Twitter Users Share What Movies They’ve Watched Once & Loved But Will Never Watch Again
Most of the time, when we see a movie that blows us away, that impacts us, that we know is a masterpiece, we have no problems watching it again. We seek it out, in fact, in order to relive the experience.
But every so often, a movie comes along that sucker-punches us right in the emotions. One whose greatness we recognize, but is so brutal, so emotionally heavy, or so heartbreaking that we just can’t bring ourselves to ever watch it again. I asked Twitter if they have any examples of these movies.
Turns out, there are a handful of movies that are collectively messed us up to the point we’re not sure we can give them another go. Here are 13 of the most frequently-mentioned movies in response. Because 13 is exactly the right number for these cursed movies.
1. Requiem For A Dream
Darren Aronofsky is known for making trippy, mess-you-up-good kinda movies, but 2000’s Requiem for a Dream is indisputably the hands-down champion. I expected this to be the #1 movie mentioned and I was not disappointed. The story of a descent into drug addiction and depravity is incredibly hard to watch unfold. And the scene of Jared Leto’s gangrenous arm? For a generation that had grown up with the “Just Say No” anti-drug campaign, one viewing of Requiem for a Dream did more than that entire campaign ever did to scare us away from drugs.
2. 12 Years A Slave
Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave was nominated for nine Oscars and won three, including Best Picture, for a reason. It’s a powerful film with some career-best performances from its all-star cast. But it’s not a lighthearted, inspiring film about one slave’s triumph over his captors, instead being an unflinching look at the realities of slavery. It doesn’t pull any punches in laying out, in excruciating detail, man’s inhumanity to man. While it’s a movie that should be watched once, it’s hard to argue against once being enough.
3. Grave Of The Fireflies
Studio Ghibli films are always poignant, sometimes sad, but ultimately uplifting and hopeful – usually. Not so 1988’s Grave of the Fireflies, based on the novel by Akiyuki Nosaka. The story of two children orphaned in Japan after a firebombing during WWII is brilliant, beautiful, and utterly devastating in the suffering the children endure. There’s something bad about seeing adults suffering; there’s something even worse when the horrors happen to children. For that reason, many movie fans have noped right out of ever watching this one again.
4. Dancer In The Dark
When Lars von Trier is involved, you know you’re in for a world of hurt. The premise alone is a heartbreaker: Björk plays Selma Ježková, an immigrant factory worker who has a hereditary degenerative eye condition and struggles to save enough money to pay for an operation for her son so he can avoid also going blind. Björk’s haunting music only adds to the melancholy of Selma’s life of poverty. If you were hoping for this to be a movie with a happy ending, dash that hope at the door right now. Ain’t nobody getting out of this one unscathed.
5. Dear Zachary
The only documentary on this list and it’s here for a reason: man, is it a heartbreaker. Kurt Keunne started this project after his friend, medical student Andrew Bagby, was murdered. Shortly after, Bagby’s girlfriend learned she was pregnant with his child. Keunne decided to put together a video love letter from his late friend to his friend’s unborn son, gathering video stories and anecdotes from friends and family. Meanwhile, Bagby’s parents desperately try to talk his ex-girlfriend into letting them see their new grandson. It’s a beautiful and heartbreaking film that explores how one great and sudden tragedy has a ripple effect on everyone they love.
6. Come And See
World War II is ripe for haunting movies, and Elem Klimov’s Come and See might be one of the most heartbreaking of them all. It tells the story of a Belarusian boy who finds an old rifle and joins the Soviet resistance against Nazi occupation. The boy experiences all the brutal horrors of war and they quickly break him, turning him from a cheerful teenager into a broken, gray-haired old man. So brutal were some of the scenes that Klimov planned to have young actor Aleksey Kravchenko hypnotized during them so he wouldn’t remember any of it. In a twist of fate, hypnosis didn’t work on Kravchenko. He had to act through the bleak, violent scenes unaided and they deeply affected him.
7. Uncut Gems
The Safdie brothers have an undeniable style when it comes to their filmmaking. Their films are skittering and chaotic, with close-up, jittering camerawork that ratchets up anxiety. But Uncut Gems might be their crowning achievement, not just because of the anxiety-inducing cinematography, but also because it’s so stressful to see Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler) make one terrible decision after the other. You know it’s all going to blow up in his face, but you’re compelled to watch the trainwreck to the end. Sandler is brilliant in the role, but it’s basically like experiencing a two-hour and fifteen-minute long panic attack.
8. Martyrs
There are many horror movies that are scary. There are many horror movies that are messy. There are many horror movies that explore deep trauma. And then there are horror movies that are all of those and come out just flat-out f’ed up. 2008’s Martyrs (save yourself the trouble and skip the 2015 American remake) is just such a movie. The story of a woman’s descent into madness as she seeks revenge on the captors who kidnapped and tortured her when she was a child is bleak and depraved. Even worse is when her friend, Anna, follows her into the horror. It lingers. If you can’t get through one viewing, don’t worry – you’re not alone.
9. The Nightingale
Jennifer Kent is a brilliant filmmaker whose works, like The Babadook, linger with us. But The Nightingale might be the most haunting of her films, also exploring trauma and its aftermath. Its exploration of the horrors of colonization in turn of the 19th century Australia are laid out in a revenge story that is as stark and unapologetic as anything you’ll see. Much like with 12 Years a Slave, it doesn’t soften the blow of depicting what white colonists did to a minority group, in this case, Australian Aboriginal people. It’s not for the faint of heart.
10. Irréversible
As a filmmaker, Gaspar Noé has never given a single, solitary damn about injecting a single, solitary bit of chill into any of his films. But even by his standards, Irréversible is next-level hard to watch: A film told in reverse-chronological order, it slowly traces backward the events of a night in which the beautiful Alex is brutally raped then beaten and left for dead in an underpass. It’s a searing look at how the consequences of cause-and-effect can be devastating and how we so rarely see the worst moments of our life coming until they’re upon us. Even worse? The first half-hour deliberately utilizes background noise with a frequency of 28 Hz in order to trigger nausea and vertigo in the audience.
11. Schindler’s List
Any movie about the Holocaust is bound to be hard. But despite winning seven Oscars and being a brilliant masterpiece of filmmaking, Schindler’s List is hard to watch more than once thanks to its near-unbearable weight of sadness. The final scene of Oskar Schindler is seared into our memories. Despite all the great work he’s done, all the countless Jews he saved, Schindler will be forever haunted by all those he could not.
12. Hereditary
Ari Aster made a splash with his first feature horror film and with good reason. Not only does Hereditary feature one of the most unexpected and brutally shocking moments in modern horror, crossing a line that very few movies dare, Toni Collette’s intense performance as a grief-stricken mother spiraling into madness is one for the ages, but so, so incredibly hard to watch. Both extremely terrifying and extremely uncomfortable to see the way a family unravels after tragedy, the string-tight tension and residual terror stay with you for ages.
13. Room
This movie earned Captain Marvel actress Brie Larson her first Oscar and introduced the world to Jacob Tremblay. It’s arguably one of the best movies of the decade but lord, is it an emotionally exhausting film. Larson plays a woman who is held captive in an enclosed room for seven years, along with her young son, who has never seen the outside world. When they finally get free, her son experiences the world for the first time. Larson’s work as a mother who desperately tries to create a safe and nurturing environment for her son who knows no different is heartbreaking in its hope. Sometimes love is the most devastating emotion of all, and Room absolutely puts your emotions through the wringer.
Shout-out to anyone who does a movie marathon with nothing but these movies. You’re an alien or a robot, but you’re certainly less flappable than me.
