15. The Elephant Man (1980)
The movie: Poor John Merrick (John Hurt) is ridiculed from pillar to post over his grotesque 🤪appearance. After a lifetime of ill-treatment, he is diagnosed with a terminal disease and kills himself. Thoroughly disheartening stuff.
Most miserable moment: Merrick's suicide is obviously distressing, but his heartfelt plea to t🎃he baying mob is perhaps more affecting still: "I am not an elephant! I am not an animal! I am a human being! I am a man!"
14. Melancholia (2011)
The movie: This list could easily have been title♚d "Ranking every Lars Von Trier movie." Yes, Melancholia is another stark entry ꦜfrom the Danish filmmaker. The world is on the cusp of apocalypse as a planet threatens to collide with Earth extinguishing all life as we know it. And it's right on Kirsten Dunst's wedding day, too!
Most miserable moment: There's about a million. But, the worst has got to be the moment when Dunst's ꦯbrother-in𒅌-law (Kiefer Sutherland) realises the optimistic reports about the comet avoiding Earth were a lie - everyone is going to die. Instead of comforting his family, he kills himself.
13. Hotel Rwanda (2004)
The movie: A harrowing account of Rwanda's modern-🧸day holocaust in which around one million Tutsis were murdered whilst the UN stood by and watched, it's a raw watc♍h, but utterly necessary.
Most miserable moment: Stomach-churning horrors wait around every corner, but the machete-l𝄹ed slaughter of a group of Tutsi women is particularly shocking.
12. Revolutionary Road (2008)
The movie: A striking portrayal of domestic misery, as Kate and Leo find themselves suffocated in suburban hell, a place of hopeless𓆉 emptiness. Thwarted ambition, failed love and an unwanted pregnancy add up to a far less romantic yarn than the star duo's last collaboration
Most miserable moment: Winslet's self-administrated, and ultimately fatal abortion brin🍷gs things to fever-pitch. The shot of Di Caprio as a broken man♔ sitting on a park bench, is also gravely upsetting.
7. Scum (1979)
The movie: T🍃his account of life inside a borstal, in all its grisly detail, is every bit as depressing as it sounds. Bruising, bleak and brutal, it's still an incre🦹dibly gruelling watch more than thirty years later.
Most miserable moment: The gang-rape of the timid🎃 Davis shows a broken system at its most appalling.
6. Million Dollar Baby (2004)
The movie: Hilary Swank's tough-as-nails boxer Maggie ends up a paraplegic, burdened by a heartless family and re⛦duced to biting through ♒her own tongue in the hope of bleeding to death.
Most miserable moment: Well, aside from Maggie's d❀evastating predicament, when Clint Eastwood cries! A weeping Clint is the icing 💃on the cake here. It's all wrong!
Click 'Next Page' to see the top 5 films in our countdown of the most depressing movies ever made.
Gem Seddon is GamesRadar+'s west coast Entertainment News Reporter, working to keep all of you updated on all of the latesღt and greatest movies and shows on streaming platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime. Outside of entertainment journalism, Gem can frequently be found writing about the alternative health and wellness industry, and obsessing over all things Aliens and Terminator on Twitter.
