My family and I love going to the movies. We like many different genres. While my wife and I go to romcoms, dramas, and comedies, my son and I go to Sci Fi, superhero, and horror films with our nephews and nieces going for the animation and magical fantasy films.
No matter the type of movie, we almost always find a hidden jewel or silver lining. It is rare indeed that we say after a film, “Well … we aren’t going to get those two hours back.” It’s even rarer that we feel like walking out of a film.
Unfortunately, our optimistic approach to the cinema has changed as Hollywood has created a bizarre new film genre that celebrates pain, depravity and the lowest type of human condition. These new “cutting edge” films place the audience in the middle of the darkest stories through distorted production design, nerve wracking sound and music, and writing and acting that glamourize all sorts of relationship issues.
The film makers are motivated by their desire to be avant-garde and artistic in the eyes of their peers.
I believe there are four particularly nasty yet critically acclaimed films that belong to this new genre:
1) “The Favourite” (2018) with 10 Academy Award nominations.
2) “The Power of the Dog” (2021) with 12 Academy Award nominations.
3) “The Banshees of Inisherin” (2022) with 9 Academy Award Nominations.
4) “Poor Things” (2023) with 11 Academy Award nominations
“The Favourite” is set in 1705 Great Britain with a morbid focus on a dark love-hate triangle between Queen Anne, Sarah Churchill and Abigail Hill. The intense depravity of their interactions is only surpassed by the irritating music that bombards the audience during the length of this film. The filmmaker appears to want to increase the pain that the movie goers feel as the pain of the characters increases.
The rabbit abuse scene toward the end of this film punctuates our collective pain when Abigail, played by Emma Stone, steps on Anne’s bunny.
Another grotesque film that has a rabbit abuse scene (involving dissection) is “The Power of the Dog.” This film is set on a large ranch in 1925 Montana. Phil Burbank, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, is a vile character that continually bullies and humiliates his brother George’s wife, Rose, and her son Peter. With multiple scenes of sadism, alcoholism and spitefulness, this film is indeed cruel, brutish, nasty — yet not short.
“The Banshees of Inisherin” is another film that showcases and elevates the bizarre. Set in the 1920s on an island off the west coast of Ireland, this movie stars Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell as two friends whose relationship ends in a mire of mental health issues. One of the friends decides to assure the end of their relationship by threatening to and then cutting off his fingers one-by-one when the other friend continues to interact with him.
The characters in the film “Poor Things” are simply revolting and monstrous. Set in 1880s Victorian London, some have said that this movie is a feminist revision of Mary Shelly’s novel Frankenstein (1818). I see it as just another of the new genre of brutally bizarre films that are made to be weird and disgusting and collect Academy Award nominations.
Transplanting the brains of babies into adult bodies seems stupid, pointless and cruel. No matter how good the acting or production design, dressing up such a grotesque film with pretty lights does not make its basic savageness acceptable.
It does, however, get you lots of award nominations.
While critically acclaimed and artistic, these films degrade us and their characters as they callously grind our sensibilities into meaningless dust.
Dave Berger of Maple Grove is a retired sociology professor, freelance writer and author.
