Most Depressing Movies

I'm looking for some movies that are total buzz kills. The saddest movies you've seen. I feel like these films stick in your mind afterwards and can make you a more understanding person. My friend asked me what films I could recommend that were depressing and I couldn't come up with any so I want to find some to catalog and watch.

Requiem for a dream is a pretty sad one Scanner darkly is also sad, but the plot is hard to understand for some

Not a movie but a show: Texhnolyze

>>1849 Akira Kurosawa's "Ikiru" is one of the bleakest, heaviest movies but also my favorite one, I recommend it strongly, other than that Francois Truffaut's "400 blows(" quatre cent coups), albeit not as bleak, could be your taste ,it is also considered one of the best movies ever made.

There are just so many of them, I guess it depends on if yo want movies about the bleakness of mankind, or the bleakness of the self and the eternal struggle of the human condition

>>1852 Good Show, for anime, pic related really is interesting >jin roh: a future japan with super soldier cops, inspired by a German folk tale. the visuals are stunningly real for anime >sky crawlers: had mixed reviews, but definitely a very existentialist view of the world seen through the eyes of genetically engineered combat pilots who exist for a corporations war game also enter the void i guess is kinda edgy and depressing, a little extreme for some people, and very explicit

The Sweet Hereafter. It'll be okay anonz.

some more out there movies, the second one is a documentary... that one penguin scene though https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWH_9VRWn8Y Babel is about the connectedness of people all because of a tragedy. the entire situation goes downhill in so many ways around the world The fountain: a little bit hard to follow, but deals with the concepts of dying, and what it means to embrace death

>>1855 Enter The Void was one of the most intense films I had seen that year. My first Gaspar Noe film. I thought it was fantastic, but I don't know if I could see it a second time. Highly recommeded, but be ready for it. >>1857 The Fountain is a great film. Great soundtrack as well. One of those films that needs to be viewed in terms of theme rather than plot (depending on your interpretation)

dancer in the dark

This movie will hunt me for the rest of my life. I've seen this exact incident in Nagaland, where a muslim man was lynched by mob for raping a girl, later confirmed that it was false rumor.

Oh oh I know these, the top one that comes to mind is Leviathan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj0SMgg9Jqg But if you're fine with TV shows I recommend The Knick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08V4RHGuGqE

>>1862 >>1863 Must see movies

Visitor to a Museum Dead Man's Letters No one did bleak quite like the USSR film industry.

>>1851 Requiem for a Dream really does destroy me at the end, simply for the mother's ending. Goddamn that drives home hard.

>>1867 tarkovskies films all had some aspects of existentialism, and they speak to the human condition, even tough they are all sci fi and some take place in the distant future

>>1869 Ehh... they aren't all SF. They don't seem bleak or depressing either, as is the subject ITT. Look at Stalker, the setting is quite ruinous but there is something very life affirming about the story.

>>1870 >Look at Stalker, the setting is quite ruinous but there is something very life affirming about the story. I interpreted the bleakness as life affirming, which is actually he reason I have seen most of the movies in this thread. (and probably the reason OP asked for titles) life affirming does not need to mean positive in any sense

I thought melancholia was pretty heavy, I watched it back in 2013 and 5 years later it still pops into my mind, it's a very slow moving film though so you have to be patient with it.

>>1868 ASS TO ASS!

Made in Hong Kong (香港製造) from 1997. Get it on youtube.

Not exactly a buzz kill, so much as a buzz. A Scanner Darkly. It'll twist you around, depress you and revive you all in one sitting.

What resonates differs person to person, I don't really find the standard classically depressing movies like Ikiru to be depressing for example because they're narratives that have been solidified and told over and over again, plus I don't relate to that male perspective. So I'd encourage you guys to expand beyond that bubble!! Check out Persona, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, Nights of Cabiria, The Florida Project, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, News from Home, Respire, Novitiate, Morvern Callar

>>1851 Literally the first movie I thought of when I saw the thread. Also, Click will break you

I'd say Salo by pasolini, I had small existential crisis in the middle of it. It's not sad-sad though, so I don't know if it fits well.

Brazil's a pretty sad one if you want a dystopian movie.

Pixote.

If you're a fan of Chinese movies, the works of Jia Zhang Ke or Ming Liang Tsai fit this quite nicely. While they're not necessarily enjoyable or even entertaining, I found them very engrossing. The three I uploaded images of are: 1) Xiao Wu, about a pickpocket in Shanxi Province who refuses to keep up with a society that is moving on without him. 2) Unkown Pleasures, about a group of luckless, hopeless Shanxi youth who are caught between the fantasies that media tell them about freedom and love, and the reality of a social landscape that has no place for unskilled dreamers. 3) Vive L'Amour, about three Taiwanese who share the same apartment but can't manage to relate with anybody on a soul-level at all. It's arthouse but this is Lainchan so I'm assuming you're patient and open to new art.

>>1902 top memer

some good recommendations coming your way >Un homme qui dort (1974) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaIXUXdYthA a narrated french film about a man who becomes increasingly isolated from society in his room, it starts out in the first 10 minutes: >you no longer go to school >you make as you do everyday, a bowl of nescafe >you add, as you do everyday a few drops of sweetened condensed milk >you do not wash >you hardly bother to dress >in a pink plastic bowl you place three pairs of socks to soak and in a way goes downhill from there the other one is offret, English title "the sacrifice" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhiC9bcoriU It revolves around an actor/playwright who gave up his career to live in the country who promises god to give up his home and is family to stop world war after it breaks out

I'm not sure if movies will ever be able to pull off what Texhnolyze did, due to their time constraints.

Take your pick.

>>2131 Thanks for the recommendations anon, more are always appreciated. Here's some more chinese movies I discovered and enjoyed during my time in the country: Blind Massage/推拿：Explores the lives of some blind massage therapists in China. Suzhou River/苏州河：Uses the Suzhou river in shanghai as a backdrop, directed by the same director as "Blind Massage." Very noir, amateurly filmed, follows two couples in the underground of Shanghai. To Live/活着 The Banquet/夜宴：A little bit too "chinese court drama" for me, but a beautiful movie with an outstanding soundtrack that loosely follows the plot of Hamlet. Crazy Stone/疯狂的石头: Classic chinese comedy that makes good use of wordplay and slapstick comedy To Live/活着: The movie adaption of the classic 1993 novel "To Live" by Yu Hua. Romance of the Three Kingdoms/三国演义 (1994): A classic TV adaption of the famous story. Not a movie but I really enjoyed watching this when I was first learning Chinese. Really good production value and they obviously spent a lot on the scenes. There's one last one I saw a while back (came out in the last 7 years) about a man who was wrongly suspected of murdering a man, and the movie follows the path that led to this man getting murdered and his motorcycle stolen. The main character steals a pig from a village at one point to make up for the stolen bike. If anyone knows what movie this is, please tell me!

Oslo 31. August manages to portray human hopelessness and despair in a more realistic, understandable and relatable way than most movies that try to do the same. The second to last line that for some reason is not subtitled translates to "It's going to get better. Everything is going to work out."

hana-biby takeshi kitano Its one of the best

>>1849 'The illusionist' (2010) by Sylvain Chomet. I don't even know why it made me so sad. It depicts the sadness seen in the mundane. The kinds of stories nobody would really pay attention to.

Very depressing documentaries about the life of the lowest of the low in Russia >Children of Leningradsky About homeless children, usually runaways from orphanages >Something Better to Come About homeless people living in the biggest European dump. Pic related

>>2209 If that's your thing, there was a Vice documentary about children living in a dump outside Karachi burning off tons of garbage every day to salvage the few ounces of copper within and sell it. I'm sure it's not hard to find.

Eva, a Spanish film from 2011. Explanations would be spoilers. Don't read up about it, just go into it cold.

Monster's Ball: Sad movie, has boobs. - Billy Bob Thornton - Heath Ledger - Halle Berry Leaving Las Vegas: Dude goes to Las Vegas to drink himself to death and falls in love with a hooker. American Beauty: Dude is sick of his upper class life and revolts, kinda sad, has some boobs. - Kevin Spacey These are actually three great movies, Academy Award winners. Very sad though. Be careful with all these sads, remember to get out and smell the roses and enjoy life.

Chungking Express has always been consistent in bumming me out. Sometimes I get the urge to drink and get sad so I watch it again.

My Joy. Not sure if its still on Netflix.

>>2231 Chunking Express is one of my favourite sad(-ish) movies. AI bummed me out big time. All Makoto Shinkai movies have made me feel like soykaf.

>>2236 Hoshi no koe was super good even if amateurish. Have you watched Haibane Renmei? If so, what did you think?

>>1849 sad but in a really funny way

>Johnny Got His Gun About a soldier who goes to war and ends up losing all limbs, and almost all of his senses and is trapped alive and conscious. It's what the song One by Metallica is based on

The Time Traveler's Wife Comfy vid, gf cried. Tugged my heartstring. Romantic drama + time travel woes.

>>2172 I work in an office where everybody is extremely multilingual (lots of speakers of Russian, Hebrew, Farsi, Urdu, Hebrew, Arabic, etc) and I feel motivated to become an "equivalent" in Asian languages. >Do you know any other Asian languages? >Which language do you think is the hardest to learn tonally? >How long did it take you to reach fluency in Chinese? What about reading-proficiency? >What made you start learning Chinese >Did you come to regret/appreciate learning Chinese? Would I regret spending the time on it? Thanks senpai.

>>2216 American Beauty's detergent-commerical-tier soundtrack made me totally unable to take it seriously, along with the spastic inconsistent tone. What milquetoast messaging it had too-- weird people are wise! The strict traditional dad must be secret gay! Let's all BREAK THE RULES! Wow! I understand that disagreeing with the morals of the film don't make it bad, but it was enough for me to hate it. Sorry for the rant. >>2231 >>2236 Kar-wai Wong is probably my all-time favorite director and though Chungking isn't my favorite of his, it's one of the most feel-good movies I've probably ever seen. What bummed you guys out watching it? Besides primal "ywn have qt Faye Wong gf" feelings it's a fairly uplifting picture about the loving connections we can have with strangers in a fast-paced city that feels friendless and cold.

It's Such a Beautiful Day It's by the guy who did those "rejected cartoons" that were all the rage on the early video streaming sites. It's pretty experimental though, mostly narration.

La vie est belle Schindler's List Okuribito Byōsoku Go Senchimētoru Jibeuro

>>2290 >Schindler's List Into the trash it goes.

I recommend watching this movie the day after having some an empathogen or something that drains your serotonin It goes so well with that empty feeling one gets

>>1851 Came here to say this. Left feeling like soykaf after watching.

I find the k-on movie extremely depressing, watching it and then knowing you will never have friendships like that and in real life people hate each other. It is very sad.

detachment had me in tears for almost the entire duration of the film. i would like to become a high school teacher but the movie is pretty much about the futility of modern education.... hit me hard >>1862 based movie

the sound of insects: record of a mummy diary entries of a guy who decided to starve himself to death over 2 months, pretty dark stuff

Threads (1984). It’s about the human experience of nuclear war. Whether or not it fires you up politically, it’ll make you very upset. From Wikipedia: ‘Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian called it a "masterpiece", writing: "It wasn’t until I saw Threads that I found that something on screen could make me break out in a cold, shivering sweat and keep me in that condition for 20 minutes, followed by weeks of depression and anxiety."’

>>1849 'The Fool' by russian filmmaker Yuri Bykov might be one of the most depressing movies I've ever seen.

>>2941 I read somewhere that this was made for TV and everyone watched it simultaneously because there weren't so many channels back then. This depression he describes actually gripped the whole country the next day where it became the main topic of conversation. Pubs even put sarcastic ads on their sandwich boards outside inviting people to drink as the world ends. >>3057 Back to 4chan with you. This was the first time a lot of people saw a realistic depiction of what a nuclear war would look like. It wasn't about the movie, it was about England possibly being hit by something 100 times worse than the blitz, which many people had grown up during and still remembered.

War movies are depressing, try watching Come and See, Talvisota, Das Boot, or Back to 1942.

Leviathan. not super depressing, in fact beautifully shot, but captures that typical Russian "everything is like kicking dead whales down the beach and will suck" melancholy so well >>2231 yeah, that seems to be his style. In the Mood For Love has one of my favourite aesthetics, and I love the angles/way people are placed while talking, but cannot rewatch cause it makes me sad.. >>1862 seconded

>>3070 Or All Quiet On The Western Front.

>>3155 Or Gallipoli. Basically anything set in WW1 that isn't about fighter pilots.

Dancer in the Dark Breaking the Waves Anti-Christ Dogville The Element of Crime The House that Jack Built

I'm not sure that it needs to be mentioned here on this site, but I think of The End of Evangelion. You have to watch the series first to make sense of it, but I think it's an achievement in a way that the series is not. In my opinion, it's not just good anime but a great film all around. For me, though, it started off depressing with my first viewing, but it seems to get more hopeful every time I see it. If anyone knows of anything similar to EoE, please share it with us.

Dark Horse (2011) Dead man Spirit of the beehive Waltz with Bashir

>>3320 >If anyone knows of anything similar to EoE, please share it with us. You might really enjoy the Holy Mountain and El Topo. Is live action but it has the same energy of chaos, esoteric simbolism and trippy visuals.

The Cable Guy Is kind of an underated movie, people assumed it was meant to be really funny, is actually just sad. Delicatessen.

Squid and the whale

Gook here to spread the word of Kim Ki-duk. His films are very quiet, somber. They usually have a dumb twist, but otherwise they are quite underrated. His most notable films are 3-iron and The Isle (2000)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCF5Y8dQpR4

>>3323 i liked delicatessen, but i don't think it's really sad? i mean, it's a black comedy...

does norwegian wood count?

>>3330 Not exactly sad but the whole ambience of the movie is deppresing. You could say that the Coen bros movies are comedies as well yet they have the same effect of putting one in an eerie downer mood.

All about Lily Chou Chou

>>1902 I thought this post was sarcastic, then I remembered my experience with the film. I cried like a bitch at the ending. >>2171 I remember liking the Comedy when it came out but I have a feeling it hasn't aged well. It felt very much like the product of the "post-irony" fad. Great chart overall though, since you've included I Stand Alone I'll have to recommend Irreversible. "Le temps détruit tout - Time destroys everything"

>>1854 Seconding Grave of the fireflies I watched it as a kid and it was sad af, will watch it again soon with friends or gf

Grave of the fireflies has already been mentioned. I don't what you mean by "sad" but it's pretty unsettling and horrible. I watched it once, and don't plan on doing it again. A recent one that could fit is Firecrackers, released 2018.

>>3070 You forgot Stalingrad