23 Movies That Were Genuinely Traumatizing

No matter what the lineup at your local cineplex would have you believe, film is art, and art is supposed to make you feel things. Those things can certainly include delight in the awesomeness of a well-placed roundhouse kick or nervousness that Ethan Hunt might not be able to bring down The Entity, but ideally, the more subtle emotions get evoked occasionally as well.

But some movies go all the way past “subtle” and likewise slap you in the face with the ball sack of sadness. These aren’t movies that just brought forth a few tears in an embarrassingly public place — they left people thinking about them for years, often while trying to sleep, usually concluding with existential depression. For user trufk, it was Irreversible and Requiem for a Dream. “Felt like an injury,” they told r/AskReddit.

They then asked, “Which movie is genuinely traumatic?” and their fellow Redditors quickly became trauma bonded.