengrass obviously never met a piece of subject matter he couldn't film with the steady-handedness of a speed freak on four Red Bulls. Taking place as it does within the confines of a plane—already a place we associate with sickness and discomfort—made this a grueling cinematic experience.
Vom-Meter: 3 out of 5 bags…and a few tissues, since we know how this thing ends.
3. THE BOURNE SUPREMACY
Directors like to throw around words like "immediacy" and "in-the-moment intensity" when they really mean "we forgot to check the focus." During the fights and car chases, they could have been splicing in outtakes of Matt Damon from School Ties for all we could make out. We left the theater feeling like we had our brains permanently scrambled by Treadstone.
Vom-Meter: 4 out of 5 bags. This is a great movie—imagine how much greater it would have been if we could have made sense of some of the fight scenes.
2. SPUN
Spun uses every trick in the book—fast cuts, sped-up action, weird angles—in an attempt to make the audience feel what it's like to be jacked up on crank. But what's the fun of feeling like you're on meth without the benefits? You know, the missing teeth, the sores, the hanging out with people who look like Mickey Rourke. If we're going to be sick and twitchy, we want the whole package.
Vom-Meter: 4 out of 5 bags. When the camerawork eased up, we were still stuck looking at Mickey Rourke's palooka-tenderized mug.
1. THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT
This is the one that, for better or for worse, convinced anyone with a home movie camera and at least three friends (acting talent optional) that they could make a blockbuster movie. The jittery camerawork gave both a sense of realism and hid the fact that the whole thing was probably shot in a patch of woods behind the local middle school.
Vom-Meter: 5 out of 5 bags. The extra bag is tacked on for acting quality.