The 22 Best Feel-Bad Movies to Destroy Your Mood

What, you might ask, is the distinction between a feel-bad film and a tearjerker? Principally: Crying at a tearjerker brings catharsis, aid, even a way of pleasure. A feel-bad film, although, is an efficient film that feels simply terrible to take a seat via, the type of gripping story you may by no means have the ability to convey your self to observe once more. It’s, in brief, the very reverse of a feel-good film. But when you end up deliberately searching for a movie that places you in a deep state of despair, who’re we to guage?

Beneath, we suggest 22 robust sits that can do exactly that—although we determined to not embody movies in regards to the Holocaust, slavery, and different historic atrocities, because it’d be straightforward to fill a listing like this with solely these types of tales. (There’s additionally no torture porn and few all-out horror films as nicely: Graphic violence isn’t precisely the unhealthy vibe we had been going for, as you’ll see.) Press play, when you dare.

A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Stanley Kubrick’s extremely influential dystopian basic was extensively censored upon its launch, and watching it at present, you’ll be able to perceive why—there’s an tried gang rape throughout the movie’s first 5 minutes, and issues solely get extra disturbing from there. However even past the assorted acts of “ultraviolence” perpetrated by Alex DeLarge (Malcolm McDowell) and his (typically) loyal “droogs”—to not point out the viscerally uncomfortable sequence during which Alex is “rehabilitated” utilizing aversion remedy, and eye-opening clamps that reportedly blinded McDowell briefly—Clockwork is a symphony of fashionable adverse power. It’s telling that Anthony Burgess’s unique novel features a ultimate chapter during which Alex reforms for actual…however that coda is nowhere to be present in Kubrick’s movie. —Hillary Busis

Courtesy Everett Assortment

Taxi Driver (1976)

There are much more Travis Bickles on the earth now than there have been when Taxi Driver first shocked audiences, which could make this early Martin Scorsese masterpiece much more miserable as of late than it was then. However Taxi Driver holds up for a lot extra causes than disheartening topicality, from Robert De Niro’s era-defining efficiency to Scorsese and Paul Schrader’s cynical strategy to politics and the media. New York has modified rather a lot since Taxi Driver, however the bitter aura of its ’70s nadir isn’t laborious to narrate to in any respect. —Katey Wealthy

The 22 Best FeelBad Movies to Destroy Your Mood

The Chocolate Battle (1988)

We like to romanticize rebel, however the reality is far tougher to bear. Normally, those that rise up to withstand cruelty, unfairness, and indifference accomplish that alone. And normally, they’re additionally destroyed for it. Ilan Mitchell-Smith stars as a teenage boy at a hard-knocks Catholic highschool who decides to make a stand nonetheless. Primarily based on Robert Cormier’s celebrated YA e book, the movie follows Mitchell-Smith’s character as he steadfastly refuses to participate within the annual chocolate-selling contest that raises a fortune for Trinity Excessive College. His refusal can’t be allowed, lest it encourage others, so he’s marked for annihilation. The bullying and torment he experiences—from fellow college students, in addition to the corrosive instructing workers—practically succeeds (John Glover is very charismatic because the sadistic Brother Leon.) However the boy doesn’t break, which is one thing price celebrating. Director Keith Gordon (additionally cited on this listing for his follow-up film, A Midnight Clear) ends the movie with one of many key bullies being knocked from his perch. However the pleased ending is dashed once we see what takes that boy’s place: one thing far, far worse. — Anthony Breznican

The Vanishing (1988)

That is going to sound like hyperbole, however the Dutch model of The Vanishing is much more upsetting than the truth that Hollywood later satisfied director George Sluizer to make an English-language model with Sandra Bullock, Kiefer Sutherland, and a cheerful fucking ending. Right here’s the plot of the unique, minus the beautiful ultimate scene, which you need to see for your self so it might probably hang-out you ceaselessly: A younger couple named Rex and Saskia cease for fuel at a relaxation space throughout a highway journey. Saskia vanishes with out a hint. (The Dutch title is Spoorloos—how nice a phrase is that?) Rex spends years attempting to resolve the thriller of what grew to become of her, and even goes on TV to inform whoever kidnapped his girlfriend that he simply desires to know what occurred. The psycho in query affords Rex a horrific deal: He’ll reveal all to Rex by doing the identical factor to him. Is he in or out? The grim, unforgettable plotting of unique films lies in its simplicity, in addition to the way it hurtles towards a final scene that constitutes lots of people’s worst nightmare. The film’s a stunner in each senses of the phrase. —Jeff Giles

A Midnight Clear (1992)

Close to the top of World Battle II, a gaggle of US Military reconnaissance troopers (Ethan Hawke, Arye Gross, Kevin Dillon, Frank Whaley) take up residence in a bombed-out villa close to the entrance traces simply as Christmas is approaching. Whereas attempting to gauge the presence of enemy tropes, they encounter a gaggle of German troopers who say they don’t consider in Hitler’s struggle and don’t need to die for it however know their households will likely be held accountable in the event that they give up. The teams devise an ingenious plan to stage a pretend battle that can permit the Germans to be captured with honor, whereas giving credit score to a shell-shocked member of the American scouts (performed by Gary Sinise) who can then be despatched house a hero. Director Keith Gordon unsparingly adapts William Wharton’s novel, which steers this hopeful premise into the darkest conceivable abyss. It’s an amazing film, an amazing Christmas film, however one that can break your coronary heart and depart it that means. — A.B.

Seven (1995)

What David Fincher will get away with on the finish of Seven won’t be fairly as audacious as you keep in mind—we don’t truly see what’s within the field—but it surely’s nonetheless one hell of a slap within the face, significantly for 1995 and for a filmmaker whose solely earlier characteristic credit score was the disastrous Alien 3. Like so many Fincher movies that might come, together with the one which billed itself because the feel-bad film of Christmas 2011, the type swoops the viewers alongside via the various terrible issues encountered by the cops performed by Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman. You may even end up wanting to observe it once more regardless of the pit in your abdomen by the top. –Okay.R.

Humorous Video games (1997)

Is it a pitch-black comedy of manners, a stinging satire of each bourgeois values and our violence-obsessed tradition, a nasty little bit of nihilism dressed up as artwork, an all-too-believable home horror story, a postmodern experiment? Michael Haneke’s mockingly titled thriller deliberately resists categorization. However one factor about this Cannes standout is evident: After sitting via the sadistic video games {that a} pair of extraordinarily well mannered interlopers put an upper-class Austrian household via, you completely don’t want to observe Haneke’s 2007 English-language remake, which is mainly the identical film however starring Naomi Watts and Michael Pitt. Until you too are a glutton for punishment. —H.B.

Happiness (1998)

The ’90s impartial scene was stuffed with grim, reasonably joyless portraits of American suburbia, however none took on home middle-class distress as frankly and relentlessly as Todd Solondz’s Happiness. Centered on the disagreeable lives of three grownup sisters, the movie opens with the reveal that one of many ladies, Trish (Cynthia Stevenson), is married to a well-regarded psychiatrist (Dylan Baker) residing a secret life as a pedophile. Issues someway get darker from there, with the movie frankly depicting grooming, sexual assault, and different types of abuse. The chilling effectiveness of the movie rests in its unsentimental ordinariness—its starkly convincing portrait of wicked, monstrous conduct occurring proper subsequent door, simply past a well-manicured garden. —David Canfield

A Easy Plan (1998)

“You’ve got to remember how people see you. You’re just a normal guy. A nice, sweet, normal guy…. Nobody would ever believe that you’d be capable of doing what you’ve done.” These brutally slicing phrases are meant as consolation to Invoice Paxton, who has unleashed a torrent of ache, struggling, and dying after discovering a bag stuffed with thousands and thousands of {dollars} within the woods. As his Woman Macbeth of a spouse, Bridget Fonda reassures him that he’s very more likely to get away with all his horrible deeds, if solely he retains going. However that is the intestine punch of Sam Raimi’s movie, based mostly on the e book by Scott B. Smith: Paxton’s character was an excellent man, no less than till he found his personal ruthlessness in that bag of money. When he had nothing, no less than he had his soul. With that gone, there’s little consolation in her promise. Nobody who is aware of him might think about he may do such issues, which implies nobody actually knew him. Together with himself. — A.B.

Requiem for a Dream (2000)

The place to start with Darren Aronofsky’s dependancy opus, a way more efficient deterrent than something DARE might have dreamed up? There’s the physique horror of Jared Leto’s Harry capturing up in an arm that’s extra wound than limb; there’s the operatic nightmare of that bravura ultimate sequence, a hallucinatory nightmare during which every of the movie’s 4 important characters sink to their lowest factors (particularly Jennifer Connelly’s poor Marian). However principally, there’s Ellen Burstyn, a fragile surprise as Harry’s lonely, diet-pill-popping mom, Sara. Her gradual breakdown is each riveting and insufferable—the kind of efficiency you’ll be able to’t cease watching however by no means need to sit via a second time. —Hillary Busis

The Mist (2007)

An odd white cloud envelopes a small city, trapping a gaggle of residents inside a grocery retailer. No large deal, proper? Besides there’s one thing on the market. Some issues. And they’re massive, hungry, and nearly undetectable till they strike. Stephen King’s novella was first revealed in 1980, and it had at all times been a fan favourite, a literary variation on creature options of the Fifties like The Blob and Them. After beforehand adapting King with The Shawshank Redemption and The Inexperienced Mile, director Frank Darabont turned this monster mash right into a post-9/11 metaphor about what occurs once we let concern overpower motive. The courageous fare nicely in The Mist, whereas those that give in to panic or terror inevitably meet ugly fates. The ending is the proper summation of this, but it surely stands as a notoriously harrowing and disturbing finale. And whereas it differs from King’s ending, the author himself has stated he wished he had give you it: “The ending is such a jolt—wham!—it’s frightening. But people who go to see a horror movie don’t necessarily want to be sent out with a Pollyanna ending.” — Anthony Breznican

Blue Valentine (2010)

Overlook what Nicole Kidman stated in that AMC advert: Heartbreak truly feels unhealthy in a spot like this. Blue Valentine stars Michelle Williams as Cindy, an bold med pupil, and Ryan Gosling as Dean, an alcoholic high-school dropout. Their surprising romance begins with electrical chemistry that erodes over time, leaving them in a dysfunctional and finally untenable marriage. A narrative informed within the vein of Jason Robert Brown’s musical The Final 5 Years, Blue Valentine jumps between two narratives, shifting backwards and forwards in time to point out us the excessive highs and low lows of Dean and Cindy’s relationship. Author and director Derek Cianfrance has made a reputation for himself within the “feel-bad” style, having helmed Sound of Steel and The Place Past the Pines within the years since—however in Blue Valentine, solely his second characteristic movie, Cianfrance proved his bonafides. Blue Valentine will take you on an emotional curler coaster because it charts each stage of a doomed relationship, from blissful starting to excruciating finish. Additionally, there’s a useless canine. —Chris Murphy

The Social Community (2010)

Aaron Sorkin’s incisive acidity pairs nicely with David Fincher’s penchant for darkish underbellies, creating an origin story that solely will get bleaker with age. The Oscar-winning movie chronicles Fb’s inception, the times when it was merely a collegiate disruptor and its most insidious chapters had but to be written. As performed by Jesse Eisenberg, there’s something quaint about Mark Zuckerberg exhibiting as much as enterprise conferences in “fuck-you flip-flops” and whispering pithy insults throughout board rooms, given the much more sinister affect his creation (or acquisition, as Eduardo Saverin and the Winklevoss twins would argue) has had within the nearly 20 years since. Though there’s one thing amusing about imagining Zuckerberg all this time later, nonetheless listlessly ready for Rooney Mara to just accept his buddy request. —Savannah Walsh

Melancholia (2011)

Possibly it’s the slow-motion local weather disaster, or the continued quagmire of struggle, or AI uncertainty amid mass layoffs—however proper about now, the downbeat plot of Melancholia, Lars von Trier’s movie a couple of wayward planet’s impending destruction, has a comforting simplicity. Who can blame an enormous rock? Von Trier took inspiration from a phenomenon he realized about in remedy: that depressive individuals typically stay eerily calm throughout moments of disaster, as they’re already practiced in anticipating the worst. Kirsten Dunst assumes that position right here, as a radiant bride turned stoic clairvoyant. Charlotte Gainsbourg performs her sister, who’s shattered by the doomsday information. (Gainsbourg additionally stars in Antichrist and Nymphomaniac, which collectively comprise von Trier’s so-called Despair Trilogy.) Melancholia’s imagery—horseback driving via fog, nude moonbathing—has an operatic grandeur, dressing up the in any other case disquieting anticipation. In a way, the big-picture takeaway comes from the anti-marriage tirade delivered by the mom of the bride (a withering Charlotte Rampling): “Enjoy it while it lasts.” —Laura Regensdorf

Younger Grownup (2011)

As the top credit roll, Diana Ross sings, “We don’t have to change at all”—a sentiment from her 1973 tune “When We Grow Up” that Charlize Theron’s Mavis has embraced. At the start of Diablo Cody’s script, the previous promenade queen is a chronically depressed author whose day by day ritual of chugging Food plan Coke by the two-liter and mainlining unhealthy actuality TV is interrupted solely by an ill-conceived plot to wreck her highschool sweetheart’s house. After failing on this entrance, Mavis flings herself from the arms of her ex (Patrick Wilson) to these of the cynical former classmate with whom she finds unlikely kinship (Patton Oswalt). She flirts with a contemporary begin, however after getting her dysfunctional viewpoint bolstered by a separate character, Mavis slips again into her wine-stained costume from the night time earlier than and rejects any kind of redemption. Director Jason Reitman insisted on this bitter ending, he as soon as stated, as a result of in actual life, “assholes don’t change like they normally do in the third acts of movies.” —Savannah Walsh

Amour (2012)

The protagonists of the second Michael Haneke movie on this listing have practically the identical names as the primary characters in Humorous Video games: they’re Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant) and Anne (Emmanuelle Riva), a pair of long-married musicians now of their twilight years. However that’s about the place the similarities finish. The place the sooner movie is chilly and sneering, Amour is, if not heat, tender and compelling because it elegantly charts the deterioration of Anne’s well being and Georges’ efforts to take care of her regardless of his personal superior age. Their gradual declines are painful to take a seat via however not possible to look away from. —H.B.

The Act of Killing (2012)

The Act of Killing meditates on the very notion of a feel-bad film by asking its topics to primarily make one out of horrific true occasions—and observing them do it with a smile on their face. This revelatory documentary from Joshua Oppenheimer follows numerous retirement-aged people, who, many years earlier, participated within the mass murders of thousands and thousands of Indonesian individuals. We encounter this group not remorseful or repressed, however prideful—wanting to recount what they did. Oppenheimer collaborates with these males on a sequence of reenactments as they gleefully make cinematic spectacle out of barbaric acts of violence. They lead to sequences so darkly comedian of their horrific realism, so divorced from what we consider as a regular ethical compass, that they communicate singularly to movie’s energy of depiction—as a result of, in these killers’ thoughts, Hollywood epics and precise genocide aren’t up to now aside. The Act of Killing presents a thesis on films’ capability to make us really feel unhealthy, sure, but it surely additionally interrogates what lies beneath after they make us really feel good. —D.C.

Fruitvale Station (2013)

Primarily based on the true story of Oscar Grant, a younger man killed by a police officer in Oakland, CA, Fruitvale Station follows Grant on the final day of his life. The little moments of what begins out as an bizarre day fill the viewer with dread for what’s to return. A riveting and sensitively informed story, Fruitvale Station continues to stay related even years later as Black males proceed to lose their lives by the hands of police. And although a devastating watch, the movie will ceaselessly maintain a big place in cinematic historical past as Ryan Coogler’s introduction to the world, in addition to establishing Michael B. Jordan as a proficient main man who was capable of ship a nuanced efficiency stuffed with craving and despair. —Rebecca Ford

Foxcatcher (2014)

Earlier than there have been the doomed wrestling brothers of The Iron Claw, there have been the doomed wrestling brothers of 2014’s Foxcatcher. When the film was launched, a lot of the eye targeted on Steve Carell’s transformative efficiency (pretend nostril included)—however the coronary heart of the film is the tender, relationship between brothers Mark (Channing Tatum) and David Schultz (Mark Ruffalo), who settle for the largesse of Carell’s wrestling fanatic millionaire John du Pont with disastrous penalties. Sometimes darkly humorous however principally depressing, it’s a showcase for wonderful performances and Bennett Miller’s course which may make you are feeling awe for the inventive accomplishment along with all these unhealthy vibes. —Okay.R.

Manchester by the Sea (2016)

Loss of life, grief, self-hatred, failure, and landscapes each actually and figuratively frozen have by no means possessed extra cathartic magnificence than they do on this misery-packed masterpiece from writer-director Kenneth Lonergan. Enjoying an emotionally shattered janitor who reluctantly makes an attempt to take care of his useless brother’s teenage son (Lucas Hedges, in his breakout position), Casey Affleck is mainly the Greek god of not with the ability to get your shit collectively after a crushing tragedy. But it surely’s feel-bad MVP Michelle Williams, in her showcase scene as his estranged ex-wife, who will drain your tear ducts and depart you weirdly awestruck by the sheer braveness it takes for every of us to get via a rattling day on this loopy, wounding world. Too many movies about struggling find yourself leaving you numb; this one truly opens your coronary heart. Come to consider it, I’m about due for a rewatch! —Michael Hogan

Hereditary (2018)

Ari Aster is arguably American movie’s preeminent feel-bad director, fashioning tales about mommy points and the worst boyfriend in historical past into riveting, darkly humorous epics. However none of his films will make you are feeling worse than his first characteristic, the film that arguably turned “elevated horror” into its personal quasi-genre. It’s turn into cliché to say {that a} horror film is definitely about trauma, however that’s additionally largely because of Hereditary, an nearly intolerably disagreeable watch targeted on artist Annie Graham (Toni Collette, actually going for it) and the familial tragedy she’s apparently destined to endure. All that, plus one of many gnarliest baby deaths ever captured on movie, clarify why Annie actually, actually doesn’t need to be requested if she’s okay. —H.B.

Uncut Gems (2019)

Have you ever ever felt extra nervousness whereas watching a film than the primary time you noticed Uncut Gems? Watching A24’s absurdly aggravating indie, directed by the Safdie brothers and starring a never-better Adam Sandler, feels akin to strolling a tightrope over a pool of sharks whereas being pursued by a bear. A playing addict and jewellery retailer proprietor in Manhattan’s diamond district, Sandler’s Howard Ratner repeatedly dangers every part to repay his many money owed, which embody $100k that he owes his brother-in-law Arno (Eric Bogosian). Alongside the way in which, Howard gambles and schemes as he juggles his accounts, his spouse Dinah (Idina Menzel), his youngsters, NBA celebrity Kevin Garnett, pop star Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye (delivering a efficiency that places his work within the ill-fated The Idol to disgrace), and naturally, Josh Safdie’s muse Julia Fox, in a star-making flip as Howard’s girlfriend. The Safdie brothers’ frenetic type and Daniel Lopatin’s pulsating rating solely amplify the chaos. Sandler was merely robbed of a number one actor Oscar nomination that 12 months—however you’ll be able to guess your final buck that, when you watch him in Uncut Gems, you’re in for an awesomely feel-bad time. —C.M.