The 25 Saddest Movies on Netflix, Because Feelings Are Good

How we define a “sad movie” is often how former United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once defined obscenity in film, i.e., hardcore pornography: we know it when we see it. Still, we think we could do a bit better than intuition. For the sake of consistency, we might say that a sad movie is one that creates a particular mood.

But that mood must be deeper than mere depression. Sad movies can’t just be those films that are relentlessly dark—films that depict suffering just for the hell of it, what we might label “poverty porn,” “war porn,” and overall “suffering porn.” (Shoutout to the Book of Job for this trend.)

Neither are sad movies (only) movies that make you cry. Take Up. The Pixar film has one of the saddest opening sequences of any movie, yet the film isn’t a “sad movie.” Often times, we might conflate “sad” with “tragic”—because all tragedies tend to be sad—but not all sad movies partake of traditional tragedy (the fall from some height, the absurdity of some undeserved pain, etc.) Besides, the tragedy’s downfall isn’t always sad as much as just pathos-inducing—the literary term for, “damn, that really sucks, bro.”

Ultimately, the genre is about a sustained mood. These are films which end without resolution. Joy is suspended, delayed. We are left in uncertainty. Yes, sometimes we are left with death and loss and sometimes we cry, but the sadness is deeper. We’re going to venture to call this mood “melancholy.”

Melancholy is really what we think about when we think about sadness in cinema. Melancholy, Italo Calvino wrote, is “sadness made light.” That doesn’t mean sadness made funny, but sadness made bearable—able to be endured throughout the course of the film. Films that bury you with sadness are not ultimately effective; in order for something to be truly sad, it must provide the possibility of salvation; there must be room for grace.

These are movies that slap you across the face with some good old ennui—that feeling encapsulated in the street-side view of a black cat vacantly staring out of a suburban window.

So while we could just hit you with some tearjerkers (and, don't worry, we still will)—those films where the dog dies or the lover contracts cancer or literally nothing happy ever happens—we’re also gonna go a little deeper. We think these movies are all the sadder because of this complexity, anyway.

Here are the saddest movies on Netflix you can stream right now. Don't just reach for the tissues. Reach for the glass of red wine and your high school yearbook.