Dang, there was some movie on the other night that I thought was nearly as depressing as Eraserhead, I remember even thinking how messed up it was, and now I can’t remember the name. I bet I looked it up on IMDB, I’ll see if any of my recent views offer any clues.
Almost. It’s actually Dead Ringers, directed by David Cronenberg. 
Requiem For a Dream, Dancer in The Dark, and Happiness would also be on my list.
Read the OP for game rules.
For one thing, I don’t like Kirsten Dunst. For another, was it ever dreary…
Dead Man bleak?
Irreversible
66 posts and nobody mentioned Brazil?
That was probably the first time that I wept in a theater as an adult.
My fiancee at the time was quite put out with me.
Damn! Beat me to it by that much.
Another maybe a lot of folks wouldn’t think of – The Godfather.
Melancholia
Is Lars Von Trier in the lead for this thread?
I agree with so many of these, but still must mention *Away from her *the best movie I never want to see again.
I considered it to be dystopian, so not allowed as per the OP.
I may have read too quickly, but I haven’t seen anyone mention any Lynch films. I’ll put forward Mulholland Drive.
The Girl Next Door.
A story about the rape and torture of a young girl, perpetrated by her neighbor and other kids from the neighborhood. Even more disturbing since it’s based on a true story, and gets most of the details of what really happened to that poor girl correct.
After Requiem for a Dream was mentioned I kept reading to see if this movie was going to be mentioned or I would have. Truly Depressing stuff but a riveting movie.
It’s sort of “dystopia”, but not in a crapsack worldsort of way. My vote is for **Never Let Me Go ** with Carey Mulligan and Keira Knightley.
It’s about a doomed love triangle at some alternate timeline 50s English boarding school. That would be bleak enough except why is it doomed? Oh yeah. Because they find out their all clones on some organ farm. And unlike most “expendable clone” flicks, like The Island, they know exactly what they are and what their fate is.
Welcome to the Dollhouse.
The first movie that came to mind for me was Northfork. Not necessarily the saddest, but definitely the bleakest.
For many years, 1984 (released in 1984, with Richard Burton and John Hurt) was by far the bleakest movie I had ever seen. A bleak introduction, a bleaker body of the movie, and a conclusion without hope and, yes, only bleakness. I don’t know why it was filmed in colour, because everything in it seemed to be grey.
Then I saw The Grey Zone. Good God. A fine movie, but given it’s no-holds-barred look at the daily existence of the Sonderkommando at Auschwitz during its “busy” period in late spring and early summer of 1944, it was the cinematic embodiment of bleak.
Yeah, forgot about that one; based on Jack Ketchum’s book of the same name. An American Crime is another one, based on the actual events that inspired the book.
animal Room with Neil Patrick Harris, mildly mis-behaving high school student is laocked in a room with no supervision with all of the hard case students in the school some of which are sociopaths. No way to get away from the violent tendencies and a school that doesn’t care. Quite frightening.
Oh yeah, add that one to my list too.