Few revenge movies are as visceral and upsetting as Park Chan-wook’s “Oldboy.” Adapted from the Japanese manga of the same name, the 2003 film centers on a South Korean businessman, Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik), who is imprisoned in a hotel room for 15 years without explanation. When he’s finally set free, he seeks answers from his former captors, although he soon learns that some truths are best left hidden. 

With its graphic violence and disturbing content, “Oldboy” was one of the forbearers of extreme Asian action and horror, and the film became famous for its single shot hallway fight sequence and shocking twist ending. Such was its impact that a string of imitators followed — including a 2013 reboot that felt almost like an insult to the original – yet only a handful of movies can match the raw power of “Oldboy.”

Brimming with invention and originality, “Oldboy” was a fresh take on the revenge film, one of the oldest and most reliable of movie genres. Like the best revenge flicks, it tapped into the animalistic urge to avenge wrongdoing with carnage, satisfying a bloodlust that lurks within us all. At the same time, it exposed the futility of vigilante justice, showing that an eye for an eye (or, in this case, a tongue for a tongue) will only leave the whole world blind. For anyone brave enough to watch, here are the 12 best revenge movies like “Oldboy.”

With his adaptation of James O’Barr’s 1989 comic book “The Crow,” Alex Proyas takes the revenge film to supernatural new heights. Brandon Lee plays Eric Draven, a rock star who is shot dead while his fiancée, Shelly (Sofia Shinas), is raped and murdered. One year late, Eric rises from the grave as The Crow, an invincible avenging angel intent on exacting revenge against the gang that killed his lover. His killing spree leads him to Top Dollar (Michael Wincott), the crime boss who ordered the double homicide when Eric and Shelly protested his illegal evictions from their apartment building.

When it was released in 1994, the cinematic qualities of “The Crow” were largely overshadowed by the death of Lee, who was accidentally shot and killed by an improperly loaded prop gun during the filming of Eric’s murder scene. As such, a grim pall hangs over what is already a pretty disturbing examination of grief and vengeance, yet its legacy has only grown with each passing year. A mix of Gothic horror and film noir, “The Crow” feels both classic and modern at the same time, tinged with the hyperkinetic editing and punk rock bombast Proyas honed during his years helming music videos, As Terrence Rafferty put it in The New Yorker, “The Crow” is “dark, moody, and seductively overwrought; it’s an amazingly pure expression of morbid adolescent romanticism.”

Pretty much every revenge film of the modern era owes a debt of gratitude to “Death Wish.” Released in 1974, it stars Charles Bronson as Paul Kersey, a meek New York architect who snaps when violent home invaders murder his wife and rape his daughter, who dies from her injuries. Frustrated by the NYPD’s inability to apprehend the culprits, Paul takes the law into his own hands, tossing his liberal values aside to become a vigilante. Paul patrols the streets with a revolver gifted to him by a client, taking down not just the thugs who killed his family, but any criminal who crosses his path, much to the public’s delight.

The film was met with controversy upon its release, with many critics condemning its exploitation of “very real fears and social problems” (The New York Times) and “appeal to brute emotions” (The Los Angeles Times). Yet “Death Wish” tapped into a growing fear amongst Americans at the time that lawlessness was out of control, borne out by a growth in the violent crime rate. Seen today, its fascist worldview is difficult to ignore, yet as Roger Ebert stated in his review, “The movie has an eerie kind of fascination, even though its message is scary.” And that’s perhaps the best way to view “Death Wish,” which spawned a franchise and turned Bronson, at age 53, into the patron saint of the aggrieved.

Although the title hints at something supernatural, 2010’s “I Saw the Devil” examines the evil that exists within the world we inhabit. Directed by Kim Jee-woon, it stars Lee Byung-hun as Kim Soo-hyeon, an National Intelligence Service (NIS) agent tracking down the person who killed and dismembered his fiancée. His search leads him to Jang Kyung-chul (Choi Min-sik), a taxi driver who moonlights as a serial killer. Yet that’s just the set-up for a brutal thriller about two men whose differing motives lead them to bloodlust.

Like his contemporaries Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon-ho, Director Kim uses the horror and thriller genres as a means of exploring broader societal and class issues. That’s certainly the case with “I Saw the Devil,” which interrogates the thin line between cop and criminal, both of whom have their reasons for committing acts of violence. “Even at its most chaotic, the film never loses sight of the human toll of the increasingly over-the-top events it portrays,” wrote Mark Olsen for The Los Angeles Times.

Who would have guessed that a dead dog would kick off one of the most successful action franchises of the 21st century? In 2014’s original “John Wick,” the titular assassin (Keanu Reeves), devastated by his wife’s death, comes out of retirement after Russian mobsters led by Iosef Tarasov (Alfie Allen) steal his car and kill the puppy his late wife gifted him. His quest for vengeance leads him to Iosef’s father, Russian crime boss Viggo Tarasov (Michael Nyqvist), who Wick used to work for. Viggo warns his arrogant son that Wick, known throughout the criminal underworld as “Baba Yaga,” is an unstoppable killing machine, which bears out as the body count piles up.

Considering how operatic the “John Wick” series became, it’s almost startling to revisit the first film for what it is: a gritty throwback to revenge thrillers of yore. Clocking in at just 101 minutes, it’s a tightly-wound violence-fest, with some truly spectacular fight sequences that hint at the epic action set pieces stuntman-turned-director Chad Stahelski would mount in the subsequent films. “If ‘John Wick’ is the best looking action film in recent memory, it’s also bolstered by a phenomenal cast of actors who, be they in parts big or small, manage to craft three-dimensional characters out of stock archetypes,” raved The Daily Beast.

The “Gone with the Wind” of revenge movies, Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” contains so much vengeance and bloodshed that it had to be split into two parts. In “Vol. 1,” The Bride (Uma Thurman) awakens from a coma after being left for dead on her wedding day by The Deadly Vipers, led by her ex-boyfriend, Bill (David Carradine). Armed with a samurai sword, the Bride sets out to pick off her would-be assassins (played by Daryl Hannah, Lucy Liu, Vivica A. Fox, and Michael Madsen) one by one. In “Vol. 2,” the Bride finally makes her way to Bill, but a shocking revelation puts a snag in her plans for revenge.

Tarantino has made no secret of his love for grindhouse cinema, from kung fu to blaxploitation, and the two halves of 2003’s “Kill Bill” are a love letter to those films. Coming fresh off the back-to-back successes of “Pulp Fiction” and “Jackie Brown,” Tarantino was gifted more resources than your average B-movie director, and “Kill Bill” is mounted with a technical skill and precision sorely lacking from most exploitation films. “Delivered with such high panache and brio, it’s mesmerizing,” raved Stephen Hunter of “Vol. 1” for The Washington Post. Michael O’Sullivan, also of The Washington Post, described “Vol. 2” as “a comic book at heart, albeit a thoroughly, grandly romantic one in the end.”

The concluding chapter of Park Chan-wook’s Vengeance Trilogy (preceded by “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance” and “Oldboy”), 2005’s “Lady Vengeance” is the culmination of everything the director wanted to say about the empty satisfaction that comes with revenge. 

Imprisoned for 13 years for a murder she didn’t commit, Lee Geum-ja (Lee Young-ae) is on the hunt for everyone who put her behind bars, from the police detective (Nam Il-woo) who faked evidence against her to the school teacher, Mr. Baek (Choi Min-sik), who set the entire plot in motion. As she picks off one offender after another with the help of the surrogate family she formed behind bars, Guem-ja is desperately trying to find her daughter, Jenny (Kwon Yea-young), who was taken away when she was sent to prison.

If nothing else, “Lady Vengeance” is the most stylistically adventurous of Director Park’s Vengeance Trilogy, with one version of the film slowly draining from color to black-and-white to show the progression of its main character. It’s also the most nakedly emotional, as Guem-ja’s quest is rooted not just in vengeance, but in the need to reconnect with her daughter. Ben Walters of Time Out called it “a slow-burning retribution narrative in which a well-founded, better-nursed grudge is visited on the body of its target with such calculated ferocity that the boundaries of victim and perpetrator blur in the red mist.”

Wes Craven kicked off his career as one of the masters of horror with a low-budget revenge drama that’s almost too intense to watch. In “The Last House on the Left,” two teenage girls, Mari Collingwood (Sandra Peabody) and Phyllis Stone (Lucy Grantham), travel into the city for a concert. Hoping to score drugs, they run into a gang of escaped convicts led by crazed killer Krug Stillo (David A. Hess) and his psychopathic girlfriend, Sadie (Jeramie Rain). With their accomplices Weasel (Fred Lincoln) and Junior (Marc Sheffler), King and Sadie kidnap, rape, and kill Mari and Phyllis, but find themselves spending the night with none other than Mari’s parents, Estelle (Eleanor Shaw) and John (Richard Towers). When they discover their daughter’s body, Estelle and John take vengeance against their houseguests.

Inspired by Ingmar Bergman’s “The Virgin Spring” (itself based on a Swedish ballad), “The Last House on the Left” stirred controversy upon its release in 1972. Made on a microscopic budget, the film was defined by its graphic violence and sexual content, so much so that Craven made several edits to get an R-rating in the U.S. It was outright banned in the U.K. until the 1990s, after failing to pass certification and being declared a “video nasty.” Yet in a retrospective review for BBC, critic David Wood said, “The film, to its credit, details both the initial acts of violation and the revenge that ensues as similarly dehumanizing and reprehensible.”

Born out of director George Miller’s experiences with automobile accident deaths and injuries as an emergency room doctor, 1979’s “Mad Max” imagines a future Australia overrun with violent biker gangs who use vehicles as weapons. Police officer Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson) tries his best to instill law and order, but he can only do so much as citizens fight for the world’s most precious and rapidly-depleting resource: oil. Max’s ongoing feud with a motorbike gang comes to a head when his wife and son are murdered by them while hiding in a remote lakeside cabin. This makes Max go, well, a little mad — and he enacts his revenge against those responsible in ways that go against the oath he swore to uphold.

Given how the series evolved over time, it’s almost striking to see how stripped down the original “Mad Max” is. Rather than taking place in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, the film is set in a future that eerily resembles our present. This may have been due in large part to budgetary restrictions, yet it gives the movie a gritty reality that’s all the more striking today, as we edge perilously close to making Miller’s fantasy a reality. It’s also fitting for the subject matter, which is more concerned with Max’s lust for vengeance than his need to survive. In his review for Time magazine, Richard Corliss said “Mad Max” contained “sequences of violent, pure cinema poetry,” which would only become more true as the franchise continued.

The quest for vengeance gets taken to operatic levels in Tony Scott’s “Man on Fire.” Released in 2004, it stars Denzel Washington as John Creasy, a former CIA operative who’s turned to alcohol after leaving the agency. While visiting Mexico City, his friend, Paul Rayburn (Christopher Walken), convinces him to take a job as a bodyguard for Lupita (Dakota Johnson), the nine-year-old daughter of prominent automaker Samuel Ramos (Marc Anthony). It doesn’t take long for Lupita to break through Creasy’s armor, and when she’s kidnapped, he embarks on a violent killing spree to enact revenge against her captors.

“Man on Fire” was a turning point for Scott, who, like his brother Ridley, rose to fame directing slick and stylish entertainments like “Top Gun,” “Days of Thunder,” and “Crimson Tide.” Whereas his previous films were defined by carefully crafted visuals and technical precision, “Man on Fire” adopted a jagged, fractured style, with quick cuts and handheld camerawork, which he would continue with his later films “Domino,” “Deja Vu,” and “Unstoppable.” 

What really elevates the film is Washington, who brings a rawness and pain to Creasy that’s at times unbearable to watch. His performance helped make “Man on Fire,” wrote Todd McCarthy of Variety, “one of the more absorbing and palatable entries in the rather disreputable ‘Death Wish’-style self-appointed vigilante sub-genre.”

Before he was the king of blockbusters, Christopher Nolan rose to prominence with the small scale neo-noir “Memento.” Unfolding simultaneously backwards and forwards (with color and black-and-white cinematography used to distinguish between the two timelines), it centers on Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce), a former insurance investigator who loses the ability to form new memories when he suffers a head injury while his wife is raped and murdered. He devotes his life to finding her killer, tattooing clues on his body so that he wont forget them. His investigation leads him to two people, Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss) and Teddy (Joe Pantoliano), who may be friends or foes, which is difficult to determine considering how short-term his memory is.

In many ways, 2000’s “Memento” serves as a rosetta stone for Nolan’s career, in that it contains so many elements that would define his filmography: the dead wife trope, the jumbled timeline, a protagonist who’s (quite literally) struggling with his identity. What’s astounding is how well the film stands up to repeat viewings, long after its many secrets have been revealed. The backwards chronology could easily be a gimmick, but it instead functions as a way of placing the viewer squarely in the protagonist’s point of view (and, strangely enough, still manages to unfold in a traditional three-act structure). “I can’t remember when a movie has seemed so clever, strangely affecting and slyly funny at the very same time,” raved Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal.

1977’s “Rolling Thunder” used the ravages of the Vietnam War as the basis for one of the all-time great revenge movies. William Devane plays Major Charles Rane, who returns to his hometown of San Antonio, Texas, after spending seven years in a Hanoi POW camp. Although he’s welcomed home as a hero, Rane has a difficult time readjusting to civilian life, even though he’s gifted a new Cadillac and a collection of silver dollars. A gang of thugs show up to steal those silver dollars, and when Rane refuses, they mangle his hand in a garbage disposal and kill his wife and son. Armed with a brand new hook, Rane calls upon his fellow POW, Johnny Vohden (Tommy Lee Jones), to help him track down the men responsible.

Co-written by Paul Schrader, “Rolling Thunder” functions like the exploitation cousin to Schrader’s screenplay for the previous year’s “Taxi Driver.” Both films center on men who served their country and returned home physically and psychologically scarred, and now take their pain out on everyone else. Among the film’s many fans is Quentin Tarantino, who placed it on his top 10 list for the 2012 Sight and Sound poll and called it (via James Whale Bake Sale) “the greatest savage, fascist, Revengeamatic flick ever made” in his book “Cinema Speculation.” That’s high praise indeed from the man who made “Kill Bill.”

Park Chan-wook kicked off his Vengeance Trilogy with a devastating study of the limits of retribution. 2002’s “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance” centers on Ryu (Shin Ha-kyun), a deaf factory worker who is fired from his job as his sister (Im Ji-eun) is suffering from kidney disease. Desperate to pay for a transplant, he hatches a plan with his anarchist girlfriend, Cha Yeong-mi (Bae Doona), to kidnap the daughter of Park Dong-jin (Song Kang-ho), the wealthy factory executive who fired him, and collect a sizable ransom. Yet when an unexpected tragedy occurs, everyone involved finds themselves in an endless spiral of violence, revenge, and retaliation.

With its many twists and turns, “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance” plays almost like a Hitchcock thriller, as Ryu, Cha, and Park get deeper into trouble with each wrong decision. As he would later explore in “Oldboy” and “Lady Vengeance,” Director Park shows that although revenge feels great in the moment, it will only lead to further loss and bloodshed. In his review for The Village Voice, James Crawford wrote that the film “accomplishes a miraculous feat by being harrowing and humane in equal measure.” That mix of violence, humor, and — yes, even sympathy — would come to define Director Park’s work throughout the years.

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN’s National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).