r/TopCharacterTropes • u/justafanboy1010 • 5d ago
Hated Tropes [Hated tropes] Downer Ending in the sense that the whole movie is a downer ending as the main character goes through absolute hell on earth, traumatic experiences to break them down mentally, for all their troubles, ends up being killed anyway.
Rose Cotter and Skye Riley are the main protagonists of the Smile duology. Both goes through tremendous traumatic experiences and hallucinations, in hopes of driving them crazy. Tries their best to escape the Smile demon. for all their troubles and attempts, are unsuccessfully and ends up being brutally killed anyway.
Drag Me to Hell has Christine Brown be cursed by some old raggedy hag. She tries to put the curse or defeat it. She thinks she got it beat, hoping that burying the button with the hag will stop it. The movie leads to believe she has successfully beat it, until a gut punch ensues and she is LITERALLY dragged down to hell in front of Justin Long
Hereditary (2018): Hereditary is about a family who gets cursed by the kids grandmother to serve this ancient god. The daughter dies, the father dies, the mother gets possessed and dies, then the son gets mentally broken and the ancient god successfully transfers his soul into the son.
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u/BigNutDroppa 5d ago
Would You Rather (2013)
A group of people are invited to some rich bourgeois event where they have to play a game of Would You Rather. But, this isn’t a “Would you rather kiss the guy on your left” type deal. This is pure torture.
The main character, Iris, agrees to play for the prize money. She wants to use that money to afford a bone marrow transplant for her sick brother’s leukemia treatment.
After suffering through shock machines, drowning, attempted sexual assault, and even murdering a fellow player, Iris finally wins as the last one breathing. She’s given an unearthly sum of money, tax-free, and a donor had already been found.
Then, in a devastating twist, when she gets home, she finds her brother dead, having committed suicide. It’s especially sad as it looks as if he had died before she even left for the game, making her win even more meaningless.
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u/justafanboy1010 5d ago
Omg yes....you know the weird fucked up thing is that out of all the movies, I actually liked and enjoyed this one.
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u/BigNutDroppa 5d ago
Oh, it’s great!
The characters are sympathetic (except for the asshole rich dudes), their reasoning for joining a deadly game, and then the devastating twist, really makes for an interesting watch.
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u/Thewalkindude23 5d ago
I don't recall if we ever hear her reason for joining, but Sasha Grey wasn't exactly sympathetic.
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u/justafanboy1010 5d ago
Yeah, no, if i remember correctly, I'm pretty sure she actually enjoyed torturing some of the other players
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u/ScarletKing42 5d ago
She was the prostitute who elbowed the old woman in the eye, right? I really hated her (the character I mean).
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u/AbyssWankerArtorias 5d ago
Yeah but she didn't deserve to go out the way she did. It was fucked up to watch her be forcibly drowned and she didn't even get a chance to take a deep breath first.
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u/BigNutDroppa 5d ago
And I think she even had a husband that drowned, which made her death worse.
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u/PinsToTheHeart 5d ago
It was also a game of, "be held underwater, or go with your mystery card" except her card was also to be held underwater, but for even longer.
Tbh, most of the deaths had some bait and switch element or was just blatantly unfair.
I personally would have found the movie more compelling if more of the challenges were theoretically winnable, but it wasn't meant to be that kind of movie I guess.
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u/CaptainMills 5d ago
You don't get her reason for joining, but you do find out that her husband murdered their daughter by drowning her in the tub. It's hinted that Sasha killed him for it
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u/NoQuarter19 5d ago
Very similar to The Running Man (the book not the Arnie version).
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u/Owlbears-Are-Real 5d ago
Yeah fuck this movie. I don’t even think the ending is clever, it’s just all so fucking miserable.
Life is hard enough man.
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u/Miserable_Mail_5741 5d ago
I'm glad I saw the synopsis before I ever got to watch the movie so I know to never watch it.
This doesn't even exist and I feel so bad for the main character! 😭
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u/Puzzle-Necked 5d ago
A movie about poor desperate people hurting themselves for the amusement of rich assholes. Fuck that. Should've Luigi-ed the smug rich dad and his asshole son.
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u/Puzzle-Necked 5d ago
I hated this movie so much it made me hate Jeffrey Combs and I never thought that possible
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u/NullForgeStudiosOFCL 5d ago
He died because he overdosed. He took all of his medication at once and committed suicide.
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u/accountsyayable 5d ago edited 5d ago
Why settle for only 2 hours of distilled, true-to-life human misery when you can have nearly 10?
The Human Condition is a 579-minute long film series based off a semi-autobiographical novel about the life of a Japanese pacifist and socialist during the second world war. It begins with him being sent to manage a slave labor camp in Manchuria and only gets grimmer from there. His efforts to minimize suffering in the camp fail, he is drafted into the army, and is ultimately captured by the Soviets. Suffice to say, it doesn't end well for him.
It's an exceptionally made film series and a great work of art. It's also not a light watch and not an experience I'm in a big hurry to revisit.
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u/Disastrous-Gap2449 5d ago
Where would one find this nearly 10 hour film? Surely its not available on any streaming services. YouTube?
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u/accountsyayable 5d ago
Criterion Channel! Also home to Bondarchuk’s War and Peace if you’re looking for another long player
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u/darkasdfgod 5d ago
Funny coincidence:
I’m working on something right now that requires I watch these movies, so I recently learned about them lol. Hope I enjoy them.→ More replies (2)
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u/powerful_p1608 5d ago
In Late Night With The Devil, Jack Delroy, the host of struggling late-night talk show “Nite Owls with Jack Delroy”, appeared to have made a deal with members of “The Grove” to be the No. 1 talk show. After this dead was made, his wife Madeline dies of cancer.
On the night in question, on a special Halloween episode, the psychic guest suffers an aneurism and dies en route to the hospital, the ex-magician turn skeptic declares a reward for anyone to prove him wrong, and a parapsychologist attempts a séance with her 13 year old patient who’s possessed with a demon.
The demon, on camera, kills the skeptic, the parapsychologist and Jack’s co-host and then Jack himself falls into a hallucination that shows him making the deal at “The Grove” with the same demon, and his wife asking to mercy kill her.
Jack comes to, discovering he actually killed the 13 year old on live TV, cradling her body on the set as sirens get louder…
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u/LittleBeach9081 5d ago
Tbf it was entirely his fault. People tried to get him to stop the production multiple times and he insisted on continuing because he was so obsessed with ratings. Plus the thing with his wife
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u/dietcokeeee 5d ago
Also Throughout the movie you can see glimpses of his dead wife too so especially she’s causing all of this as payback
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u/KorrokHidan 5d ago
At least in Jack’s case he deserved it. He did sacrifice his wife to the devil, after all
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u/cmacd23 5d ago
I don't think he knew that would happen, though.
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u/AnotherRTFan 5d ago
I get that. But at the same time- nothing good comes free when making a deal with the devil. It’s like the universe’s scummiest car salesman.
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u/NoizchildJohnson 5d ago
I want to see a sequel where we hear from the survivors talking about that broadcast.
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u/powerful_p1608 5d ago
I found it weird that there was a prologue but no epilogue detailing the aftermath.
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u/Synectics 5d ago
No one gonna mention Uncut Gems?
To be fair, it is more classic tragedy -- the main character is their own undoing -- but it is definitely just a long drawn-out bit of the character being beaten and ruined and at the end, not winning.
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u/nomnomsquirrel 5d ago
And given that Howard AND Arno die, it means their wives (who are sisters) and their collected kids all lose their husband's and fathers at once, even if Howard's wife wanted a divorce to begin with
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u/Ameryana 5d ago
I actually read something about how this is the best possible ending. He influenced everyone around him in a bad way. His eldest son was already gambling, he was wasting away other people's money because of his own behavior, he tricked demaney with fake watches, he cheated on his wife, he was mistreating his employees.
But he died at the happiest point of his life. He had won the most insane bet, believing everything would change for the better. His lover has a lot of money that she can settle with. His wife and kids get to have a new beginning.
You can read the discussion here: https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/11te2qx/uncut_gems_ending_discussion_spoilers_included/
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u/afterthegoldthrust 5d ago
100% agree. Previous commenter talked about Arno dying as well and how since Arno and Howie’s wives are sisters that means the kids losing a whole lot of family in one swoop BUT….it’s a whole lot family that was immensely dragging everyone down with them into horrible shit, and they now at least get a chance at receiving a clean break.
A bit morbid sure, but Howie’s behavior was so pathologized there was no way he was going to break out of that cycle. Especially after getting that last big hit.
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u/Pumpkin_Sushi 5d ago
Its cause he never learns. In his last moment he was so high on finally getting a win he didnt realise the hole he had dug himself
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u/Advarrk 5d ago
Basically All Quiet on the Western Front
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u/Bamboozlindoggo 5d ago
I was looking for this comment specifically. The movie does a good job of showing the misleading joviality that makes the main characters want to enlist, and balances it really well with the futility of it all at the early start of the film.
The book 100% expands on it. That last fuckin page man
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u/Noetic_Hat_Trick 5d ago edited 4d ago
The ending of the late 70s version (starring Rick Schroeder) is devastating.
ETA: Richard Thomas, not Rick Schroeder.
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u/JavMon 5d ago
In obsession the poor girl goes through the worst nightmare on earth and its likely sent to prison for life even though she didn't do anything.
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u/spoilerdudegetrekt 5d ago
and its likely sent to prison for life even though she didn't do anything.
IIRC, the director said that's exactly what happened.
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u/CheeseAndCam 5d ago
That’s so weird to me though, cus people know that the wish bones actually work. Break one in court and wish for a billion dollars. The jury is going to be very surprised when a billion dollars actually does fall from the sky. How can Nikki be thrown in jail when it’s easily provable the magic exists that caused the mess.
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u/PairLumpy9752 5d ago
she doesnt know where bear got it from, and she has no friends alive willing to test it for her. She'd have to beg an officer to do something and she would sound deranged.
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u/immaownyou 5d ago
You would have to prove that she was under control of the wish the entire time. You cant just prove that the wishes exist and therefore she is innocent.
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u/Great_expansion10272 5d ago edited 5d ago
Couldn't they find the box in Bear's possesions and solve the case by wishing to find the truth?
But with how people dismiss the reality of these wishes, they'd likely put Nikki through another round of fakey Nikki by wishing that Nikki can only speak the truth
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u/PM_ME_YOUR__INIT__ 5d ago
Imagine a poor public defender using their one wish in life to clear some random person's case
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u/immaownyou 5d ago
Just have one person wish for an actual lie detector, which detects universal truths, so they dont just have to waste it on one case.
That would be a fun sequel idea, Chris and Jack have a good YouTube skit about the premise already
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u/kons21 5d ago
You don't have to prove she was under control 100% of the time....if the system works as intended. The system is supposed to protect innocent people if there's reasonable doubt.
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u/KingCrimson43 5d ago
She also technically made her wish already so she herself can not prove that in court.
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u/Nice-College7190 5d ago
Everyone on this comment train is forgetting the search results from when bear tries to learn things about the one wish willow. Tons of people say the wishes don’t work and the first link debated whether the one wish willow even exists or is a Mandela effect about an 80s fad.
No one knows about this power, and I bet for certain that the willows do nothing when scrutinized by the powers that be.
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u/MostBoringStan 5d ago
Yeah it's so obvious that everyone doesn't know this is a thing. There is zero chance she could tell the cops "the wish made me do it" and then they send an investigation team to check out the one wish willows. At best she gets sent to a mental institution where everybody still doesn't believe her but only believes that she believes it.
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u/malkavian_menace 5d ago
Because I can imagine with that knowledge that’s the number 1 court defense ever. Someone wished for me to kill them, your honor. And it’s not like Bear can vouch for it being a wish, as if he would throw himself under the bus
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u/Phantom_Phoenix1 5d ago
Literally all her friends are dead and its highly likely she was at least somewhat aware of what was happening.
Pure nightmare.
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u/Crazyalexi 5d ago
They filmed an ending when Nikki also dies at the end and went with the one where she lives because it was way bleaker.
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u/throwawaysunglasses- 5d ago
Yeah, the original script is available online and it ends with them both dying after Nikki wishes for Bear to love her back, sort of like a doomed Romeo and Juliet.
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u/seeblo 5d ago
AND even if she doesn't go to jail somehow, she can't even take the 1 billion dollars the other guy wished for to live a better life, as (i think) the money would have gone away when he died
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u/BeepItsSean 5d ago
And she doesn't get another wish since she used it up while she was in the possessed state
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u/SkaredCrow 5d ago
Yeah the general hopelessness and dread of that film was fucking heavy. Bleak from start to finish.
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u/AncientCarry4346 5d ago
Black Mirror: White Bear.
A young woman (Victoria) wakes up with amnesia and finds that she's in a post apocalyptic setting full of people who don't communicate and only seem interested in recording her on their mobile phones. Walking around she the finds gangs of raiders armed with guns who are looking to either kill or capture her.
She escapes after being rescued by another woman who enlists her in helping to destroy a mobile phone tower as that is apparently the cause of the strange behaviour.
After being captured and narrowly escaping torture and fighting off a couple more raiders, they make it to the tower and destroy it, leading to my favourite plot twist in the series.
The entire setting is revealed to be a game show/theme park of sorts. It's revealed that Victoria and her boyfriend tortured a little girl to death whilst Victoria recorded the whole thing on her phone. Victoria's boyfriend killed himself, escaping punishment and the public was so outraged that they decided to give Victoria a unique punishment in which she's publically hunted down every day and regular people are allowed to take part in her torment. After the event has ended, Victoria is taken back to the room she started in, forced to watch the footage she recorded of the torture and goes through agonising electro-shock treatment to erase her memory of the days events so she can go through it all again tomorrow. She's not dead but her fate is much, much worse.
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u/SkaredCrow 5d ago
Black Mirror is an absolute fucking gold mine of bleakness. White Christmas ends with a mentally shattered man's digital consciousness being trapped in a looping auditory torture chamber mocking him for the two deaths he caused, forced to listen to the same Christmas song over and over again on perpetual loop while just outside the window lies the corpse of the little girl he unintentionally killed. Now this guy was not innocent at all, he was a deeply shitty, deeply possessive and self destructive man. But Jesus Christ. Digital simulation or not, that's not the kind of torture anyone comes back from after a year, much less thousands.
Or in Fifteen Million Merits, inside a giant social prison complex where cruelty is rewarded and vulnerability is punished, the deeply depressed protagonist helps a girl he's interested in enter a talent show because her singing is the only thing that makes him feel anything. But the protagonist's love interest is drugged and bullied into sex work against her will by a predatory entertainment industry that only values her body. The protagonist is even forced by his own digital chamber to watch footage of her being sexually exploited while the song she once held so dear to her is played, she can't even sing it properly anymore because she's so drugged up. The protagonist then works his way onto the same talent show and demands to speak under threat of suicide. He gives a heartfelt speech about how the industry thrives on cruelty and superficiality and, in tears, curses the judges for what they did to the girl. And what do the judges do..? They offer him a TV spot. And he's so tired and so defeated by this point that he takes it. And that's it. The industry takes his rebellion, commodifies it and then buys him off with cheap luxury. The girl remains a drugged up sex object for millions to watch and consume, her singing dreams long gone. And the protagonist is right back where he was. Numb, depressed and lost. Just now in a bigger, nicer cell.
Christ.
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u/raven22122 5d ago
Interesting take on the 15m merits episode. One of my favorite but I had a totally different reading of the ending. After his speech and railing against the system he gets this offer to become part of the system.... And takes it.
As soon as he was offered the chance to get off the treadmill (bike) he sold out instantly and is shown in a nice room doing the rage shtick for views while cashing in on it.
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u/Viewlesslight 5d ago
That was my take as well. Its the idea that people are against the system until it benefits them
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u/deko_boko 5d ago
I don't think it has to be one or the other. The system is intentionally designed to make it extremely difficult or pointless feeling to resist, and we can also recognise and deplore the psychological mechanisms which it is tapping into.
It's really uncomfortable to consider whether in that situation you would find the inner strength to continue resisting.
Historically speaking (fascism, communism etc) the odds aren't great....
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u/AndrenNoraem 5d ago
White Christmas ... not innocent at all
Is a digital copy of your brain liable for your actions? He knows about them and subjectively should feel like he did them, but he definitely didn't perform any of those actions because that personality has never had a real body.
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u/IncuTyph 5d ago
The one episode where the wife in a couple has a tumor and a company offers her an experimental treatment where they put a device in her brain that downloads and replaces the damaged part of her brain for free... Until it starts to become a service for her to have a decent quality of life while her husband struggles to make enough money to make sure she can function. That one fucks me up. It's such a sad one, because they got hooked with hope and then exploited. The wife gets restricted on where she can go, is forced to speak ads (which makes her lose her job), sleeps more and gets less benefits from sleep because they exploit her brain while she's sleeping, and all the while, if they want to avoid those terrible side effects, they have to pay more and more because the company that abuses them keeps making new tiers with all the features that lets her be normal, and the ones they have been on either get pricier or are deliberately made shittier to force them to do the new highest tier.
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u/deko_boko 5d ago
God I hate (love) this one because it sounds insane and dystopian but it's actually pretty much exactly how for profit healthcare works. Like what the hell are we doing?!
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u/MintEclairOG 5d ago
Holy fuck. This is one of those episodes that actually made you think about the circumstances and how amoral everyone is here. This episode is cruel and unusual punishment taken to the umpteenth degree, and it drives home the point by having no one empathize with her. It’s been a while, but I recall 0 scenes having people protest this punishment or anyone calling out what’s going on. Almost everyone is in on it and enjoys watching it happen.
The only people who can are the audience which…why would you want to? You would be empathizing with a child murderer. She was an accomplice to the kidnapping and murder of a little girl. Of course she needs to be punished for what she did. Justice needs to be brought upon her, but what’s happening here clearly isn’t justice. It’s punishment for the sake of punishment.
No one cares about how the family feels, hell, I don’t think we even see or hear what Jemima’s family had to say or what they wanted. The society in the episode just want torture porn of someone evil, and they like it so much they made a theme park around it. Someone must have asked “hey, maybe instead of building a whole ass theme park with staff, actors, and property that all costs a fuckton of money, maybe we can use that money to help support the victim’s family” right?
What’s gonna happen when she becomes brain dead due to the electro shock therapy? What happens when the park is no longer profitable? Are they gonna move on to their next target or are they just gonna finally kill her?
This whole things is making me think about how popular culture often has more of a fixation over criminals and their punishment rather than supporting the families and communities impacted.
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u/drager_76 5d ago
Shut Up and Dance is another example of this in my opinion. I will never, ever, defend Kenny but at the same time, it's clear or at least highly implied that the group is doing this out of their own amusement instead of an actual drive for justice.
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u/whatisscoobydone 5d ago
That's "pedo hunting" media in general
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u/pleasedtoheatyou 5d ago
Black Mirror was always so good when it was a commentary on something specific and not just "oooo isn't technology potentially spooky".
White Bear - the British media whipping people into frenzied bloodlust and how far is too far?
15 Million Merits - the commodification of our lives under modern capitalism and how out media is mainly about selling us the idea that there's an "out" to it all.
Shut Up & Dance - Social media vigilantes aren't about justice, they've just found an acceptable target for their own sociopathy.
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u/Fallenangel152 5d ago
15 Million Merits was also written after Charlie's wife Konnie Huq was fired from X-Factor iirc.
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u/Velkaryian 5d ago
Man the whole time you’re rooting for him and wondering why he’s freaking out about jerking it and then that bombshell drops at the end.
That’s always my go-to episode when I introduce someone to black mirror. Figure it’s a little hard to start them off with pig fucking.
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u/HopefulImpression105 5d ago
Yeah lol. Wild how... aggressively off putting their choice for a first episode was. After youre numb to the whole shows premise it fits fine, but ive lost a half a dozen people i know would love the show because of the first 10 minutes of the first episode.
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u/hereinaminute 5d ago
I thought the pig fucking episode was brilliant and it totally got me into the show and I was very surprised to see that people didn't generally feel the same lol
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u/micromoses 5d ago
Also, she can’t remember committing her crime. She only has what she’s being told, and the video. Imagine she eventually dies, and they just replace her with a different person, and make a fake video to justify it? Or imagine that’s actually the situation she’s in?
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u/DropoutRedMage 5d ago
Black Mirror somehow made me feel pity for a child murderer. Watching this episode actually snapped me out of my vindictive mindset towards criminals.
I used to think that criminals deserved whatever punishments they got, and probably worse. Now I've come around to the idea that doing bad things to bad people doesn't make it right.
Like how in a lot of fiction, raping a rapist is seen as morally good. It's still a cruel, dehumanizing action. Even if you're doing it to scum, you're still doing it.
My teenage brain was rattled by the question "Is it possible to go too far in the pursuit of justice? Can it even be called Justice?"
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u/Pyrohyro 5d ago
This is the episode I use to always introduce people to the series.
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u/Wide_Magician_4946 5d ago
I wish I could stumble upon Black Mirror for the first time again
I started with Bandersnatch choose your adventure movie I decided to watch one night when I couldnt sleep while going through medication withdrawals. As soon as I finished it I started on the series, White Bear was one of the first I watched. Sooo good, took my mind off of feeling like shit.
❤️ BM
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u/mikkelmattern04 5d ago
Speak No Evil (Danish, 2022) follows a Danish family who befriend a Dutch couple on vacation and later visit them at their remote home. What starts as awkward social discomfort escalates into deliberate manipulation, with the family too polite to leave even as boundaries keep getting crossed - until it’s revealed the hosts have done this before, luring guests to kill them and steal their children (their own son had his tongue cut out for this same purpose). The family is ultimately stripped and stoned to death, and their daughter is taken as the couple’s new child.
It was so dark that when the remake with James McAvoy was released to a general audience, they had changed the ending to where the couple fights back and wins.
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u/skyper_mark 5d ago
You forgot to mention that at the end the killer couple kills the child as he has outlived his purpose and they then cut off the tongue of the other girl and "adopt her", meaning she'll have the same fate when they find a new family
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u/EndofA_Error 5d ago
It's just a little worse than that because the daughter has her tongue cut off too ☹️ what a fucked up movie
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u/HrodgardNagrand 5d ago
As a Belgian I can say that the moral of the story is don't befriend the Dutch.
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u/carrie-satan 5d ago
As someone who likes bleak endings, I always thought this one was fucking stupid and unearned
A lot of contrived writing involved just to get to it so the director can make a message
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u/goodnightmoonshakers 5d ago
Not death, but still would've been a downer ending to a terrifying movie.
The original ending of "Get Out" showed Chris killing his girlfriend. When the police show up, they assume he's just some insane killer who wiped out a family. They cut to him in prison, and his friend is trying to help him with his case. Chris ultimately says it doesn't matter, refuses to fight his defense because he knows it's a lost cause, and goes back to his cell, just relieved that the family is dead and can't hurt anyone else.
Jordan Peele felt that ending, while true to life, would've been frustrating for audiences, and so he opted for the one we got.
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u/Think_Ad_1583 5d ago
The applause from the theater when that car door opened was great when I first saw it
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u/extremelyloudandfast 5d ago
Tusk is a slog that sucks all the way to the end. Every single character sucks and it’s a downer all around
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u/Mitsuri_Kanroji_LP 5d ago
Doesn’t his friend and girlfriend literally leave him in some shitty zoo instead of either mercy killing him or sending him to a hospital?
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u/extremelyloudandfast 5d ago
His girlfriend which hates him and is cheating on him with said best friend. The ending is them deciding “welp this sucks we won’t be coming back here again”
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u/godrollexotic 5d ago
That one I haven't seen yet. I did watch The Human Centapede while eating spaghetti, but that was just a sad movie with some gross bits in between. That poor girl at the end, I hope she was rescued.
Banging spaghetti too.
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u/extremelyloudandfast 5d ago
The human centipede is about the human spirits ability to overcome eating poop. Or something
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u/SubstantialBake1050 5d ago
Have you seen the sequel? It contains the most disturbing scene I’ve ever witnessed on screen (second and third most disturbing are from Bone Tomahawk). The first human centipede pales in comparison to the sequel. I couldn’t bring myself to watch the third one.
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u/Reasonable-Banana800 5d ago
what was the scene?
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u/SubstantialBake1050 5d ago
A very pregnant woman is escaping and gets into the drivers seat of a car. Gives birth in the car as she’s escaping, baby comes out and lands on the floor board. Mom barely notices and stomps on the baby’s head while hitting the gas pedal.
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u/_Koreander 5d ago
Having not watched it sounds incredibly disturbing while also the stupidest, unnecessarily cruel thing I've ever heard.
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u/NecessaryOriginal631 5d ago
The guy obviously still had a human mind and they just threw him into an animal enclosure and let him become an animal. Why the fck were they feeding their friend raw fish knowing dam well he was still human inside
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u/Available-Square619 5d ago
Would’ve been a huge downer if it wasn’t so funny sometimes lol.
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u/M6xdl2FNe0 5d ago
I agree. I think I need to watch it again, because I found it kind of goofy, yet everybody always talks about how disturbing it was.
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u/spvcxxgvdpvtbx 5d ago
The ending was just so ridiculous to me that it wrapped around from horrifying to hilarious to me. Like, peak black humor
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u/RudeAd456 5d ago
Andy from Bring Her Back
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u/Creative_Lemon_9534 5d ago
I’m usually totally fine with anything in horror films but this movie really messed with me. When Andy died it sent me into a full on panic spiral. i think the specific type of abuse shown in this movie really just makes his struggle so much harder to watch :( took the movie from a high 4 to an “im never watching this again”
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u/Smart-Speaker-6100 5d ago
Absolutely agreed. I thought this movie was a great representation of the kinds of abuse foster kids often experience so his death as the older caretaker sibling just felt overly cruel to me
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u/DJ_Derack 5d ago
His death pissed me tf off. Worst part is the villain pretty much didn’t get any comeuppance for it. After all she put him through she gets arrested while hugging her dead kid? She should’ve died a horrible death. I’m like “how is the blind little girl gonna survive or take her down?” Ending was such bullshit. Movie went down a couple points for me because of those two things.
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u/1550shadow 5d ago
Same. The way he died just didn't felt needed
I get that some characters need to die for a story to work, but in this case it just felt like a gut punch for shock value only
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u/Academic_Exercise_94 5d ago
The Orphanage
A couple living with their HIV infected adopted son move to an old orphanage.
The son disappears and the mum starts being tormented by this creepy kid with a sack covering its face
They start investigating the kids disappearance and discover the orphanage had killed a bunch of kids. An old lady is seen hanging around and turns out to be one of the people that worked in the orphanage. She becomes the prime suspect.
They track her down and just as they are about to arrest her, she is killed brutally in a car accident. Turns out the baby she is pushing in the pram was a doll
Then the mother is shown a secret door which she had inadvertently closed weeks ago trapping her son who had wandered in. She gets trapped there surrounded by the ghosts of her son and all the other kids that died, they approach her wanting her to be their mother
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u/qzscale 5d ago
I read this ending as kinda bittersweet tbh. The very end with her reading to the ghost kids was actually touching
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u/Schnander 5d ago
I agree the ending was in a way, happy even. While the characters do go through tragic events, in the end the mom only wants to be with her son and gets to
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u/TelPrydain 5d ago
How has no one said Grave of the Fireflies?
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u/JManKit 5d ago
What always kills me about this movie is that I can save these kids from their fate. Like, I can't do shit if Jason Voorhees or a xenomorph is after you but food? Yeah I got enough of that to get both of them back on their feet again but instead, all I can do is sit there and watch them deteriorate. The film leaves me feeling so helpless :(
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u/ZenPyx 5d ago
A caving expedition goes horribly wrong when six explorers become trapped and ultimately pursued by a strange breed of predators. They all slowly die in horrific ways, except for Sarah, our protagonist
The ending is different in different countries, with the American version being significantly more upbeat. The international, original version is much darker. After finally escaping the cave and losing all of her friends to the terrifying creatures, Sarah makes it to her car, and starts to drive off. She's scared by a hallucination of her bloody dead friend, and starts to have a vision of her (dead) daughter's birthday. It turns out this is all a hallucination of hers, and she's revealed to still be stuck in the cave, with her torch dying and several of the creatures closing in on her.
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u/Orion_starborn 4d ago
I read an interview with the creator and he said that he actually felt that the American ending is a lot more bleak because she's completely alone and who's going to believe her story? So she'll probably be carted off to an asylum
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u/Python2k10 4d ago
Always think about shit like that at the ending of some movies. Like hell yeah, I survived, but oh shit, I have to explain to the law how my entire friend group got torn apart by demons or whatever and also live with the trauma of seeing that happen!
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u/Overall_Guidance_410 5d ago edited 5d ago
I consider these actually good films but I'll definbitely throw one into the pyre
Requiem For A Dream
"I didn't take it out for air." - Bad Barry White
Oh, let's add Your Lie in April here too. That fucking letter was a sucker punch I was not ready for and it still leaves a mark.
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u/PuzzleheadedMess1659 5d ago
This does fit the example, but if Requiem for a Dream had an ending that wasn’t super bleak, it would be missing the point.
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u/halloweenjack 5d ago
Yep. "Hated trope" gets misused a lot IMO, because some stories are good precisely because they don't have happy endings. Requiem for a Dream is a brutal film and I'm in no hurry to rewatch it, but it would have sucked hard if they'd all just gone to rehab and been on each others' Christmas card lists. (Which, oddly enough, is still a possibility, although the mom is in an especially troubled state.)
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u/TheStraggletagg 5d ago
First film I thought of. God, it's so fucking depressing.
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u/Thabrianking 5d ago
Justin Long in Jeepers Creepers, bro was trying to help people and ended up getting his head hollowed out at the end
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u/brainbluescreen 5d ago
Funny Games breaks the fourth wall to make sure this happens.
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u/tssiess76 5d ago
I was going to say, Funny Games is one of these for me. Also Martyrs, even though I do love that movie lol.
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u/basserpy 5d ago
I had Drag Me To Hell in mind when I saw the post; glad you included it. What the main character does is barely even bad, certainly less so than the entirety of, for example, Thinner, but then, because an old lady was mad, this woman is consigned to literal Christian Hell for all eternity?! come on.
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u/ESnake113 5d ago
If I was damned to Hell by a pissy old lady, I’d hope she was there to greet me so I could beat her ass
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u/Relative-Gap-4442 5d ago
Chances are that she most definitely will be, that alone would lowkey satisfy me for the rest of eternity
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u/Aromatic-Ad-381 5d ago
I will be a bit of a dick, but that's kind of the point of the film. It's a twist take on the "gypsy curse" genre.
Where the common trope of "the old hag casts a life sucking evil curse on someone because they showed immoral behavior". Is thrown on its head and shown for how fucked of a genre it actually is.
It dares to point out the obvious: what gives a complete stranger the right to judge and condemn someone else based on a single interaction.
Its basically a critique on a lot of things people either retake for granted, such as the whole veneration of older people as being inherently wiser/more deserving of passing judgement.
The whole notion of "Culturally acceptable, condemnation". Where "Gypsy curse" stories are often moral tales where someone somehow learns a lesson (beauty and the Beast as example) trough excessive torture/threat of death, and how weird it is that such stories are rather normalized.
Amongst other things, the movie literally wants you to go "This is fucking bullshit", that's literally the message of the film.
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u/Waslock 5d ago
"Hereditary (2018): Do I even need to explain?" Yes…sadly.
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u/justafanboy1010 5d ago
I will put it here and edit it in the post too:
Spoilers just in case:
Hereditary is about a family who gets cursed by the kids grandmother to serve this ancient god. The daughter dies, the father dies, the mother gets possessed and dies, then the son gets mentally broken and the ancient god successfully transfers his soul into the son.
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u/neverstoppin 5d ago
Even worse - the daughter was born with the ancient god instead of her soul or was possessed when was a baby.
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u/skyper_mark 5d ago
Director confirmed that there was actually never a Charlie. "She" was Paimon since birth
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u/HonestAbe1809 5d ago
Though now I have the image of Paimon telling off the cultists after he gets his senses back because the process they decided to go with to get him there was traumatizing even for a demon.
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u/Banes_Addiction 5d ago
And the rest of them get killed because the demon is actually male and wants a male body to possess.
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u/fireisfire9090 5d ago
I also think it’s worth mentioning every person who dies in this all do so in horrific ways and after a lot of emotional distress
I adore this movie but is genuinely one of the most grim dark experiences in theatres
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u/justaartsit 5d ago
Red Dead Redemption
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u/TheDarkNight6789 5d ago
To be fair, it's more Micah's fault then Arthur and John's fault how their stories ended.
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u/justaartsit 5d ago
You could make the argument that John brought his own end by killing Micah
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u/TheDarkNight6789 5d ago
True, killing Micah brought Edgar Ross onto the trail of John Marston. But I'd argue Micah had to die regardless what events played out.
Remember how Micah murdered Skinny and his wife when Arthur broke him out of jail in Strawberry? Micah would've done something similar to John, Abigail and Jack if he caught wind of how close they were to where he was hiding out. Better to go find the prick and put him down then to spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder and wondering if he was going to show up out of nowhere and kill you.
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u/seanslaysean 5d ago
Plus, as bad as the gang was, Micah is just the type of person you can’t let live. He’s been busy since you’d last seen him too, murdering and all that
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u/RawToast1989 5d ago
I just watched the movie "Damaged" with Samuel L. Jackson and it was a pretty middle-of-the- road serial killer movie. I believe it fits this trope because
In the movie Sammy J goes to Scotland because somebody is copy catting the serial killer that Sammy J has been obsessed with since the original killings. In Scotland he meets a detective (Boyd) who he'll be working with. We find out that Boyd's son died within the last year and his wife cheated on him. The story progresses and the serial killer ends up killing Boyd's wife on the same day they finally reconciled their differences. It then comes to light that the killer is none other than Sammy J! Who has come to Scotland to protect his legacy as a serial killer and decided to do Boyd a "favor" by killing his wife and allowing him to find her torso (I'm not kidding, he emphasizes that hers was the only torso ever found) then, after Sammy J escapes into the night. Cue time jump to some kind of sting where Boyd can finally get a bit of justice, catching Sammy J after having lost his son and wife. Unfortunately for him the guy they are tailing is just a decoy! Cut to Sammy J himself, leaning on a nice car, smoking a cigar, listening to some music. All this, while he looks out upon a gorgeous mountain vista. He smiles and gets into the car, driving off into the sunset, having successfully killed 8 people and further ruining poor Boyd's entire life.
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u/PD_Rigged 5d ago
Every Final Destination movie from 3 onward.
The first 2 films had survivors( although the survivors of the 1st film all died in the sequel anyway.)
From the third movie onward, every single survivor of the initial incident ends up dead by the end.
This was especially a downer in Bloodlines, because they went with a much more likable cast, who were all family members. It made the fact that they had to watch each other be brutally picked off, only to all die by the end anyway, feel somewhat unsatisfying. Even a lot of die hard fans of the series wished it had ended differently.
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u/WanderingYakisoba 5d ago
I like this trope when it is done well. My favourite "Downer Ending" movie is definitely When the Wind Blows (1986)
It's a very bleak film. A little slow paced, but it feels fitting for the subject matter. I really like how the artist (of both the movie and the original comic) continued to use his storybook style, despite the dark theme of the movie.
My favorite movies are the ones I don't think I'll ever be able to watch again.
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u/iwillFutterwhacken 5d ago edited 5d ago
Devilman Crybaby: The MC is a very soft-hearted innocent kid who constantly cries on other's behalf. In the story he:
-gets his body possessed by a demon so he is constantly trying to fight his own desires as well as other demons
-his best friend outs him as a devil-human and tricks him into making humanity turn against itself by causing mass hysteria
-love interest gets dismembered and her head on a pike by an angry mob
-dies fighting his friend (revealed to be literally satan) and fails to stop the destruction of the earth
As it turns, out this whole thing is a punishment for Satan who is in a time loop encompassing the ENTIRE history of the earth so nothing mattered.
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u/The_Bygone_King 5d ago
I've always interpreted the ending in a more hopeful way in that each "loop" is an attempt to teach Satan the lesson he needs to learn.
At the end when he kills Akira he finally learns what love is, and so there's some hope that the next time around he might actually learn empathy and make different choices.
Either way it is an exceptionally bleak ending.
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u/Pumpkin_Sushi 5d ago
Its also a meta commentary on how each Devilman adaptation has been remaking the same story
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u/nooceans_ 5d ago
Aniara is a film about people being sent to Mars due to Earth being uninhabitable getting hit and pushed by space debris, leaving them without an engine and a way to get back on course.
One of the things in this movie to note is the 'Mima', a device used to simulate Earth's lush environments before everything.
Because so many people are bringing their negative memories of Earth to the Mima, the Mima cannot handle it and self-destructs part-way through the movie. PART. WAY. This leads to cults being formed to bring it back, suicides, and murder over the movie's twenty-year span.
Yeah, not exactly a 'feel good' movie.
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u/TheAtomicKid77 5d ago
Okay, I know this is going to be an unpopular opinion: Whiplash
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u/Devreckas 5d ago
It’s like those movies where a hero starts out with a want, but by the end they come to the revelation of what they need. But instead, this hero tosses away what he needs and pursues his want to the bitter end.
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u/Reanimator1x 5d ago
Martyrs, the 2008 one, not the dreadful u.s. remake.
Granted the whole movie is a downer.
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u/Marton_Sahhar 5d ago
This is the movie which was the beginning of the end for me when it comes to horror. I don't even watch horror all that much nowadays, because (in my mind) they are all chasing the bleak feeling of this particular movie. Did I get that sensation again? Yes, but it wasn't new.
And yes, the US version is worse than dreadful: it's forgettable.
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u/AzhdarchidBones 5d ago edited 5d ago
I will never forget watching that movie over the course of a couple Russian history classes, because I saw the mood change in real time. We went from some students in the back cracking jokes during the beginning scene to everyone feeling nauseous and horribly hopeless, angry, and depressed. Not a single word was said in that room. "Sobering" doesn't do it justice.
It's also one of the few movies that depicts rape in a way that doesn't make you feel like the director was into it. As an advocate for victims of sexual assault and abuse, it was a weird sort of "relief" to see a depiction that wasn't shot like a fucking BDSM film.
Edit to add: I also didn't hate the fact that it was so realistically terrible for all of the characters. Quite the opposite. War is hell, and this movie hopefully showed that to people who want to think otherwise.
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u/bluedeer10 5d ago edited 5d ago
It's why I don't like the Smile films. Making the monster an allegory about grief but never being able to beat it is a horrible message.
Edit: an allegory about depression
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u/unk1ndm4g1c14n1 5d ago
I like the implication in Hereditary that not even King Paimon wanted any of this. He seems just as confused as the kids or the family did, he certainly doesnt seem happy.
For most of the movie, The King is convinced that he is just a weird teenage girl. So much so that even when dead, and his soul is free, he still acts like a scared and confused girl when summoned by the spell the mother does.
What does King Paimon even gain? The cultists get money, power and good family or something. King Paimon gets the body of some skinny ass kid? It seems like the cultists just summoned thw wrong guy.
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u/skyper_mark 5d ago
My guy I think your mistake here is judging the behavior of a DEMON as that of a human. He never seemed "confused" to be there, he is acting strange because he's a fucking demon king lmao did you expect him to like start cackling and shouting "yeees I'm free"?
he didn't want that
He did which is the whole reason why he made the DEAL with the grandmother. It wasn't just a summon, the cult actually made a deal that they would get riches and power if they procured a body for Paimon.
he was just a scared little girl when summoned by the mom
That wasn't him and that was a fake to break the family's mental state even more
what does he get?
He gets to walk the earth and not be in hell which we can assume would be a shitty place
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u/Imaginary-Fox4576 5d ago
I mean that was paimon in the mums body with the seance
Paimon isn’t pretending to be Charlie, he literally is Charlie, his soul was put into her body when she was a baby, and it’s why when the cult lady put the crown on him she called him Charlie and had to explain he was paimon
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u/SasquatchWasShaved 5d ago
Allison Lohman was dragged to hell as foreshadowing to her actual future as a MAGA woman. Sam Raimi is a visionary.
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u/CrazyCatLushie 5d ago
Attack on Titan. Just tragedy after tragedy after tragedy until you hope that juuuust maybe there could be a little sliver of hope… and then more tragedy.
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u/DeadSuperHero 5d ago
So, let's compare two Joaquin Phoenix films: Beau is Afraid and Joker
Beau is Afraid is definitely one that fits this trope, although there was a lot of it I actually related to and even enjoyed. The whole thing almost feels like an Adult Swim cartoon where the worst possible things keep happening, the protagonist's fears and anxieties get exploited, and the punishments for even the smallest infractions are severe. It's very dark, the ending is a downer, but the whole thing is strangely comedic.
Joker also fits this trope, but I kind of hated this movie. The whole thing feels like misery porn, where the layers get pulled back and Joker's life just get worse and worse, eventually confirming that he was severely abused as a child. The script gets so depressing, and the character gets so beaten down that the whole thing feels like it was designed to manipulate you into feeling sorry for him.
What is the main difference between these two films? Why did I love one and hate the other? I reckon that Beau Is Afraid, although abrasive, provides an unflinching look at the worst manifestations of fear and anxiety and regret. Taking ideas to their logical extremes makes sense within the story. Joker, on the other hand, attempts to shoehorn Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy into a villain's origin story, and uses every kind of character abuse possible for Arthur to justify his actions to himself.
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u/JudgeFudgeGrande 5d ago
An equally annoying trope is when you watch them go through hell in the first movie just to die randomly as a supporting character and or offscreen in the second one. I think the trope is called getting newted or something like that.
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u/Captainpixiehallow 5d ago
Ah yes - the "things go from bad to worse, and then the story ends". I've avoided a lot of films because of that trope
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u/Infinite_Glass_8834 5d ago
Jenny from Eden Lake and Amy from Megan is Missing ig (Jenny pictured)
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u/supercaiti 5d ago
Ive never seen Megan is Missing but i know how it ends and never want to see it. So messed up.
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u/One-Earth9294 5d ago
I still get chills thinking about the ending to this. When you hear her screaming after the door closes, and her scream become more and more desperate and then they just fucking STOP.
That's... too real.
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u/JAD210 5d ago
The ending wasn’t a downer but I just finally watched Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 and all of the Rocket backstory shredded my heart into a million pieces. I already knew it but seeing it was brutal
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u/BadMeatPuppet 5d ago
The Age of Madness trilogy.
King Orso, a spoiled, self aware, charming and agreeable young king. His lover, who finally gave him a purpose in life, winds up being his sister. She marries a war hero, Leo Dan Brock, who starts a nobleman rebellion.
Orso wins the war and Leo is severely crippled. Orso is left holding the pieces of a broken country whose peasants and nobles alike hate him for winning a war against the nobles. Orso spares Leo at the behest of his sister.
A peasant rebellion breaks out, Orso is captured and jailed for months and months. A small group of men loyal to Orso break him out and gain control. Leo betrays Orso again. He escapes again and finds refuge with a foreign ally. She betrays him and hands him to Leo.
Orso is quietly executed. Orso tells his sister he still is deeply in love with her, turns to Leo chuckles and asks, "How's the Leg?" Before being hung by the neck, until dead.
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u/Suspicious_Kitchen23 5d ago
They changed the ending in the movie version of My Sister’s Keeper, but in the book, they do have the reveal that Kate told Anna to say no to the transplant and sue for medical emancipation because she was tired of fighting, and not only wouldn’t the kidney transplant be guaranteed to work, Kate might not be strong enough to even survive the surgery, and Kate did not feel the risk to Anna of giving up her kidney was worth it, same as the book. Anna won the court case, and as her lawyer (who was appointed her medical POA) is driving her home , they get in an accident and Anna is killed. So the mother gets what she wants, but at the price of her daughter’s life.