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What’s the grimmest, bleakest or most pessimistic film or tv show you’ve ever seen?

I've not seen most of your classic "Russian orphan getting slowly kicked to death for six hours in black and white" films, but a few that stand out for me and not been mentioned yet are:
Dead Man's Shoes was pretty thoroughly grim.
Been years and years since I watched City of God, but I remember thinking that it didn't really make life in a Brazilian favela seem like a big barrel of laughs?
Similarly, maybe people mostly remember the Wire for Omar being cool and McNulty doing some swearing, but I feel the actual content of a lot of it has to be up there, especially that first season plot with Wallace and the fourth season plot in the schools.

Of the ones that have been mentioned already, I love Happiness, one of my all-time favourites, and I remember Themroc being good fun too. Grave of the Fireflies and Requiem are two I have seen and can confirm are indeed grim. I thought I might've seen that Dancer in the Dark one but I don't think I have, I think I'm getting it mixed up with Dogville, which is also not massively upbeat.

I did almost go to a showing of Threads once, but then some fairly major and important stuff went really badly wrong in my life that week, so I decided it probably wasn't exactly what my mood needed. Think I'm happy to remain in ignorance there, it is funny that they named the knockoff twitter after it though.
 
I've not seen most of your classic "Russian orphan getting slowly kicked to death for six hours in black and white" films, but a few that stand out for me and not been mentioned yet are:
Dead Man's Shoes was pretty thoroughly grim.
Been years and years since I watched City of God, but I remember thinking that it didn't really make life in a Brazilian favela seem like a big barrel of laughs?
Similarly, maybe people mostly remember the Wire for Omar being cool and McNulty doing some swearing, but I feel the actual content of a lot of it has to be up there, especially that first season plot with Wallace and the fourth season plot in the schools.

Of the ones that have been mentioned already, I love Happiness, one of my all-time favourites, and I remember Themroc being good fun too. Grave of the Fireflies and Requiem are two I have seen and can confirm are indeed grim. I thought I might've seen that Dancer in the Dark one but I don't think I have, I think I'm getting it mixed up with Dogville, which is also not massively upbeat.

I did almost go to a showing of Threads once, but then some fairly major and important stuff went really badly wrong in my life that week, so I decided it probably wasn't exactly what my mood needed. Think I'm happy to remain in ignorance there, it is funny that they named the knockoff twitter after it though.
I just naturally assumed Dead Man's Shoes must have been mentioned somewhere in the thread to be honest. Deffo should be in here
 
Lilya 4-Ever

Lukas Moodysson really knows how to deliver the misery

(ohh, it has been mentioned several times. I clearly couldn't even bring myself to read the words before)
 
Speaking of Lilya 4-ever, there's a series called Box 21 on a very similar theme (story of a trafficked sex worker) which is excellent but yes bleak and depressing as fuck ... and the very last scene in the final episode, is a killer.

It's on C4 / Walter Presents. (Actually I've just looked and it's not there any more.)
 
Threads was bad. I was an early teenager and a member of youth CND when it played.

Worse was boys from the black stuff. I was about to leave school at 16. Factories shutting throughout Croydon.
 
I remebmer quite liking Happiness :confused: Dark though i is, it didn't find it depressing.

e2a not seen it for 20 odd years. Jus looked it up and I remember my main reaction was fucking hell, that's er, horrible. But weirdly not bleak in a no hope for humanity type way.
Wolf Creak I found really grim. Knowing that it had drawn a bit on some real murders.

Antichrist was pretty depressing as I recall. But was sposed to be.
 
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I was trying recall the other day what film poster Charlie boy's recent portrait reminded me of.

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I also found the episode of Futurama in which Fry’s dog from his original timeline is shown waiting for him every day outside the pizza place where he used to work for the rest of his life and until the poor thing dies of old age absolutely fucking brutal :(
 
Grimmest, bleakest or most pessimistic. Great thread.

I think a film can be bleak without intending to be, if the world view it reflects is bleak, limiting, empty...

On that basis, the Fast and the Furious franchise goes someway to being the most bleak thing I've had the misfortune to experience. Grown adults going to enormous, indeed trans-national, lengths to impose losses on each other in service of the unquestionably sacred car and an obsession they cannot themselves understand.
 
I hate grim films. I'm pessimistic and gloomy enough without indulging some film director's desire to make me feel worse.
I remember feeling really pissed off after watching Naked. Grim, exploitative and ultimately pointless. I wanted to post a turd through the director's letterbox. You want grim mate? Have some.

Agree wholeheartedly. Same with the equivalent music.
This was a brilliant take down of I Daniel Blake (which I haven't seen but can imagine) and of other worthy depressing social injustice films in general <not for me. If there's no fight back and inspiration what's the point of watching?


I, Daniel Blake is one of the bleakest things I've seen.
 
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