10 Harrowing Movies That Will Crush Your Soul

10. All Quiet On The Western Front

Kicking off the list is All Quiet on the Western Front, a monumental German-language war film which is based on the legendary anti-war novel of the same name, previously adapted by Hollywood in 1931. Technically speaking, this iteration of All Quiet is a war movie, but to be blunt, it plays out more like a fully-fledged horror flick.

A gore-soaked, mud-splattered nightmare in which all of the major characters die - frequently in maddeningly avoidable ways, no less - this is an almost unbearably intense watch. Most war pictures make every effort to depict war as hell, but here, in many scenes, it really does feel like its young soldiers are in the midst of hell itself.

Alongside the film's visceral intensity, it offers disturbing thematic commentary on war itself and the way war-mongering elites thoughtlessly sacrifice millions of soldiers. The war machine at work is shown ever so well in All Quiet's opening, where its lead characters are given recycled uniforms from previously killed soldiers. 

This 2022 movie further hammers this home with a completely maddening ending (in a good way) that sees an arrogant German general order one final attack just before 11 o'clock on Armistice Day; protagonist Paul (Felix Kammerer) dies seconds before the end of the war. This is the cherry on top of a completely miserable viewing, one made even more distressing by all the wars waging around the world right now. 

All Quiet on the Western Front might be set over a century ago, but it's as relevant as ever.