I don’t know about movies but the Edgerunners series is pretty good
Melancholia is the bleakest movie I’ve ever seen.
The most fun movie to deal with bleakness is Gamera 3: Revenge of Irys
Spoilers for a 2018 movie
I’m not a horror fan, so my opinion probably isn’t worth much, but I found the ending to Hereditary unsatisfying not because evil wins, but because the supernatural aspect made it completely ridiculous and removed all fear.
I think a much better ending would’ve been leaning into the family history of psychosis instead of the paranormal. Because real people actually have schizophrenia and get psychosis, which is legitimately terrifying because it can happen to anyone at any time.
I can’t believe nobody has mentioned 12 Monkeys. It checks all 3 marks including having “fate” as an integral part of the plot.
so you want a classical tragedy?
It is pretty notable that Western culture has totally abandoned fatalism in exchange for optimistic and fantastical personal agency.
It ties into our founding Myth of Progress, where everything is going to get better, whereas most cultures throughout history of treated this mortal plane as a cyclical at best and random at worse.
Cynical trends when in boom times, hope when in bust times
To be fair, the conditions of material reality are cyclical at best, and random chaos at worst. I think that the absolute domination of Christianity in the west sowed the seeds of this progress narrative. Christianity (and its many branches) somewhat stands out from other philosophies in its perception of a finality.
My hot take is that the renaissance and then the industrial revolution brought with it the means by which westerner Christians could start to imagine tangibly bringing that vision of heaven to earth. I believe there was an ideological split where many Christians stopped believing in a god and started secularizing Christian theology, blending it with other ideas and beliefs. This split creates competing views of the finality, the fundamentalists believe they are waiting for the world to end, the secularists believe they are building a utopian heaven. The rich assholes who don’t believe in anything but power take full advantage of this split to drive conflict in the working classes, much the same with racism.
If we build a utopia it will fail, if we wait for the end we will surely bring it upon ourselves. The foundation of the ideology is so excessively optimistic that reality cannot fit within it; that might be okay, heck if i know anything.
Yes, I think any fair reading of history points to cycles. What’s kind of hilarious to me is that one of the best historians, Marx, totally decided to ignore that reality and project a Happy End Time Utopia for humanity. And then we also had Francis Fukuyama, with the End of History, thinking that Neoliberalism was that permanent state of cosmic happiness.
I’m not sure where Christianity fits into all of this. It is often blamed for this optimistic bent, but the Orbus Fortuna was a medieval concept and that was a thoroughly Christian culture. Early Christians (and Jews) of that era were expecting a permanent real-world Return of the King situation, but quickly pushed any hope of a final peace into the afterlife.
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The Road
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Van Diemen’s Land
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Valhalla Rising
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The Proposition
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Threads
The plague dogs, grave of fireflies, full metal jacket
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People need the movie fantasy that the bad guys don’t win.
On the other hand Hallmark makes twenty new films a year with the same plot. They’re hollow, but full of hope and lighthearted. You could probably make the argument that that is a pretty cynical way to produce art in itself. But frankly if I want something to make me want to kill myself, I think that’s probably better than bleak depressioncore films way too up their own ass about the depravity of man, I already see that enough in the news
As someone who has frequently thought about killing himself, I can tell you that Hallmark movies seem even more hollow when I’m in that state.
Cosmic horror is what I like to watch when I’m in that mood.
- Memento
- Black swan
- Event horizon
- The fountain
- Pan’s labyrinth
- Requiem for a dream
- A scanner darkly
- Vatel
I thought The Fountain was known for being off puttingly pretentious, though it’s been so long since I’ve seen it. All I can remember is a space tree orb
Most of Black Mirror
How could i forgot about Pan’s Labyrinth?? So beautiful
Just stop the movie at the cliffhanger at the end of act 2 when the hero gets knocked out/almoat killed/gives up/etc. Stop the movie then.
Example: Good Will Hunting - there’s a part near the end when Will says FUCK YOU to everyone around him and storms off. Stop there, and don’t let the movie conclude where Will caves to everyone’s terrible demands that he leaves town and goes after the girl.
Or an ending where he succumbs to alcoholism, leads a miserable life doing menial labor. The girl (forgot her name) walks by him, doesn’t even have a flicker of recognition. Just a broken man tortured by what could have been.
If zis were un American film I would have a gun, and perhaps a little car chase. But it is French.
Merde.
Just saw Wild Horse Nine in theaters. Absolutely worth a watch!
Enough of this normie shit, let’s get to the real, hardcore bleakness 💀
- The Seventh Continent
- Wake in Fright
- The Turin Horse
- The Celebration
- The Vanishing (1988)
I can keep going if people want more.
Oldboy
Fuck that noise.
Reality is already bleak enough. Don’t need it when I try to escape it.
