Let's LIST 'EM! The Most Depressing Movies EVER.

Now, I'm not talking just gory, or creepy. No, I mean flat-out, full-on DEPRESSION-ville. As in, pass the Wellbutrin. Industrial strength. Maybe it has a decent, happy ending, maybe it doesn't, but it's gotta leave you feeling dark and hopeless to make this list. (I have only listed movies I've seen. Add on!)

1. Leaving Las Vegas. Watch this one or two times and no matter how crappy your life is, you'll think you are the luckiest bastard alive.

2. A Clockwork Orange--just.....see it. No words.

3. Dead Man Walking

4. House of Sand and Fog

5. American History X

6. The Elephant Man

7. Schindler's List

8. The Hours

9. Fahrenheit 9/11

10. Dammit, I wanted to list ten and I just ran out of titles.

Well, add some on of your own. I've always heard Requiem for a Dream is very depressing, but I've never seen it.

That should be on my list, too. Just DAMN.

was my first thought.

The Professor

most depressing movie ever.

God that was depressing.

Bjork plays a woman who is going blind and whose son suffers from the same disease. She works in a factory and lives in a shack behind a wealthy family's house and is saving every penny to get her son an operation which will prevent him from going blind from the disease. It progresses from there, but that's just the starting point premise so you can imagine how it goes from that point.

bjork was originally contracted to create the music for the movie, but the director ended asking her to play the part.

it's a very good movie, but it is not very happy at all.
worth seeing imo.

bjork and catherine denueve are in it!! it's a lars von trier flick. :thumbsup:

I thought Dancer In The Dark was depressing due to the existential nature of it and being caught up in forces beyond our control due to other people's actions.

Dogville was depressing in that it pretty much said everyone were self centered scumbags would would use and destroy people for their own benefit.

Lars Von trier assumes everyone is like him. Personally, I think he's an asshole and his movies are rancid.

...but I love his movies even if I don't always agree with his take on things. The performances he brings out of his actors are always impressive to me.

I don't view the characters in his films as indicative of the way every human is all the time. I think what his films say is more that all of us have that potential within us. I can't say I disagree. Perhaps that makes me an A-hole as well.

I think that, unlike you, he goes beyond seeing potential and sees us all that way. Sorry, I think he's pretty false and extremely unsavory to boot.

..I've heard that as a person he iss loathsome and sadistic. But I always try and separate the art from the artist.

I think because I'm naturally a cynic I tend to be more of a target audience for his movies, even if I'm nowhere near as nihilistic as he is. I can totally see where his work and personality would turn a lot of people off though, so he's not one of those artists I'm ever willing to go to the mat defending.

try to separate the work from the artist. Sometimes, it's pretty difficult, though. He strikes me as one of those posing, controlling sadists that would cry like a baby if you clocked him one.

Completely. An accurate assesement I would guess.

i am no fan of depressing movies, so i have no idea about Dogville.
maybe i will check it out.

can you give breif synopsis?

The whole thing is filmed as a staged play. There are no sets or walls, only chalk outlines.

A female stranger arrives one day in a small town. She is running from someone or something. The town gives her refuge and takes her in and gives her odd jobs to do. Her main ally is a young idealistic man who preaches compassion and care to his fellow townsfolk. After living there for a while the towns people see Wanted posters for her and realize that people would be willing to pay good money to find her whereabouts. So they begin to take more and more advantage of her as "pay" for keeping her from the people from whom she is running until slowly she becomes essentially their slave. Again, it progresses from there. The ending is brutal.

thank alot,
i appreciate it.

:hi:

Man that'll make you never wanna do heavy drugs.

Pretty dark and disturbing movie.

I've seen parts of Sid and Nancy (the really bad parts). UG.

But upon review, I realized it was a REALLY excellent depiction
of a REALLY depressing story.

That was when I realized that I never wanted to see DRAMA again.

Real Life is depressing enough; I want HAPPINESS from my fiction!

And if not happiness, then HUMOR.
Failing that, I am willing to settle for rapid-fire VIOLENCE, provided that the 'Good Guys' win in the end.

How much more depressing can you get ...

No arms, no legs, no face, and locked away in a closet in a medical ward for the rest of your life. Ugh!!!!

Pretty much anything by Lars Von Trier, really.

Requiem For A Dream is pretty depressing, as is Last Exit To Brooklyn (both based off of Hubert Selby books).

and never ended up watching it. Just sent it back. I knew it was a depressing movie and I just couldn't handle a depressing movie that week. (My husband has seen it and warned me it was pretty bleak.)

John Cazale died soon after the filming makes it even more depressing.

Could you imagine anyone else as Fredo in Godfathers 1 and 2?

I'll never see that $1.75 again! :cry:

An eye-opener but no warm & fuzzy feeling after it ended.

Training Day

but really it just pissed me off REALLY BAD.

And then Schindler's List...the end of that movie just kills me.

"Requiem for a Dream" is a real kick in the gut though.

Because war IS depressing. Saving Private Ryan, Platoon, Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, etc.

Amongst war pics. This one depressed me in junior high and has not been cause to elevate my spirits since.

"1984"

"Soylent Green"

"Raise the Red Lantern"

"All Quiet on the Western Front"

I first saw it right after it came out and I was depressed for days.

The most depressing line from "The Man Who Fell to Earth"

Thomas Jerome Newton: We'd have probably done the same to you, if you'd come 'round our place.

Great train wreck of a movie, absolutely stunning, but one of the most depressing flicks I've ever seen.

on edit-- I'll second Sid and Nancy, too.

I was blown away by that film from the first time I saw it when it was released. I watched it again recently on the Independent Film Channel and it was still just as powerful.

but really depressing...

btw - they deleted your second post about my monkey on that GD thread (assuming I am remembering right and it was you who posted it... :P )

...to my signature line just to see if that particular moderator will delete ALL my posts!

just what you need to make class any more unbearable is to watch a movie with domestic violence and rape. :(

n/t

I have seen both of those films only once, yet they haunt me to this day. :-(

GAWD. If your destiny is to be FUCKED, then FUCKED you will be.

I cried like a baby.

I kept thinking, "When does the "mirth" start happening?"

Gillian Anderson played the lead. She's quite an actress.

I saw it again after a 20-year break and didn't enjoy a minute of it. The characters were far more pathetic and totally hopeless than I ever remember. Even that episode of Seinfeld where they spoof it is brought down by the pathos of the original (Jerry hugs a sick Kramer as their bus heads for Florida.)

eom

I can't watch that movie, or Boiler Room. I was a headhunter for years and lived and died by the cold call. Though I was never in the exact line of work as the people in either movie, the tactics, vocabulary, and feel is absolutely dead-on.

... and unsettling movie for sure. But on some level, I pitied the salesmen as much as I loathed them.

It's depressing because it reflects something in everyones lives, and lost hopes. The drug addiction is the legal kind and the illegal, so it pretty much lets you know that the "junkies" aren't only on herion or crack..

Amazon.com
Employing shock techniques and sound design in a relentless sensory assault, Requiem for a Dream is about nothing less than the systematic destruction of hope. Based on the novel by Hubert Selby Jr., and adapted by Selby and director Darren Aronofsky, this is undoubtedly one of the most effective films ever made about the experience of drug addiction (both euphoric and nightmarish), and few would deny that Aronofsky, in following his breakthrough film Pi, has pushed the medium to a disturbing extreme, thrusting conventional narrative into a panic zone of traumatized psyches and bodies pushed to the furthest boundaries of chemical tolerance. It's too easy to call this a cautionary tale; it's a guided tour through hell, with Aronofsky as our bold and ruthless host.
The film focuses on a quartet of doomed souls, but it's Ellen Burstyn--in a raw and bravely triumphant performance--who most desperately embodies the downward spiral of drug abuse. As lonely widow Sara Goldfarb, she invests all of her dreams in an absurd self-help TV game show, jolting her bloodstream with diet pills and coffee while her son Harry (Jared Leto) shoots heroin with his best friend Tyrone (Marlon Wayans) and slumming girlfriend Marion (Jennifer Connelly). They're careening toward madness at varying speeds, and Aronofsky tracks this gloomy process by endlessly repeating the imagery of their deadly routines. Tormented by her dietary regime, Sara even imagines a carnivorous refrigerator in one of the film's most memorable scenes. And yet... does any of this have a point? Is Aronofsky telling us anything that any sane person doesn't already know? Requiem for a Dream is a noteworthy film, but watching it twice would qualify as masochistic behavior. --Jeff Shannon


Okay, on edit: Just saw your last sentence...so here's the review . Here's another one I'll nominate, then: Chelsea Walls


Ethan Hawke makes his directorial debut with CHELSEA WALLS, an ambitious ensemble film that captures a slice of bohemian life. Inspired by the dozens of brilliant and self-destructive counterculture heroes who have taken refuge at New York's famed Chelsea

I think I'll pass.

it's a good movie...it's depressing because you realize how it could be anyone of us...but it also makes us want to avoid the pitfalls...Ellen Bernsten gives one of the best performances I've ever seen...

i never really cry, about anything, ever, but both of those movies turned me into a blubbering baby

...longer participate in that limp, backslapping 'event'.

It was the performance of a lifetime, from one of our most talented performers.

Kids.

Maybe I just have a warped sense of humour, but I was laughing throughout the whole thing.

"How is you mother?"

"Well, she's not a musician, I can tell you that!"

That's what I was thinking of.

But the rest was a riot. ;)

It's a brutal watch, but it's amazing.

It's over, earthlings!

The old version, not the new one. I know it's depressing, but I've heard it's also very well done.

made and distributed when it was. It's very, very critical.

Chilling. Absolutely chilling.

A Beautiful Life

Million Dollar Baby

:)

That was going to be my answer... but thought I should post it under yours for effect. :)

:puke:

unless you are feeling self-abusive

Don't They?

All that dancing, yet no one's happy.

Go figure.

Not really that depressing, just very sad.

Leaving Las Vegas, Full Metal Jacket, Welcome to the Dollhouse.

very depressing ending...

Though it's not without it's share of laughs.

care to explain what you think I missed?

That movie had some great dialog and the ending was actually hopeful for Giamatti's character. I can't wait 'til it comes out on DVD.

and most other films by Mike Leigh, with the exception of "Topsy-Turvy"

It was a movie about all these people from dysfunctional families, creating one of their own. Basically, the family unit stayed together, and was comforting for most of the members (pardon the expression).

As I walked out of the theater, the common question among the audience (all 20 of us or so) was, "Damn that was depressing. Anybody got a gun?"

Pretty much a sad parody of his former self (which wasn't all that exemplary to begin with).

It just seemed like squandered lives all around.

I'm still haunted by the scene where they beat up that guy on the sidewalk and Roller Girl smashes her skates into his head.

It's beautiful, artistic, and devastating. It's an amazing movie, but not very uplifting. To say the least.

it was good. Although there was something about the rhythm that was off.

I was expecting some sort of closure, and there really wasn't any. I suppose nthat was part of the message; that often you don't get closure from someone's suicide.

Specifically, Fridrik Thor Fridriksson’s ANGELS OF THE UNIVERSE(ENGLAR ALHEIMSINS

Majorly depressing, but extremely good IMO. If you haven´t definelty read it (I think they've published an English version

Whispers", "Winter Light"

that whole dismal Swedish thing, you know.

One of my favorites. An old professor spending a whole movie reminiscing about how devoid of human contact his life really was.

there should be a new rating for films this depressing:

"This film is rated SW-
for making you want to slash your wrists."

Excellent movie, but not undepressing.

The end makes me want to scream.

since I've never seen it, but I've heard that "The Shawshank Redemption" is a very claustropbic film.

I abhorred Blair Witch Project, for another. Horrible, horrible movie.

was redemed in the end...I ended up feeling good at the end of the movie...

Another one that was depressing that I just remembered was:

The Man from Elysian Fields

Add The Man from Elysian Fields to the list of essential movies about the pains of writing. This wry comedy-drama charts the frustrations of a financially strapped novelist (Andy Garcia) as he desperately and secretly agrees to be an "escort" for ladies who need, ah, escorting. This leads him into a Faustian bargain to help a beautiful client (Olivia Williams) whose husband, a once-great, now-dying writer (a mighty James Coburn), is struggling with a final work. Of course the fact that the men are sharing a project and a woman complicates matters--and Garcia's loyal wife (Julianna Margulies) is curious about all these nights spent away. The movie explores different levels of compromise and betrayal, yet it remains tartly amusing throughout. And it has a glorious casting inspiration: the director of the mysterious escort service is played by Mick Jagger, looking decadently elegant and purring like a vaguely satanic Siamese cat. -Robert Horton

but I've heard that Reservoir Dogs is depressing AND gruesome.

depressing? nah, it's one of my favorite movies.

found it ironic.

Impossibly cool, impossibly tough guys, breaking down.

:cry:

OK, it was a play first, but it was a movie also.

they get through all the trouble and it looks like things are working out, then it all collapses. the most depressing part is that the final act is so meaningless, except that it shows how f'd up things can be. it makes you think "why bother?" for hours.

Good Lord!!!!
:-(

Different flicks entirely, but they both haunted me for days after I saw them for the first time.

Michael gains the world and loses his family and his soul.

Fredo's murder is heartbreaking.

I've never been able to bring myself to watch this.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1084175-happiness/

Building on the darkly comic angst of WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE, Todd Solondz's HAPPINESS conveys suburban desperation and frustration on a larger scale than his previous film. The ensemble cast of characters centers around the lives of three sisters: Joy (Jane Adams), an awkward, naive, and unlucky musician; Helen (Lara Flynn Boyle), a beautiful, self-obsessed writer; and Trish (Cynthia Stevenson), a conservative housewife who is married to Bill (Dylan Baker), a psychiatrist harboring an unhealthy fascination for young boys. Other dysfunctional characters include the sisters' unhappy parents, Lenny and Mona Jordan (Ben Gazzara and Louise Lasser), and the lonely, sex-obsessed Allen (Philip Seymour Hoffman), who lives next to Helen and goes to Bill for therapy.

At once both scathingly funny and shockingly bleak, HAPPINESS addresses subjects that most films are afraid to touch, including pedophilia and masturbation. Unapologetic and unflinching, Solondz's film features bold performances from the entire cast and makes for uneasy but intriguing viewing as it peers behind the fragile facade of the American dream.

..especially if you're a parent. I couldn't stop crying. Aaugh.

I am almost afriad what it would do to me actually seeing it.

Based on a John Galsworthy short story, The Apple Tree.

Beautiful and poignant, but the love story is so freaking sad.

Description --> http://www.epinions.com/content_38728404612

-- Rafelson's FIVE EASY PIECES?

And two French films, THE DREAMLIFE OF ANGELS and COME UNDONE.

Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, Naomi Watts in the most depressing fucking movie ever made. If you're depressed and suicidal, this will send you right over the edge.

But wasn't really depressed. If anything, I found it an inspiration for strength.

I wanted to throw myself in front of a bus after seeing that movie.

Also

Requiem for a Dream
They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
Paths of Glory
Day of Wrath (Carl Dreyer's 1940s film about 17th century Danes settling personal scores with accusations of witchcraft)
1984
Grave of the Fireflies (anime about orphans in WWII)

When you realize hundreds of women were actually incarcerated in these laundries, and the last closed only about a decade ago.

disturbed, and it took a day or two for him to forgive me.

If the girls were pregnant, the babies were often sent abroad, frequently to Boston or Philadelphia, and given to "good Catholic families". He was one of those Magdalene babies.

I don't know if he's seen the movie

In A Lonely Place

This was really a downer but Gloria Swanson was great!

What an offensively obnoxious and depressing movie.

Some call it art; I call it a waste of time.

It's at the top of my list of movies I absolutely detest.

Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep, Tom Waits. Depression-era Albany, NY. Winos, bums, and a dark secret. Bleak!

Recommended!

I mean, I get the whole "descent into madness" thing...but what was up with the post-wall little kids playing in the ruins of wartime London?

"Where are your troubles now?" and the most of the clientele are wearing swastika armbands. Also The Sorrow and the Pity. Did anyone get that?

Depressing and timely. Just because no one else mentioned it.

excellent, teary, beautiful.... real.... Very Sad, quite beautiful.

Hands down. Nothing compares.

a bunch of kids in a schoolbus plunge into an icy lake and die

the town falls apart in the aftermath

one of the saddest ever...

An Australian film from 1995 or 96. I had to watch it for psychology class. It's about two schizophrenic people who meet in therapy and fall in love.... horribly, hideously depressing. You won't smile the rest of the night.

"Million Dollar Baby" was the SADDEST movie I've seen in forever, but yet, it was strangely uplifting, in a twisted sort of way. I still bawled like a baby, though, and I never cry at films.

watch it.

an incredible movie all should see.

http://www.amctv.com/show/detail?CID=64-1-EST

God, I hadn't thought of that one in years!

I'm serious. All that forced treacle is, to me, nauseating. This is a very popular film, but I find it rippingly depressing.

i get immensely sad when plummer sings 'edelweiss'.
:(

depressing.

On edit: Thirteen. Great Expectations with Ethan Hawke and Gwenyth Paltrow.

Not so much depressing as sad. It was inspiring as well. At least a 5 hanky flick.

... one of the few movies I had to stop early. Just too much.

As long as we've listed Sound Of Music which, like Cabaret, deals with the Nazis taking over and everybody getting the f*k out, how about Zhivago in which everybody dies or is exiled by the end except for the secret police guy and you can tell Z's daughter doesn't give a rat's behind for Z's poetry? And the thing starts with a funeral too and doesn't get a whole lot jollier. Nice photography and score though.

There is no other..

a Jack Lemmon classic

it's one of the French filmaker Kieslowski's films, part of the Red, White and Blue series, and is just bleak as can be. (Red is my favorite of the three.)

Agree on "The Sweet Hereafter," which is still a wonderful film, and "Midnight Cowboy," a true classic. I love depressing films :)

Shows the utter futility and stupidity of war.. Based on a great book ..I think the movie came out in 1967.. I have never found it on video, and it;s rarely shown on TV.. :cry:

Truly a standout in a long list of disastrous date movies. I believe it will never be topped.

Hands down.

"You're all pigs."

watching that thing in the theatre was like having someone wail away at you with a sledgehammer...except a little more painful.

Very depressing when it came out, and even more so in the light of current events.

Hamburger Hill.;(

balled my eyes out.

taught

Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara

9 1/2 hour documentary of the Holocaust without using a single frame of archive footage...

Of course, they do and Jessica Lange becomes despondant.

Four-hankie rating.

my boyfriend at the time and I walked out of the theatre utterly depressed. And then he asked me to marry him. :)

I second "Sid and Nancy" -- I was literally sick to my stomach with emotion after that film. I've never watched it since.

"Midnight Cowboy" is another bleak one, as is "Easy Rider".

The late 60s and 70s were the time for bleak, downer films with depressing endings.

at "Pride of the Yankees", and "The Babe Ruth Story"-the one with William Bendix. Worst sobbing scene ever in a movie? "The Other Side Of The Mountain"....yech.

Canadian film about the end of the world.

1980s British film about the nuclear holocaust. Agonising, terrifying, and relentlessly depressing.

Man, after all the promise of the first movie...

More seriously, if I have to pick a movie which hasn't been mentioned yet: The Conversation. Gene Hackman has rarely been better, and there's something about his troubled surveillance expert which I find very depressing.

Alice's Restaurant: it's not especially sad in itself, but looking back at that lost world of innocence is very poignant.

eom

I bought it at a pawn shop several years ago. I had watched Siskel & Ebert give a review of it and they both agreed it wasn't an entertaining movie...however all adults should watch it...since there are people like Henry out there.

So I bought it... and they were right. It is VERY disturbing.

A funny story..

I told a buddy of mine I had this movie and he said he wanted to watch it. Since he lived with his Mother, I told him NOT to watch it with her as there are some very graphic scenes. He didn't listen to me.... he came to work the next day and said that he had to turn it off part way through because his Mom had got very upset with the film.....for those of you that have seen this film ... you will understand. All I could do is laugh... and say "I warned You!!"

Major bummer. Especially the ending.
The Professor

About an old man dying of cancer who tries to find some meaning in the last days of his life. One of the most powerful movies I've ever seen and Kurosawa's greatest masterpiece, in my opinion.