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The World is Hell: Hopeless Cinema

Pessimistic worldviews. For when you want to wallow in despair.

It doesn't matter if we all die.

Suggestions welcome.


NOTE: the criteria for films on this list is not merely that they have sad endings. In fact, sad endings are not even a requirement.

DISCLAIMER: This list started off as the first fifty-ish. All subsequent films are suggestions. I have therefore not seen all films on this list.

ADDITIONAL NOTE: This list has grown way beyond what I expected. I also understand that some are dissatisfied by the films in this list. I sympathise. This was not the list I set out to make. Sátántangó and Salò are not the same as Fight Club. But every single one of these…

Block or Report
  • Satantango
  • Antichrist
  • mother!
  • Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom
  • Werckmeister Harmonies
  • Hard to Be a God
  • The Turin Horse
  • An Elephant Sitting Still
  • Come and See
  • Damnation
  • Loveless
  • Leviathan
  • Possession
  • First Reformed
  • Taxi Driver
  • Tyrannosaur
  • Se7en
  • The White Ribbon
  • In a Year with 13 Moons
  • The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
  • Only God Forgives
  • Winter Light
  • Battle Royale
  • Son of Saul
  • The Wild Bunch
  • Veronika Voss
  • Fox and His Friends
  • Halloween II
  • November
  • The Tribe
  • The House That Jack Built
  • Dogville
  • The Merchant of Four Seasons
  • Day of the Dead
  • Shame
  • Brawl in Cell Block 99
  • High-Rise
  • Violent Cop
  • Kids
  • Secret Sunshine
  • La Haine
  • Ju Dou
  • Ran
  • Suicide Club
  • Noriko's Dinner Table
  • Angst
  • Full Metal Jacket
  • Videodrome
  • The Killing of a Sacred Deer
  • The Banishment
  • Dancer in the Dark
  • Grave of the Fireflies
  • Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
  • Snowtown
  • Cannibal Holocaust
  • Manila in the Claws of Light
  • Time of the Wolf
  • Melancholia
  • Wake in Fright
  • The Nightingale
  • Au Hasard Balthazar
  • Caché
  • From What Is Before
  • The Painted Bird
  • The Killing Fields
  • The Platform
  • The Lower Depths
  • Kisapmata
  • The Cremator
  • Prisoners
  • Kalel, 15
  • The Wolf House
  • New Order
  • Reflection
  • Insiang
  • Benny's Video
  • Threads
  • Irreversible
  • Century of Birthing
  • Naked
  • Martyrs
  • The Third Part of the Night
  • Begotten
  • The Road
  • A Time for Drunken Horses
  • Oldboy
  • Next Sohee
  • Biutiful
  • Osama
  • Inland Empire
  • Blonde
  • Natural Light
  • Harakiri
  • Joker
  • Requiem for a Dream
  • The Mist
  • Melancholia
  • Apocalypse Now
  • The Young and the Damned
  • Sansho the Bailiff