Most Depressing Movies of All Time

Melancholia was a bit of a drag.

Requiem for a Dream

Dancer in the Dark

Longtime Companion

99 Homes and The Florida Project, both about the miserable lives of poor people in Florida, which neither former governor Rick Scott nor current governor Ron DeSantis would ever acknowledge and most likely call it Communist propaganda.

The Deer Hunter

Revolutionary Road. Requiem for a Dream. The English Patient.

Mamma Mia.

Wit

Another vote for Requiem For A Dream.

Henry: Portrait OF A Serial Killer

Bad Ronald

Crash (2004) -- because it's depressing to imagine how such a shitty movie won an Oscar for Best Film.

Requiem for a Dream. Perfume (I think that's the name).

What was that Sarah Silverman movie where she was a depressed mess?

‘Fox and His Friends’ by Fassbinder.

I watched "The Killing of a Sacred Deer" on Netflix last night.

What a twisted, depressing movie.

And Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman, who were directed to read all their lines in a flat monotone, were creepy AF.

OP not to mention it stared homophobe Denzel

Pans labyrinth

Leaving Las Vegas

House Of Sand And Fog

Fellini's Nights of Cabiria

"Daddy's Big Dump" starring Mrs. Patrick Campbell (AKA "Erna")

On The Beach (1959)

The Rose starring Bette Midler

Grave of the Fireflies

Far From Heaven

"The Hours" (Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, Meryl)

"The Road" (Viggo Mortensen)

The Boy In The Striped Pajamas

Forbidden Games

The Third Man

Kes

Nights of Cabiria, Longtime Companion, Through a Glass Darkly, Breaking the Waves, The Bridge (1959 German film).

All Marvel's shit shows.

Old Yeller

The Wicker Man (1973)

R4 haven’t seen 99 Homes, but agree with you about the Florida Project. Well made movie, actually.

I saw two last week.

Uncut Gems and The Lighthouse

Precious

Grave of the Fireflies. Though it's animated, it's based on a true story.

Devastating.

Yes, Uncut Gems was a very depressing.

Irreversible. I wanted to burn my eyes out after.

A word of unsolicited advice: if you want to watch Grave Of The Fireflies (and it's worth watching), opt for the subtitled version and not the dubbed version. The English-language performances are flat and lifeless.

The Florida Project was a masterpiece.

R33, The Lighthouse needed more of Robert Pattinson masturbating.

The Vanishing (the original one, not the remake)

The Mist

Schindler's List

Saving Private Ryan

R27 I was coming in to say Forbidden Games. So fucking sad.

La Strada

Purple Rose of Cairo (although sweet and funny, the ending KILLS me!)

Au Hasard Balthazar

[quote]The Lighthouse needed more of Robert Pattinson masturbating.

So did the Twilight movies.

Witch

The Gift

End of Watch

It's VVitch

What Dreams May Come

R21, I saw 'On the Beach' (1959) and also 'Lord of the Flies' (1963) when I was twelve years old and very vulnerable, going through a very rough patch. Those films damn near overthrew my mind.

I still dislike both films.

The Elephant Man.

Dead Man Walking. A great film, and I never want to see it again.

Million Dollar Baby

R47, I totally understand how you feel. LOTF was also disturbing to me. The scene where they drop the boulder on the head of the boy scaling the cliff made my brother laugh - I was horrified.

OTB wouldn’t allow you to hope, because there was no hope. The radioactive waste was coming and nothing could be done. No one was going to be saved. The people standing in line for their cyanide pills...chilling. Then I read the Nevil Shute novel it was based on...I couldn’t get out of bed for two days.

City Of Angels

They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Day of the Locust

We Need to Talk about Kevin

The Bicycle Thief

Shanghai Surprise

Blue Valentine, Requiem for a Dream, The Deer Hunter

R41 Purple Rose of Cairo --- the last scene was heartbreaking, Mia sitting in the theatre staring longingly at the screen.

The Pledge

Mystic River

Into the Wild

And they were all directed by Sean Penn.

That horrible movie I heard about with the old woman playing an old woman pretending to be a man.

Nobby? Nubbin? Albert Fish?

Anyway, I heard it was depressing. To think anyone put money into the budget for it.

[italic]Eight Below.[/italic] The story of a team of valiant sled dogs who are left behind in Antarctica. Devastatingly sad. (Especially if you happen to own a couple of Huskies).

[italic]It's My Party.[/italic] Probably the saddest of all the sad AIDS-era movies. Eric Roberts plans his own farewell party after being diagnosed with AIDS.

[italic]Tell Me a Riddle.[/italic] Beautiful story of an old couple (Melvyn Douglas and Lia Kedrova) who discover while on a trip that she has cancer. Poignant to the point of copious tears.

Yet another vote for "Requiem for a Dream." Even just thinking about the scene where Ellen Burstyn's character tells her son about how she's old and lonely breaks my heart. The last ten minutes of that movie are just brutal and hopeless.

So many of Spielberg's movies are emotional roller-coasters. "Schindler's List" is so terribly upsetting, but if you can make it to the end it does impart a sense of hope for the future. "Saving Private Ryan" has a tearjerker ending but, once again, a sense of hope. So I don't know if these are truly "depressing" films as OP is looking for.

I know this one will make me sound like a huge dork, but "Logan" shocked me with how depressing it was. I never would've thought that a comic book movie could make me cry three times, but this one did.

R59, Mystic River was directed by Clint Eastwood.

A Normal Heart, I almost didn't finish it.

R64: Yes, A Normal Heart was rough.

'night, Mother

Judgement at Nuremberg

Gidget Goes Hawaiian

The Shop on Main Street (1965). Czech/Slovak film that won the Foreign Language Film Oscar.

House of Sand and Fog.

R68 Plus, a crappy ending in both book and movie. Totally unresolved and lazy.

Kramer vs. Kramer was unbearable. For me, anyway. Ugh.

August Osage County

Crimes and Misdemeanors

Days of Wine and Roses

Warner Brothers wanted Blake Edwards and Jack Lemmon to change the ending but immediately after the completion of filming, Edwards and Lemmon left for Europe and remained out of communication so that the studio would be forced to release the movie without changing the story.

Meadowland

The Belarusian movie Come and See. I've never seen anything like it.

R62 Burstyn should've won the Oscar for that, but they gave it the Julia Roberts' push-up bra instead.

"Make Way For Tomorrow" about an older couple fallen on hard times in the Depression whose children find them a bother to deal with, starring Beulah Bondi and VIctor Moore. Orson Welles said it could draw tears from a stone. It's pretty heartbreaking. It's also one of the inspirations for the great Japanese movies, "Tokyo Story" on a similar topic, and it has been voted one of the greatest movies ever. Both of these are wonderful films, but pretty heartbreaking. Have lots of tissues on hand.

R4 I grew up poor in Florida and I had to turn off both because they hit too close to home, especially The Florida Project. The little girl in it even looks like my sister.

Another vote for The House of Sand and Fog! Annihilation & Never Let Me Go - pretty much anything by Alex Garland

I've seen lots of movies about prostitution. Movies and documentaries. Most are grim. I saw one today in fact called Miserere (2019) about hustlers in Buenos Aires. The list is long. There's one about hustlers in Montreal, called Hommes à louer, sometimes it's on Youtube in a great print. It's dark.

For a feature film I nominate Sembene's La noire de... (Black Girl) (1966) about a Senegalese young woman who goes to Antibe to work for a hideous French bourgeoise couple.

Lots of Marxist and anticolonial films of the 60s and 70s are very depressing . Sembene's movies in Africa are funny and cutting. This one - he wouldn't throw the French a bone.

Wendy and Lucy, hands down

Beaches- Barbara Hershey dies and Bette Midler has to raise her bratty daughter.

Gardens of the Night- A 2008 independent movie about two teenagers who were kidnapped as small children and pimped out by their kidnappers to pedos until they reached their teen years. The second half of the movie is about the teens living on the streets after their kidnappers ditched them. It's a depressing, but good movie and Tom Arnold who played one of the kidnappers gave a good performance and so did Gillian Jacobs who played one of the teens.

R83 That is a good movie and the same year it came out Arnold gave another solid performance in a movie called Good Dick, where he also played a pedophile.

Grave Of Fireflies wasn't even very good because it was a relentless parade of misery.

"Last Exit to Brooklyn", understandably forgotten today. I can't imagine anyone who's seen it to ever want to see it again. I felt I needed a shower afterwards.

TraLaLa (Jennifer Jason Leigh)'s gang-rape scene managed to be as horrific as the original novel's depiction.

The book made me physically ill r86.

But it had nothing on his novel The Room

The green mile.

Requiem for a dream.

Pan's labyrinth.

The French Lieutenant's Woman.

Another vote for "Come and See" (1985). Devastating WWII-themed film.

Yeah, Last Exit to Brooklyn is a hard one to watch. Jennifer Jason Leigh is excellent in it and should have been nominated for it, just for the sheer bravery for going there. Not many actresses could have done that.

Song of Norway.

I cant watch any movie that is centered around an animal where something tragic happens. It is non stop ugly crying. I'll think about it when I am trying to sleep afterwards, and cry some more.

[quote] Grave Of Fireflies wasn't even very good because it was a relentless parade of misery.

I lived in Japan when it came out. I refused to watch it because it's just way for the Japanese to wallow in their victimhood and avoid examining Japanese responsibility for the war.

That's why I mentioned Wendy and Lucy r92. DO NOT watch if you're a dog lover

Requiem for a dream, definitely. I kept thinking about that movie for days.

The little whining girl in Grave Of Fireflies is one of the most annoying animated characters of all time. I seriously wanted to smother that little cunt. Couldn't even finish the movie because of her (and because of the ugly, FPS-challenged Asian animation).

Two of the most depressing films I've seen were probably Lilja 4-ever and Bergman's Shame. No one does depressing quite as well like those Scandinavians. They have it in their genes.

Take This Waltz

R94 As soon as I saw the thumbnail, I knew it was bad news, and my brain filled in the rest. It is a HARD PASS on anything I know will be like that. I wont even bother with it. I'm hypersensitive enough I dont need help with being triggered into tears. I'm the dream target of bullies.

Manchester By The Sea,Seven,The Tree of Life,Dancer In The Dark,They Shoot Horses Don’t They?,12 Years a Slave,Eyes Wide Shut.

[quote] Seven,

But that has the most joyous ending I could imagine!!

Charly (the ending anyway)

The most depressing ever for me was The Day of the Locust. That put me in a funk for hours. But also:

Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

Day of Wrath (Vredens Tag)

Blue Valentine

They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

Now that I’ve seen it several times, HOLDING THE MAN. Great love story with a tragic ending, made all the worse because it’s based on a true story.

"Boys Don't Cry" and "Monster".

Still Alice

Biutiful

All is lost

Never let me go

A.I.

Albert. Nobbs

Philomena

Agree with many films mentioned above but also Antichrist comes to mind....

Papillon (1973)

As an awkward gayling in early 90s Lord of the Flies and Stand by Me traumatized me till today.

Lilya 4-ever.

[Quote]Take This Waltz

...and shove it.

Threads. If you grew up in the UK in the 1980s, you'll know this one.

Fritz Lang's M.

Another vote for Tokyo Story.

'Isn't life disappointing?' 'Yes, it is.'

R86, etc., I bought the DVD of Last Exit wanting to see if it was as depressing and disturbing as I remembered but have been afraid to rewatch it. I still do remember being amazed by Jennifer Jason Leigh.

American History X

Anything with Michelle Williams. Williams has become the go to actress for mopey, broken damaged doll women.

I just finished this movie. Depressing is an understatement. I'm still kind of shocked and weepy.

Pixote is depressing.

I always wondered what happened to the actor (probably a homeless tranny) who played Lilica. Good actor.

[quote]Anything with Michelle Williams. Williams has become the go to actress for mopey, broken damaged doll women.

lol I agree. At some point, she'll probably do some depressing Oscar bait movie where she plays a disabled housewife whose husband was killed in Iraq and she has to raise a transkid.

My Life Without Me

The Sweet Hereafter

Nights of Cabiria

Anything with animals or children being abandoned or traumatized in any way. As I’ve gotten older, I just refuse to watch.

Au Hasard Balthazar

Incendies

I couldn't watch Wit without breaking down and cyring. Why, because my mom and my dad's 2nd wife both died of cancer.

I can take anything so long as the plot and theme are aligned and worth the misery. I don't need a "life is shit" or "we're going to fuck you up" approach to filmmaking.

For me, "AI" is a perfect example of a headless, hateful production team just shitting all over the audience. There was no need for the whole bloody exercise.

"Pan's Labyrinth" is another. It shoves its head so far up the ass of allegory it forgets the rationale behind the tedious ending.

Anything about the Titanic is depressing, but Jean Negulesco's "Titanic" with Barbara Stanwyck and Clifton Webb is horrid. The whole thing hinges on them being married but Webb finding out their son isn't his. And in the end the boy and Webb die together, bravely, on deck, "Nearer My God to Thee" playing, while Stanwyck sits in the lifeboat. Please.

And "Brokeback Mountain." There was no excuse for it.

M wasn't depressing. It was brilliant and had the power and uplift of retribution.

R124, that version of TITANIC is my favorite...great dialogue. I can’t stand Clifton Webb though. But I love Barbara. She and Thelma Ritter carried that film.

Pixote

John Singleton's 1995 movie Higher Learning was a decent movie, but it is quite depressing especially if you watch it in current times.

R118 "Lilica" is alive and well:

R120: Same.

Oh, I forgot DLs mainstay, ATONEMENT.

Threads (of course). Testament(talk about cry). The War Game 1965. Brazil. Silent Running(so depressing). Seconds. The Elephant Man.

Braveheart

R133 good one. Have to agree. Maybe now Scotland will finally become independent

Alpha dog. Blue Valentine.

Trial By Fire which is based on a true story of executed death row inmate who many believe was innocent.

Pink Floyd The Wall, My Life as a Dog, and pretty much anything by Tarkovsky.

Yes to whoever posted TESTAMENT...how morosely beautiful that movie was. No special effects or cringey prosthetics to make war look like hell...wasn’t necessary. Sometimes I think that Jane Alexander was robbed of the Oscar. But it was long overdue for Shirley MacLaine.

Boys On The Side

Boys don't cry

Oh God that movie was hell on earth R140.

Beaches

A Girl Named Sooner, Take This Waltz

Pretty Woman.

Last tango in paris

Any musical

The Nightingale; beautifully shot on location in Tasmania, but oh, so grim and depressing - made worse by the fact that it's based on real life events

I'd also add to the list "The Devil's Backbone", but that's' such a good movie that it's still worth it

There was a British animated film that came out around the same time THREADS and THE DAY AFTER...about a retired British couple who survived the initial bomb, but slowly succumbed to the effects of radiation sickness. For the life of me, I can’t remember the title. But it was very sad because they couple tried to maintain a normal routine while getting sicker and sicker until they wrapped themselves up in blankets and prayed to God, then died. I can’t remember....

"Shame" with Michael Fassbender was one of the most depressing movies I've ever seen.

That kind of sounds like the movie "Testament"; it came out about the same time as "The Day After" (or whatever it was called), but rather than a big explosion, Jane Alexander's husband never comes home, while her kids slowly die off one by one. Eventually, she tries to kill herself and this disabled kid (who's parents already died), but decides against it at the end. I remember just BAWLING when I watched this movie (and hoping that if there was a nuclear explosion, I'd just die after the initial blast)

We Need To Talk About Kevin. A movie about the miserable lives of heterosexuals, combined with Tilda Swinton who is saddled with an idiot husband she refuses to leave and a child from hell she refuses to abandon.

"I Smile Back," with a surprising dramatic performance from Sarah Silverman as a drug-addicted suburban mom.

The entire film was sad and full of despair, and the ending was devastating.

HAPPINESS. Brilliantly dark, occasionally funny and ultimately devastating.

R33, you poor thing. I hated that depressing dreck.

I would say all of the really well done Holocaust movies -- SOPHIE'S CHOICE, SCHINDLER'S LIST, THE PIANIST -- are incredibly depressing, except "depressing" isn't a strong enough word. Emotionally devastating would be more accurate.

"Atonement" and "Manchester by the Sea" were both emotionally devastating for me.

Jude. It’s based on an English novel.

Guy is married, falls for his cousin. They live together out of wedlock and have a pile of kids. They are super poor, and he has one son from the first relationship whose mother dumps him on their doorstep. The oldest kid finds out they’re about to be evicted by the landlady because they have a pile of kids living in a small room and the mother is pregnant and not married. At the same time, the father gets a new job, things are looking up and the overjoyed parents go back to tell the kids.

The oldest kid, still a small boy, leaves a note to explain his actions to the horrified parents: “Because we are too meny.”

This is the most depressing movie I’ve ever seen in my entire life.

I've been watching a lot of Time Travel movies lately.

Most I have liked. Some I've had to do a google search for some answers afterward.

But avoid "Predestination" (2014) - talk about depressing!!! Midway through I started to figure out some of what was going on, but after seeing the whole picture - what a downer.

Even I think my films are depressing, admits Ingmar Bergman

A little known movie from 1964 with Barbara Barrie and Bernie Hamilton called "One Potato, Two Potato."

An interracial couple get married and the woman's ex-husband tries to take her kids away from her.

Incredibly sad ending.

A Separation (2011, from Iran, Oscar winner for best foreign language film).

Sofie's Choice. I walked out because it was so depressing.

R162 Was it as depressing as Sophie's Choice?

The Belgian film Rosetta has to be up there. It was relentless in its depiction of poverty and despair.

Jude is a good choice, R157, a chronicle of bad decisions made often for bad reasons each of which ends disastrously. Thomas Hardy and a super gaunt Christopher Eccleston at his most wrenchingly sad.

I used to work with the woman who played the little girl Sophie gives up. Considering her mother handed her over to the Nazis to do as they pleased, she was actually very bright and cheerful.

Au Revoir Les Enfants, which depicts a Jewish boy who is enrolled in a French boarding school under a new name and religion during the Holocaust.

Mask. Cher was phenomenal in it, along with Eric Stoltz.

R75 Beat me to it. ‘Come and See’ is an incredible film and worth the watch. It will stay with you for a long time. However do NOT see it if you are already feeling sad or are in a vulnerable state of mind.

R157, sorry, but you did a very poor job of summarizing the plot of that movie. What you wrote is really confusing.

R170 Guess you're gonna have to watch the movie then, huh?

ALL MINE TO GIVE with Cameron Mitchell and Glynis Johns. Two parents die in an epidemic and before she dies, the mother goes all over town to find someone who will take her kids. Haven’t seen it since I was a teenager but it is some sad shit.

The Collector (1965)

The Comfort of Strangers

Dancer in the Dark

"TraLaLa (Jennifer Jason Leigh)'s gang-rape scene managed to be as horrific as the original novel's depiction."

Not really.In the novel her lips are split and her teeth are chipped by beer cans shoved against her mouth; she passes out and kids who had waited their turn to fuck her are disappointed that she's a "dead piece" so "tore her clothes to small scraps put out a few cigarettes on her nipples pissed on her jerked off on her jammed a broomstick up her snatch and then bored they left her lying amongst the broken bottles rusty cans and rubble of the lot" and she's lying "naked covered with blood urine and semen and a small blot forming on the seat between her legs as blood seeped from her crotch." Of course in the movie the gang rape scene is nowhere near that bad. And for some reason the movie features a teenage boy who develops a crush on the scummy prostitute; he comes upon her being raped in the parking lot and pulls a guy off her; he then begins to weep. And Tralala takes him in her arms and rocks him and says "Shhhh." WTF? That was definitely NOT in the novel. In the novel Tralala lies alone in the parking lot after being unimaginably violated. There was no sweet teenage boy to rescue her.

R171, I don't "have to" watch the movie, and I don't think it's asking to much to expect you to provide a coherent summary of the plot if you're going to write about it.

R175 Thanks for weighing in, Judith Crist.

Irreversible. It's about rape and it's torture to watch. My advice: DON'T. Not even for curiosity's sake. It's vile.

R148 When the Wind Blows

R169 My sister is a film scholar and she made me watch it once. I had never even heard of it, but it's incredible. Yes, it's bleak and depressing, but what an amazing film.

I’ll second ‘night Mother. Gut wrenching.

I’ll add The Piano. Bleak, bleak, bleak.

r157, you forgot the punch line.

Really, you CAN'T do that; not for that movie.

The Vanishing, original Dutch version.

Kapo (1959), Holocaust film, in Italian but filmed in Yugoslavia.

Kids (1995)