10 'Comedies' That Were Secretly Really Depressing

2. Calvary

All of the worst of humanity is on display in John Michael McDonagh's Calvary, a comedy so black that all the jokes have instead turned to rotten comments on the futility of existence. If you want depressing subject matter personified in just a handful of characters, take your pick. There's the doctor (Aidan Gillen) who lost faith in God after a healthy patient's anaesthetic turned them blind, deaf, dumb and paralysed; the psychopathic, misogynist-in-waiting (Killian Scott) who wants to join the army to know what it's like to kill someone; the woman-beating butcher (Chris O'Dowd); the cannibalistic convict (Domnhall Gleeson); and the rich guy living on the country estate (Dylan Moran) who pisses on priceless art just to prove how much money he's got. One of these people is about to kill a priest (Brendan Gleeson), the only real good character in the film, as a way of getting revenge on the Catholic Church for historic child abuse. On a pleasant note, the film's got a happy ending at least... only joking, it ends as badly as you'd expect.