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What are you favourite grim, dark, atmospheric films?
I've just come from my latest rewatch of Blade Runner and its sequel. Two of my favourite films ever. I always find myself totally engrossed in the atmosphere of the films, and I often crave more of it.
Dark City is a fantastic noir film, that has a grim, dark atmosphere. Really cool setting and a stellar cast.
If you've not seen it and want to watch it, watch the director's cut, the theatrical cut has a narration at the beginning of the film that ruins the story.
I was introduced to this movie by a friend, and it's become one of my mainstays. One of the movies that embodies the 90s culturally, while being wholly original in its own way (in fact, it may have lent some inspiration to the Wachowskis for the Matrix trilogy). The soundtrack is particularly good, and is definitely worth shelling out to buy/rent the director's cut.
I think I read once that even some of the sets were reused for The Matrix
I routinely wipe down my kids faces while whispering "sleep!" at bedtime, just in case it works. 😂
Love love love Dark City. I think I end up watching it and The Thirteenth Floor every few years, and I'm never disappointed.
Side note: I love The Thirteenth Floor for somewhat different reasons and wouldn't put it in the same category as Dark City. I just tend to lump them together because I first saw them around the same time. Still a great movie to watch.
Seconding Dark City. Such a fantastic movie!
I've never so much as heard of this film. Having just read a spoiler free description of it, it sounds exactly like what I was looking for. I'll surely be checking this one out in the next week or so.
There's a Director's Cut version of it too, that is a bit longer and adds a few scenes.
Can't tell which is a better experience though, but it's a good movie so you can watch both :D
Children of Men is probably my favorite film of all time, and it's extremely grim and intense - if you haven't seen it, you should!
Not only grim and intense, but kind of a masterpiece in the technical aspects of filmmaking. So many great, long, single shot sequences. After you watch the film, watching the making of is pretty interesting. I love watching how they filmed the car sequence. The whole thing is so intense, but surprisingly grounded at the same time.
Fantastic movie.
Can and will make you want to go outside and stare into space for a little while afterwards mind.
The feeling you describe... I felt the same after watching Carlito's way. While credits rolled on TV, I sat there staring to nowhere.
EDIT: Oh, I saw Children of men, just to be clear.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011). Trent and Atticus's score combined with Jeff Cronenweth's cinematography gives a really cold dead-of-winter vibe.
You mentioned the cinematography and soundtrack, but is the American remake actually any good besides those elements? I skipped it since I love the original Swedish movies, American remakes are almost always terrible, and even the rare ones that don't suck are usually still pale imitations of the original films. I also absolutely adore Noomi Rapace, so the new actress playing Lisbeth Salander basically had an impossible task living up to Noomi's portrayal of the character.
Oh it's definitely worth a watch, Fincher knows what he's doing. I believe they went into this project wanting to adapt the book rather than the movies before it, so it's less of a remake and more of a redo. Rooney Mara crushes it as Lisbeth, but keep in mind it's a version, not an homage.
Fincher was also involved in the series Mindhunter. This also fits the grim, dark and atmospheric vibe. Unfortunately the series got cancelled after two seasons.
Not cancelled. Fincher was burned out and didn't feel up to a third season. It's technically stuck in perpetual limbo. Unfortunately.
https://collider.com/david-fincher-mindhunter-season-3-cancelled-comments/
Interesting, though it doesn't necessarily contradict earlier reports. There's a good chance Netflix didn't see the profit in the series—it certainly wouldn't be the first time. But there's also a chance that Fincher wanted to step away from it indefinitely and Netflix killed it as a result. I know there were series they canned during the pandemic rather than keeping them on indefinite hiatus.
Either way, it's disappointing.
I do like Fincher, and Daniel Craig. But I also like Spike Lee and Josh Brolin, but the American version of Oldboy was absolutely terrible... so I've been burned in the past by directors/actors I like doing remakes of films I love. But you've convinced me to give the Dragon Tattoo remake a shot. I'll let you know what I think of it when I give it a watch. ;)
Oh man. The swedish versions of those films are not… great. Like the consensus is that the American film is the superior version.
Consensus by who, YouTubers with less than 5k subs? ;)
IMDB, Metacritic, and RT all have them pretty much neck and neck:
Original:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1132620/ = 7.8/10
https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-girl-with-the-dragon-tattoo/ = Critic 76, User 7.6
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_girl_with_the_dragon_tattoo_2009 = Critic 85, User 87
Remake:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1568346/ = 7.8/10
https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-girl-with-the-dragon-tattoo-2011/ = Critic 71, User 8.0
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_girl_with_the_dragon_tattoo = Critic 86, User 86
The Fincher version certainly looks slicker, I'll give it that. But no shit it does... it had 10x the budget of the original. :P
This is one that I've been meaning to watch and putting off for... well about 12 years. Maybe I'll finally get around to it this weekend.
I remember the first one when it came out and I felt like watching a boring soft porn. But I don't know if today's me would appreciate it more.
I'll toss in The Thirteenth Floor and warn you to avoid watching trailers or spoilers, it's better if the film gets to surprise you just like with Dark City's directors cut leaving out the opening monologue. You'll undoubtedly dig on The Adjustment Bureau and I'd say Gattaca also has that vibe.
Less hardcore noir, but both Equilibrium and Existenz might scratch the itch. Also Looper, Moon, Solaris, and A Scanner Darkly have heavy atmospheric elements and something of a mystery to solve at their core. In the action department, try Total Recall, Upgrade, and Minority Report. I can't believe nobody has plugged Inception yet either.
If we're going old-school, make sure to watch the Moroder version of Metropolis. Before Blade Runner came along, there was Alphaville but as it's a French noir-scifi you'll need a version with good English subtitles. I'd say Brazil, Soylent Green, and Millennium are also a good bet for your itch.
If you're looking to get your brain melted, check out Pi and Primer.
I love most of these movies. Definitely going to check out the ones I don't recognize. ❤️
How have I never come across the Adjustment Bureu? I will most certainly dig that.
Thank you for all of the suggestions. Many of them I have already seen or read, but plenty of your suggestions are new to me.
I'll definitely be checking out Pi and Primer...
I'm surprised The Road (based on Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road') hasn't been mentioned yet. It's very desolate - a man and his young son are traveling across the country after nuclear war to find safety on the coast. Deals with all sorts of the darkness in people, and not at all fantastical like the post nuclear apocalypse films. I highly recommend the novel too!
The cataclysm in "The Road" is never specified. It has weird properties that serve the story-telling rather than slavishly conforming to any particular event.
There's an interesting discussion here.
Thanks for that - I was inserting my own interpretation into the comment, hah. I had no idea it wasn't actually defined.
I have bought this on Blu ray after reading the book. I still haven't watched it. I don't know if I want to.
Alien
Nightcrawler
No Country for Old Men
Taxi Driver
2001: A Space Odyssey
The Revenant
And for a slightly different answer: Inside Llewyn Davis. It’s got a rich atmosphere and is wildly depressing but maybe isn’t necessarily “dark.”
Seconding Taxi Driver. It's one of very, very few films that I've seen that's successfully made me feel disgusting by the end of it. It's like a never ending loop of paranoia and pointlessness, and by the end I felt like I needed a shower. The only comparison I can think of is the ending of The Godfather, and watching the monster that the main character molted into finally emerge, and wreck vengeance. Though, that movie's protagonist has a future (unclean as it may be) in front of him, whereas TD's Travis Bickle feels truly hopeless and self-defeated.
Nightcrawler is one of the most fucked up movies I've ever seen without being torture porn. Jake Gyllenhaal does a phenomenal job playing one of the most creepy, sociopathic sleaze-balls I've ever had the displeasure to watch. Low key one of the most irredeemably evil characters in cinema.
Llewyn Davis is Coens at their best, so it’s dark but hilarious. But it definitely counts.
I can only second /u/timo mentioning Nightcrawler and Prisoners - honestly watch every movie Villeneuve has made, all of them are very atmospheric but the next of his best fitting in the dark and grim category you are looking for would probably be Sicario.
I will also add:
Drive
Die Fälscher
Collateral
All is Lost
Das Leben der Anderen
El laberinto del fauno
Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) and The Conversation would make a fantastic, tensely paranoiac dark double feature.
Or Wind River, Hell or High Water, and Sicario for a super dark sort-of official trilogy from Taylor Sheridan!
An incredible spiritual trilogy. Though I do think the weakest of the three is the one Sheridan directed himself.
Drive, Nightcrawler and Collateral are a fantastic gritty LA trilogy.
Coming back to say, having watched all your other suggestions, I gave Prisoners a shot. Absolutely loved it! Really atmospheric, superbly acted and just an absolutely gripping story. Thank you for this recommendation.
You’re welcome! Thank you for replying!
First thing I thought of was The Cell -- a detective and her partner use an experimental technology to enter a comatose serial killer's mind in an attempt to save one of his victims. It's grim stuff, but has surreally beautiful cinematography and some unforgettable imagery.
I still have that on DVD. The scene with the torture device will stick with me for life, probably.
On the Beach, which turns out is now on YouTube. It's a post-apocalyptic film from 1959 where the world is drawing towards the end after nuclear war. It primarily follows the crew of a US submarine that's stationed in Australia.
What sticks with me is that it's such a quiet apocalypse. The war is already over, everyone in the Northern Hemisphere is already dead, and the people of Melbourne, Australia are just waiting for the fallout to slowly drift their way. Everyone knows humanity's days are numbered, but they don't become chaotic and riotous over it. There's just this quiet resignation, and they still go about their daily lives as they wait for the end. It's all just so mundane, which makes the grim undertones all the more noticeable because it's so close to daily life. It's easy to imagine yourself in that movie compared to other post-apocalyptic films. It's not a movie I think could be made today with the same emotional impact.
Metropolis (1927) - by Fritz Lang. It is as watchable today as it was in 1927. Not bad for a futuristic sci fi that is almost a hundred years old.
Miller's Crossing (1990) by the Coen brothers. More Film Noir than Sci Fi.
Pitch Black (2000): Probably the closest thing I can think of to the Matrix in terms of a grim and dark future.
I’m pretty sure Fritz Lang could see the future. If you changed the language and gave tech a more contemporary aesthetic, his movies could easily be awesome today.
If he wasn’t a psychic seer, what this tells me is that our own time is terrifyingly close to Germany just before the rise of the Nazis, and we need to pay attention and activate. Unless you are a Nazi, in which case please turn yourself off. (I kust watched The Creator. Good flick.)
We are actually in a quite similar time to that of the rise of German, Spanish and Italian fascism. Fortunately there are many who are aware, motivated, organizing to protect democracy and human rights as best they can.
Trump and the Christian Nationalists seem to be less aware of the need to camoflauge their true intentions from opposition and people that they want to victimize than Hitler was. The communists in Germany famously were not afraid enough of Hitler's political success and they paid a deadly price for it.
This article shows one split in the Republican coalition in one state in the US. But I am not making predictions. The right wants to succeed and dominate.
https://www.mlive.com/politics/2023/10/michigan-gop-focus-on-christian-nationalism-excludes-muslim-party-leaders.html POLITICS & ELECTIONS headline
Michigan GOP tilt toward Christian nationalism vexes Muslim party leaders
The ones that I can think of right now are:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Days_(film)
This has a lot to do with viewing other's experiences. Very similar to the "braindances" found in cyberpunk 2077
Throwing Dredd in to the mix here. It’s more action and pretty violent but it still ticks all the dystopian / grim / dark boxes in my opinion. I love that movie.
I adore this movie, and can say it is the only film I've ever watched in 3D that I felt was actually enhanced by the technology.
Do Apocalypse Now or the Godfather trilogy or Schindler's List match the vibe you are looking for? I might also suggest the Revenant.
Edit Also Ironweed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironweed_(film)
@bugsmith
Wait the Godfather was a trilogy? I am only familiar with the first two, there was a third one made. /s
All three suggestions are great, just don't watch the third Godfather movie, it is not that great.
Let’s see. The Warriors, Escape from New York, pi (symbol), and if you want to feel suicidal, Requiem for a Dream.
Make it a marathon in that order so you finish with Requiem at dawn. And then watch ‚Kids‘ for breakfast.
Oof
Might as well throw in Grave of the Fireflies for good measure.
Valhalla Rising. There's barely any dialog, just grimness and atmosphere and mud. Mikkelsen is very grim and muddy, and the people around him are very grim and slightly less muddy, except for when they are sometimes suddenly more muddy. There are lots of clouds and subtext.
Kids. Bleak peak into some skater kids‘ everyday life in late 90s NYC.
Bone Tomahawk is my favorite niche sleeper hit.
Kurt Russell in full Hateful Eight western beard mode. Patrick Wilson in something better written than The Conjuring. Matthew Fox playing the same honorable-jerk energy he figured out during Lost.
Disclaimer: this is a horror movie. There's an extremely gory scene towards the end of the movie, and weak-to-moderate gore throughout. But damn, is this one of the most atmospheric horror movies I've ever seen. The acting is brilliant throughout. These characters absolutely show the sheer desperation and loneliness of the West in a way that your classic shooter Westerns just don't do.
Watched this with my father one year when I was over for Christmas. I went into it blind / he loves Westerns, so thought it was going to be like your standard John Wayne chat.
Veeeeery quickly realised this was something else entirely! Memory of it stays with me to this day, damn Troglodytes!! (Or "Fuckin Trogs," according to the big man)
Good choice!
There was a real spate of mainland Chinese movies a few years ago that really nailed that kind of slow, grim, neo-noir type thing.
Diao Yinan's movie Night Train is great, if punishingly bleak (both visually and storyline-wise). Black Coal, Thin Ice (from the same director) is another good one with more of a detective angle. A Touch of Sin might not be as close of a match visually, but I think it fits well tonally.
I love the atmosphere and soundtrack to 28 Days Later. It actually made me feel increasingly anxious during my first watching, and even hearing the soundtrack alone now brings back those same feelings.
Oh I have a good one for this:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_All_the_Time_(film)
There are no happy endings and its incredibly bleak.
(I've been wanting to write in this post for a while, but kids get in the away...)
Honestly, the types of films you are looking for, are German expressionist cinema from the beginning of the 20th century :) Basically, looking at films from the directors from Fritz Lang, F.W. Murnau and Robert Wiene are well recommended.
Some recommendations that I can think out of the top of head (sorry, searching for the film links takes time that I don't have :/ )
Not sure if are actually looking more for Noir type of film, but these films are for me the epitome of what I would call grim, dark and atmospheric. But I hope I could help :)
Thanks for taking the time to reply. I totally understand how busy life can get, so I really appreciate it. Noir fits in with what I'm searching for, but only under than more general 'grim, dark and atmospheric'. I'm looking forward to checking out some of your suggestions. I'll probably start with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari given that's your favourite.
And if noir is also one of the things you are looking for, then I would say the film M is probably the closest to being noir. Awesome film also :)
Some of my suggestions. Be warned, they're all horror of some form or another.
Cure (1997) - A suspense film in the vein of Se7en but with a decidedly supernatural bent. Seen as a precursor to the J-Horror film boom of movies like Ringu and The Grudge.
Prince of Darkness (1987) - One of my fave atmospheric films for the sense of looming, palpable dread that Carpenter creates. You really feel like the End of Days is upon the characters, even if you aren't religious. I think it's the combination of soundtrack and cinematography that does it.
Threads (1984) - More real-life horror than fictional horror. It's about the start and aftermath of nuclear war, but also delves into the grim, hopeless future that would likely come in the decades afterwards. It hits home because it focuses primarily on everyday people and how they would be impacted.
If you're going for dystopian then The Book of Eli is a must watch.
Dark and moody, I'd offer up The Crow, although it's low budget, not great acting, awesome sound track and the graphic novel wipes the floor with the movie.
Other fun mentions would be Pitch Black (a Riddick movie), Alien/Aliens and maybe even throw in Silent Hill.
Sicario is a masterpiece
I'm a little surprised the Dark City and Metropolis fans haven't mentioned Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. It's a beautifully filmed grimdark dieselpunk homage to 1930's - '40's pulps, even if the plot and dialogue leave something to be desired.
Likewise, Sin City, which is perhaps overly true to the Frank Miller graphic novels. It's a violent splatterfest, hyperactive noir fiction movie that maintains the sensibility of the extremely dark graphics.
Also, Angel Heart, which is a classic neo-noir with as grim an atmosphere as you could wish for, and some stellar acting and cinematography. Roger Ebert rated it very highly.
I'm not saying these are favorites, just that they shouldn't be missed in the canon of grim, dark, atmospheric films.
The Old Dark House
Batman Returns has a grimy Christmas tone, with a city that's trying to present an image of a happy holiday season while the sky is perpetually dark and the sewers are full of circus-themed gangsters. It's difficult to explain how it all comes together into a deeply weird yet fascinating tone, but if you made Nightmare Before Christmas into a Batman movie this is what you'd get.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7h8stPIngBo
Resolution and the Endless. Both weird dark gritty movies, labeled as horror (which I can't typically watch) but done in a way thats more psychological mystery than horror. I really enjoyed them both.
Not a movie but my favorite TV show.
Severance
If you find all the dark noir movies getting you on edge then watch Dead men don't wear plaid. It's a great film noir parody with Steve Martin with lots of characters and footage from old film noir movies spliced into the story