Badmovies.org Forum

   I was really into independent films when I was in college.  At some point though I said to myself "  you know this movie is going to have some old vietnamese guy riding a crappy schwin bike through a village and he is going to get to his mud hut and open the door and his whole family is going to be dead.  I know this is "reality" but why am I paying to see something that makes me feel so awful?" 

    So I am torn on these types of movies.  Sure they are important and often quite good but aren't movies simply light entertainment on some level?


Anyway,  I started wondering about this because I recently caught Lilya 4 Ever,  the most depressing movie I can recall ever seeing.  The poor girl lilya,  if it weren't for bad luck she wouldn't have any at all.  It's almost like "long weekend" when the whole force of mother nature is conspiring against her.  The berlin wall fell for the sole purpose of her having to survive and be horribly exploited.  Now I feel bad for making light of her predicament.  So you can see my dilema.


      So Lilya 4 ever that's mine.  How about you.  any "Closer" fans? haters?

Mysterious Skin.

A Gregg Araki film, and easily his best work to date. My ex-girlfriend made me watch and it was really, really uncomfortable. It's about two young boys who are sexually abused when they are 9 years old by their baseball coach and meet again 10 years later, having led very different lives. One boy has grown up gay, prostituting himself to older men and is still dealing with what happened to him. The other boy lives an asexual life with his mother and has blocked out the ordeal, thinking that he was abducted by aliens. It was a very powerful film, but unpleasant to watch with most of the sex scenes as I nearly had to switch it off several times. Had my ex in tears too.  :bluesad:

what a great way to spend an evening after working all day  :thumbup:  :cheers:

The Mist
Forest Gump
Philadelphia

Well, the psychological theory behind depressing movies is that they provide catharsis.  You feel a little worse immediately after watching them, but you feel better in the long run, because they help you deal with unresolved feelings of tragedy you experience in your own life.  

BAD LIEUTENANT comes to mind as a film that's extremely depressing even despite the supposedly positive religious message.  

Among movies I've watched recently, GUMMO sticks out as easily the most depressing.  It's just utterly ugly, and the overall message seems to be that life is pointless.  It really feels like the kind of movie a depressed teenager would make.  

March of the Penguins

I'm a big tough guy and don't usually CRY during movies.
But that movie punches you in the gut.

'Twas depressing to learn what they endure, or try to endure.

For me it would have to be Roland Joffe's "The Mission".

The wonderful music of Ennio Morricone provides only more emotional fuel to the ultimately doomed fate of the Jesuits and the Indians they try to protect.  I'm not sure what this film is trying to say about god, or religion, but it doesn't seem to be a very inspiring message. 

Grave of the Fire Flies... It's an old anime film... ugh... good but depressing.

A recent French horror film called Inside is easily the most depressing film that I've seen to date.  It's a brilliant film though but it'll make you feel like you like complete crap for watching it.

Yep, when the topic of depressing movies comes up I think of that one first.

For me it would have to be The Bridge.

Check out this short trailer for it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zwl-Pa_QT0M

It's a documentary about people who are drawn to the Golden Gate Bridge...to commit suicide by jumping off of it.
When I first heard about it, it sounded fascinating.
One thing's for sure, it is depressing.
It's well made and all that, but it wasn't fascinating like I thought it would be.
It left me feeling sad.   :bluesad:

An American Tail, the first and second.

I have never watched such a depressing, sad, and heart tearing animated movie before.  At one point, I just assumed the movie creator was just trying to make me depressed.

REPULSION by Roman Polanski is pretty dam depressing...I felt bad for the girl. She was really f#cked in the head. Don't get me wrong it's an EXCELLENT film...but...ugh!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gP-2AKBzn_g

Another one is the IDIOTS...some very depressing nonsense from Lars Van Trier....something about trying to find your inner idiot....a real bummer...I saw an english subtitled version...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuvMl291c7A

Brilliant on some levels but it made me want to punch the screen in.


SPOILER ALERT!





I usually applaud downer endings in some films, just because always knowing that the good guys will win kind of makes the whole moviegoing experience pointless. However, in this case, having it end that way felt like being stabbed in the gut, especially after sitting through an hour of possible saviors getting killed off. I refuse to watch it again, and that's coming from someone who's sat through multiple viewings of pink flamingoes.

1984
Brazil
Requiem For a Dream
Pi
Most sci-fi from the late 60s-early 70s

Interesting, these are also some of my all-time favourite films

My god, I forgot about 1984.  That one is definitely a devastating story.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead was pretty depressing.

So was Little Murders.

The Quiet was surprisingly depressing and disturbing. Not the lezbian love fest I was ihoping for. In fact it almost put me off lezbians altogether. :wink:

Hard Candy was pretty devastating. Really good, but devastating.

And of course....Phantom Menace( Sorry I couldn't resist)

The Seventh Seal. I think it is a great movie, I gave it 10/10, but it's really depressing.

Strozek

FRANCES with Jessica Lange

Biography of the film star Frances Farmer. If you ever see this, remember this: The role played by Sam Sheppard is fictional. It makes the movie that much more depressing.

Oh yea, I didnt even think about Docs.

The Bridge or Tarnation are two really depressing ones.

Kes

Unspeakable
Grave of the Fireflies
And the Band Played On
American History X
Bleeders
La Bamba
and there was something about Superstition that felt kind of depressing, but I think it was just the overall feel of the movie.

Requiem for a Dream is pretty depressing.

RFAD is the first movie that popped into my mind when I thought of a depressing films.

Basketball Diaries is a pretty good depressing movie. One of the films that Leonardo Dicaprio really proves himself as a great actor.

Also: Trainspotting and American Beauty. 

Noi Albinoi (aka Noi the Albino)

While not as soul-crushingly depressing as some of those previously mentioned like Requiem for a Dream or the wonderfully nihilistic Gummo, Noi the Albino succeeds in painting a relentlessly bleak portrait of isolation.  This film is as stark and cold as any of the Scandinavian classics, but what sets this apart for me is that even the landscapes trap the viewer and serve to siphon away any glimmer of hope.  The looming mountains which dominate every exterior shot blot out the sky entirely, and I guarantee you won't be able to watch this without feeling powerless and claustrophobic.

House of Sand and Fog.  The book was hard enough to take, but watching it visualized on the screen, good god. 

The Mist....I would have preferred the book ending...the ending they put in there was horrible. 

Open Water.  Just, yuck.

For me, it is the South African maestro filmmaker Jans Rautenbach's Jannie Totsiens (1970). While the film is a little depressing, it is also South Africa's first black comedy as it is set in a lunatic asylum, which is a microcosm of SA, circa 1970. Very scary mostly, depressing sometimes but also very funny.

My review of it below:


Allegedly autobiographical in tone, this was South Africa’s first film in the avant-garde genre, one of its’ very few horror films and also its’ first black comedy. It is now known to be an allegory about the South African situation in the 1970’s – showing said situation and the country’s inhabitants in the mileu of a home for the insane whose inmates’ lives are flipped by the arrival of a catatonic, mute mathematics professor, the “angel of discord”, as he is referred to by one of the loonies. Among this merry little band, we find a jilted bride (Hermien Dommisse) whose wedding portrait depicts her holding the hand of a faceless man, a knife wielding nymphomaniac with Bible thumping parents (Katinka Heyns), an ex Ossewabrandwag soldier with an uncanny resemblance to John Vorster (Don Leonard), a judge who went mad after his daughter’s killer was let off scot free (Jacques Loots) and a psychotic woman (Jill Kirkland) who continously writes unsent letters to her dead daughter. The seemingly mad and mother fixated Jannie Pienaar (supposedly based both on director Jans Rautenbach’s treatment by the critics, some of the more sensitive sections of the South African community after the release of Katrina and Rautenbach’s experiences as a clinical psychologist) finds himself both restored to life because of two major factors: a love triangle which involves him and two of the inmates and the horrific finale when, on the suicide of one of those inmates, Jannie is condemned to death by hanging. One would have to go very far back or far forward into the future of the South African film industry’s history to find a film as horrific, comic (yes, it is very funny in parts) and perfect as this, with brooding photography (courtesy David Dunn~ Yarker and Koos Roets) an eerie credits puppet show in which the spectre of death intrudes and is frightened away, haunting music by Sam Sklair and oppressive, claustrophobic set and art design. Starring Cobus Rossouw, Jill Kirkland, Hermien Dommisse, Phillip Swanepoel, Katinka Heyns, Don Leonard, Lourens Schultz, Patrick Mynhardt, Betty Botha, Sandra Kotze, George Pearce and Jacques Loots.

The 2004 Miniseries Of FRANKENSTEIN
MARY REILLY
MAY
ROMAN
WHITE NOISE 2
THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY
QUILLS
THE ORPHANAGE
The GINGER SNAPS Trilogy

All Of These Movies Are Really Good But They're So Depressing That I Can't Really Watch Them Too Often

I thought Walkabout was pretty depressing. Dad offing himself, then the kids being left for dead, the native kid that pretty much saves their lives, only to be discarded once they're out of danger, and his reaction to that. If it weren't for Jenny Agutter being totally nude, it'd be a complete downer. 

Yes I agree, this film is pretty bleak. Especially given what is actually occurring behind the scenes. Another thread is about Salo, and that film is pretty devoid of any hope. The Rapture and What Dreams May Come in the afterlife category also come to mind as films that are soul-crushingly depressing. 

Boys Don't Cry

Oh yeah, my ex made me watch that, good film, but awful at the same time. Thank Satan for that Cars tune.

Yeah, it's good.

But, man...not exactly feel good.

 To be quite honest, the film that made me feel like I was going to burst into tears was a Spanish film called Pan's Labrinth. This film was ridiculously depressing and will bring tears to your eyes in a heartbeat...so, if any of you plan on seeing it-bring a hanky or something.  :lookingup:

It's one of my faves but i didn't cry because it was sad. I thought it was bittersweet happyness.

I think it depends on how you look at the ending, the same can be said for The Orphanage.

Catch 22 the movie version was choatic but just as cynical as the book was.

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, that was a pretty tragic ending.

The boy in the stripped pajamas
Boy A
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father~ documentary
Eden lake
A simple plan
Lilja 4-ever

They all depressed me but the documentary bothered me for days.

I just finished watching Dear Zachary on Youtube. I suddenly have a lot less faith in the legal system.

Its scary how people can manipulate the system. I know its not perfect but the errors in this case had tragic results and the people involved with the decision making should be ashamed.    :thumbdown:

Most recently, it would have to be Funny Games with Naomi Watts. That movie just f**ked with me. Before that it would have to be Asia Argento's (yup, she's THAT guys daughter) The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things. These films stories could be pulled straight from the newspaper, so they definitely leave a mark on me.

 I just thought of an epic depressing film: Schindler's List... that was a toughie to watch without some serious waterworks.

Remembered another one.


Sophie's choice~  Her choice made me want to throw up. 

As far as major Hollywood releases, the most depressing one that I've seen to date was Seven.  I remember sitting in a theater during the ending credits just feeling like I had been punched in the gut after the macabre twist during the final stretch.

I Am Legend
 :teddyr:

The movie BULLY that is occasionally shown on IFC is incredibly depressing.  I mean, the fact that there are so many young people in America who are like the characters in this movie makes you want to slit your wrists when you think about the future of the country!

That's depressing for a whole load of reasons...

Yes that and the fact that this for the most part is a true story is disturbing.

Stephen King's The Mist that ending wtf the ending to that movie was absolutely despicable beyond depressing  :bluesad:

Odd Girl Out

Now there's a depressing movie, with at least a happy and pleasant ending.

20 million miles to earth...the ymir dying because he was prevoked :bluesad: :bluesad: :bluesad: :bluesad: :bluesad:

You're all wrong!

THE most depressing movie of all time is....

Threads.

I strongly recommend NOT looking it up on youtube.

My poor soul was crushed without watching the whole movie.

Angela's ashes

Dancing in the dark

a spanish film called "Los santos inocentes"

I think, probably, Nacho Cerda's Aftermath.

And, personally, I don't know what it is, but I dig movies that make me feel like that.

Here are a few:

* TESTAMENT
* THE DEER HUNTER
* THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER
* 'NIGHT, MOTHER (what's more depressing than a woman planning her suicide for 90 minutes?)
* STREAMERS
* I WANT TO LIVE!
* IN COLD BLOOD
* ON THE BEACH

And recently, MY SISTER'S KEEPER

. . . and let's not forget:

* THE PANIC IN NEEDLE PARK

I had forgotten about Night, Mother.  Its hard to make a movie interesting with just 2 characters talking but they do it.  Anne Bancroft and Sissy Spacek are both great in this.

I have to totally agree with you, Threads is one of the most soul crushing movies I've ever seen.  I tracked it down for a friend of mine and decided to watch it too.  Little did I know, I'd be in for the saddest and depressing 2 hours I'd ever spent in front of the TV.  I mean who would have thought that ultra-realistic portrayal of nuclear war and the fallout that would accompany it could be so depressing, right?

Haven't seen THREADS, but the brief description made me think of WHEN THE WIND BLOWS, the extremely depressing animated story of a sweet, naive old couple who survives a nuclear war and experiences the effects of fallout, all the while trusting the assurances of their government that everything will be all right. 

I guess Im a glutton for punishment because I found threads and watched it. It was depressing for sure but it scared me more than anything.

I watched THREADS in a class in college.  The professor didn't announce in advance that we would be watching it nor did he tell anone what it was about.  A lot of people were freaked out by it.

By far the most depressing movie I have ever seen was Requiem For A Dream. I couldn't sleep that night and haven't been able to watch the movie since.

Not particularly mainstream but two movies I saw fairly recently:
Flavia The Heretic
Begotten

Interesting.  I didn't find BEGOTTEN depressing, because the characters were too abstract, and therefore impossible to identify with. Personally, it's hard to say what emotion I took away from the movie.  It was a complex combination of disturbance, fascination, intoxication, and boredom (by the end).  I'm not saying at all that your response was illegitimate by any means; it's certainly a movie that everyone takes away something different from.

FLAVIA is a movie I've always wanted to see just because I find the title interesting, and the whole concept of nunsploitiation as sort of dirty and intriguing. 

You're right, Begotten is really one of those movies that everyone will take away something different from, just for me I got the whole 'Humanity is evil' thing.
'Flavia' is certainly worth checking out, it's a cut above the usual Nunsploitation flick and you really end up feeling for Flavia and everything she goes through by about the half way point. I won't say anymore as not to ruin it.

Most depressing movie, ummm ... Vulgar.

It's about a clown that gets raped, no lie. I remember Howard Stern said DONT WATCH IT! and what did I do? I watched it. Really depressing, made me sick for days.  :bluesad:

I shall have to check that one out, heh.

I always thought the original ending to "Evil Dead III:Army of Darkness" where Ash goes through all that demon bullsh*t just to wake up in a post-apocalyptic junkyard was a downer.... I'm one of the few who's glad they re-shot it.

(http://barfblog.foodsafety.ksu.edu/uploads/image/bruce_campbell_army_of_darkness.jpg)
(The king deserves a happy ending)

Vulgar was a pretty bleak movie interesting only as it had Dante from Clerks in the lead role.

As for the original Rip Van Winkle ending for Army of Darkness it was a set-up for Evil Dead IV where Ash would have been this time the "primitive screwhead" as opposed to the man from the future with all the technology. While the original ending makes sense if the series was to continue, the re-shoot is one of my favorite sequences and a nod to Chuck Connors who had passed away the year before.

There are lots of sad films... TESTAMENT, though, is damned depressing. 

Yeah, "Vulgar" was brutal... I realized I was in way over my head and shut-er'-down about 20min into the movie. From what I'm reading; I'm glad I did...  :tongueout:

BUG
Let The Right One In
Sounds Like
Philosophy of a Knife
Night of the Living Dead
Ichi the Killer
The Devils Rejects
Kids

Thirteen.

This depressed me for many, many reasons... :bluesad:

I totally agree with this. The ending of Threads almost destroyed me.

Ah, the film that tore my heart to watch was "Life is Beautiful."

That... aaah.

Aw...that film tricked me into believing the father was still alive. grrrrr...it was sad though. :lookingup:

dogett- thirteen was a classic exploitation movie. I mean, they sold it as this bold vision of society with a new female diretor, script by a 13 yer old girl, etc but it was just showing titillating stuff!!  with the big lesson learned bs

I just posted a topic about a depressing film, "Bless the Beasts and Children" from 1971. I was actually commenting somewhat on the dark and bleak nature of films from the early 70's in general.  Following the 60's, American culture was depressing in general.  The idealism of the 60's was waning, and the landscape was harsh and brutal.  Many films from the early 70's relate that feeling, and are either depressing either in a direct way or through irony.  Dog Day Afternoon comes to mind as a prime example of that feeling of desperate despair.  Harold and Maude, a very dark comedy, also has that feeling of melancholy, and a theme of the misfit that is the primary theme in "Bless the Beasts and Children."  I'm sure if I put my mind to it I can come up with dozens of films.  So, I guess I'm not trying to bring up any specific titles as the most depressing film of all time, but a period of time in film in general that saw alot of depressing films, but important ones nonetheless. 

Yes, films should entertain as well.  Remember, like Mr. Miagi said, in Karate, as in life (and in watching films as well), you must have balance.

The new version of LAST HOUSE ON THE LEfT

'Ordinary People' with Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore always made me feel depressed at the end. Maybe because it's to real.

Also.....

Come on you guys! Don't any of you remember 'Old Yeller' when you were a kid? I still remember crying my little eyes out then I first saw that as a young boy.

Dont know if anyone has said this but i think "LEGENDS OF THE FALL" has got to one of them

Grave of the Fireflies for sure.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnk0xTgns5k

That is the saddest scene in the movie.

I'm not sure if wildlife documentaries count, but March of the Penguins sure has a lot of jarring, depressing scenes. Another film that comes to mind is the 1988 Discovery Channel production People of the Forest, which chronicles 25 years in the lives of a community of chimpanzees in Tanzania's Gombe National Park, subjects of Jane Goodall's now legendary studies, focusing on the famous Flo and her children, Fifi, Faben, Figan, and the spoiled Flint. While the film is a well-balanced overview of their lives, it did have two very sad parts near the end.
(SPOILERS)
 First, the chimp community is struck by a polio outbreak that affects a quarter of the chimps in one way or another. There's an especially horrible sequence where one older male chimp, a gentle, grandfatherly guy named Baldy McGregor, appears on the scene, paralyzed from the waist down. All he could do was either tumble along or pull himself around by his arms.  :bluesad: A baby chimp died from the disease, and its mother, Olly Longface, was carrying it around, refusing to accept the loss. Other chimps were paralyzed for life in some way, including Faben, who lost the use of his right arm.

Later, at the age of 53, the ancient Flo herself dies of heart failure on the bank of a stream. Sad enough in itself, but although he's 8 years old and should be perfectly capable of making it on his own, the loss breaks mama's boy Flint completely. The narrator's words about the outcome are perhaps some of the most heartbreaking and brutally simplistic I've ever heard uttered: "Flint stayed near his mother's body for nearly three weeks, growing weaker and weaker. He died of grief."

I loved the ending to The Mist, Se7en too;  I'm a little sick in the head.

A Serious Man - made me want to hide under my bed.
The Great Silence
Night of the Living Dead (original)
I'll second (or fourth or fifth) Grave of the Fireflies - just gutwrenching

Too bad we can't count tv shows because The Wire and Deadwood were full of depressing episodes; Twilight Zone had a few too.

For various reasons:
The Devil's Rejects- not cause it was bad, just I dunno, depressing.
Night of The Living Dead- Poor Ben...
Marley and Me- Really? Really?  Good God.  NO movie ever, EVER, actually made me shed a tear.  Watched this, bawled for 25 minutes. :bluesad:

When I saw the ending to The Mist, I thought they should've played this sound: http://www.sadtrombone.com/ (http://www.sadtrombone.com/)

I'm a horrible person.

Werd!  This woman was convicted for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And every time you thought there was a glimmer of hope, it was suddenly taken from her.

Another one is Red Dawn.  *SPOILER ALERT*: The ending scene where a dying Patrick Swayze is carrying Charlie Sheen's dead body, and the Cuban commander looks at them with such pity as he lowers his AK-47, and waves them off as he begins to cry and pray for them.

The final scene of Swayze and Sheen dying together on the park bench as Swayze tells him that their father is coming down to get them....nuff' said.

The Devil's Rejects is, to me, a play on one's minds, it's open up to interpretation, you can either feel bad to the Sheriff, or you feel bad to the three bad guys who gets tortured by the Sheriff.

Anyways, A.I., Artificial Intelligence, Spielberg's work on a fairy tale should have ended sooner, but I don't want to spoil it.

Martyrs was really depressing. 
Eden Lake was depressing and infuriating. 

The most depressing movie for me is The cure and its even more depressing since the main star just died from a heroin overdose. I dont know his name but it was the kid off of The client

I hit this on the Bad Movies Board, but I'll add it here... Das Boot.  They go through so much and then its all pointless.
-Ed

Ever notive how many ultra depressing films are German?

All dogs go to heaven.

Eraserhead--  :buggedout:

Pretty depressing flick. 

I agree, A.I. would have been the most depressing movie ever if Spielberg had the courage to end it where he should have.

This is a really depressing movie, Life is Hot In Cracktown

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iDjswFhicw

And I thought this was gonna be funny but it was also depressing...Defendor

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnK6ZR78TC0

The HBO movie Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee. 

Just about every part of that was depressing. Hats off to Adam Beach as the Lakota man who became a doctor thru a White scholarship, who saw the "best" and the worst of the times before and after Wounded Knee.

Hats off to Adam Beach again for his portrayal of Ira Hayes in Flags Of Our Fathers. He put in a VERY powerful performance that has to be seen to be appreciated.

Dances With Wolves where Wind-In-His-Hair stands on the cliff mounted on his horse, shouting Kevin Costner's name over and over again as he leaves the camp, his voice trembling with sadness as he shouts the name over and over.

Schramm. It's a potrait of a serial killer. Very depressing.

Haven't seen all of these movies, but here is my list.

Memento
The Tenant
In The Mouth Of Madness
Mulholland Dr.
Men Behind The Sun
The Naked Lunch
Jacob's Ladder
The Prince Of Darkness
Event Horizon
Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma

A Midnight Clear which was an account of the short lived truce between German and Allied soldiers one Christmas eve during WW1.  Remade as Joyeux Noel not long ago, but that one wasn't as powerful as A Midnight Clear.

A million times more depressing when you learn what happened to Judith Barsi. I can't bring myself to watch it again.

I just found this on the imdb:

That's bleak. I had no idea.  :bluesad:
I'll still watch the film but it will always have a sad under-current.

Both verisons of Animal Farm hit me hard.  While the animated one ends on a trimputant note and the live acted one ended on more a 'time will tell' note, they are pretty sad and depressing, especially when Boxer is sent to his death.

Thinking about it, Bicentennial Man is pretty depressing overall and I saw it when it when I was still young.  Not extactly an upbeat movie for a kid to say the least.

Oh, for all of you who have said Grave of the Fireflies, how about we set that movie to a certian song and force you all to cry right about now?:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aR_HaHLnboA

Apparently, the father was an out of work alcoholic, jealous of Barsi's success, and paranoid that she and her mother were going to leave. Thankfully, they were asleep at the time, and did not suffer.

She was also Ducky in "A Land Before Time." Ducky was Judith's favorite character, and her catchphrase, "yup yup yup," was added to Barsi's headstone (originally, she and her mother's graves were unmarked, but her fans raised money to have headstones put down).

I swear, it's like the movies always take a backseat to the REAL horrors.  Naturally that's the way of it, and I realize it, but when something like happens to someone at such a tender age, it really hits home.  God knows where this little girl might have been by now, had she lived to see more success.  :bluesad:

I think Fellini's "La Strata" is the saddest film ever made.

While I tend to avoid depressing movie like the plague I've seen a few.

I think both "On the Beach" and "Braveheart" are both real downers, as were "Red Dawn" and "Casualties of War." But for me the worse I've seen was "Valley Girl" I felt like I had been kicked in the gut during the end credits.

This year's Best Picture nominee WINTER'S BONE is an awfully bleak film.
And SKYLINE had an absolute downer ending.

Up in the Air.

Without spoiling the plot too much the subject matter is depressing and heartless, additionally George Clooney's character gets really taken advantage of by somone at the end of the movie.

I saw Buried with Ryan Reynolds last weekend and it might now be at the top of my "most depressing" films list.


Kevin

"Requeim for a Dream".

It had a very sad ending. It was even more sad because in the middle of the film I heard my Mom screaming. I rushed into the kitchen and found my dog lying on the floor dead. Dad buried her and cleaned up the blood then offer we watch the film later. Instead I forced myself to finish it. The ending of the film did distract me from her death for a while.

I recently watched The Boy in the Stryped Pajamas again. The ending is a hard punch in the gut.

Not a movie per se, but the British mini series Dead Set.  A zombie outbreak hits England and the only people who are unaware of it are the contestants in the latest
Big Brother series.

It moved along at a fairly rapid pace and the lead character Kelly was really good.  She went from an average nice kid to a grown up faced with unthinkablechoices in a matter of days.


**********SPOILER ALERT**********





The fact that all the characters ended up dying or zombified totally shocked me and left me feeling sick.  There was no hope left of any survivors or good feeling or anything.  It left me thinking that it was probably a realistic ending if the world really was gripped by a zombie plague but it was just a little too nasty and gritty.

I enjoyed it immensely though and I will buy on DVD, but it's not the kind of thing I would watch repeatedly, unless I was having a real downer of a day and I wanted to curl up and feel sorry for myself (which actually happens a lot more than makes me comfortable).

Has anyone seen it?  What did you think?

OMG that  is the most depressing thing I've seen in a long time.  Do they actually show people jumping off the bridge on camera?  If they do, why doesn't anyone try and stop them?

I saw that on telly in the 80s.  That movie had me sleeping in a  brightly lit room for weeks.  It was depressing and soul crushing beyond measure.  Whenever I think about it, it makes me shudder even now.

I just wrote a paper on this film for a documentary class. According to the director, they did alert authorities whenever they spotted someone suspicious, and were credited with saving at least five people that way. However, they were still accused of being exploitative. The film is free on youtube, for anyone curious about it. What's troubling is that many of the youtube comments are from suicidal people, some of which seem to suggest the film had not only failed to dissuade, but even managed to encourage their intentions, by making the act look more peaceful than it actually is. Also, none of the interviewees were informed about the footage until after the interviews were conducted.

I don't know if this one has been mentioned yet but a long time ago I watched "Flowers in the Attic" where after the death of her husband a woman and her three kids have no choice but to return back to her wealthy parents to live with them. Upon arrival the parents give the woman 15 lashes one for every year she was with her husband.  After that she lives comfortably with them and goes on to meet other men and get engaged to remarry but the story focuses on the un-wanted children who are locked in a room that they discover links to the attic. The grandparents feed the children arsenic laced cookies and the older two figure it out pretty much after the youngest dies. In the end the older two children (think teenage age) manage to break free (after being locked up for almost a year) and get down into the wedding of their husband to a new man. The woman unable to bear the vision of her pale-faced and barely living children from the first marriage swans dive out the window and is strangled to death by her own veil.

Did I mention I saw this movie as a child? like really young(<10yrs), I'm sure I'm missing some details here but its a downer when your an adult. For a child to see it is the stuff therapy is made of.

I had forgotten about "The Bridge", but that one is definitely up there for me.  Also, a few others that have already been mentioned:

Grave of the Fireflies (not much of an anime fan, but this one packs a punch)
Dancer In The Dark
Requiem For A Dream
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
Eden Lake

A few that I don't think have been mentioned (but I could be wrong):

Magnolia (has both uplifting ups and depressing downs)
Leaving Las Vegas
They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
Jude
Punishment Park
Dead Man's Shoes
Million Dollar Baby
Sophie's Choice

I found The First Deadly Sin (1980) to be a downer...

Most serious, well-made movies about the Holocaust and/or WWII are depressing as hell.

Sophie's Choice
The Pianist
Schindler's List
Saving Private Ryan
Life is Beautiful
Etc.

Requiem for a Dream is another good one that has been mentioned.  From my childhood, I remember it was a serious blow in Neverending Story when the horse dies in the swamp.  Lord. 

Ditto for Bambi - that's a great movie for 3 and 4 year old kids.  "Ooh!  A fun Disney movie!  Now let's all watch Bambi's mom get shot and killed.  Now you'll spend the next year or two trying to get over the idea of being orphaned as a child because of your mother's brutal killing right in front of you!"

Are documentaries excluded?  Because if they're not, I'd have to say that GASLAND really shook me up a lot when I saw it.  Maybe more than any movie I've seen before.  I think the part that got me the most was seeing the map of gas wells across the country, seeing the whole country fill up with little red dots, and thinking "my wife and I are about to start a family - where the hell can we possibly live that isn't tainted by this?"

Now that I'm an adult, I can get past movies that are pure fiction and depressing (The Mist is an example - it would be depressing but it's so far out there that it's not realistic enough to depress me).  It's the ones that are based on real events or are close enough to reality that I could see them, those are the ones that get me.

1984 would be on my list, but I read the book first so I knew what was coming and had already gotten past the worst of the depression from it.

Joe mentioned And the Band Played On - that movie is haunting.  Well-done, but really disturbing.  Matthew Modine's quotes: "we could've stopped it...."  "How many dead hemophiliacs does it take?  A hundred?  A thousand?  Give us a number so we won't annoy you until it becomes more profitable to save people than to kill them."  Ack.  Such a powerful movie.

Kudos for your mention of Requiem For A Dream, ChocolateChipCharlie.

The way Ellen Burstyn's character kept thinking she needed to take speed to lose weight for a game show she'd never be on was especially hard to look at.  Andwhat happened to the kid's arm from using infected needles should be a cautionary tale in it's own right.

Another one that dosen't get much mention is The Virgin Suicides. If any of you fellow Bad Movier-er's have seen it, nuff' said.

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is a total downer.  Violent and hopeless, but very well made.  Chinatown has become one of my absolute favorite films, but it drains me by the time it's over and leaves me depressed and angry.  Stroszek has been wisely mentioned before, but it's a film that I love and find a strange comfort in.  Supposedly Ian Curtis, Joy Division's singer, had watched it shortly before commiting suicide.

Most depressing for me was 21 Grams (2003).

Quite a few Shaw Brothers movies lately for me.  It has nothing to do with the movie itself and more to do with the fact that the movies seem to end in a non ending.  An assumed ending, I find that depressing as I would like to see the story have some resolution.  I guess it is more realistic to end things that way as we can't see a characters whole life and are just watching a snapshot.  When I feel unresolved I find that sad.