10 Most Unexpectedly Depressing Movies
3. Don't Look Up
Adam McKay's Don't Look Up was marketed as a satire of humanity's inadequate response to climate change, allegorised here as a comet that will destroy Earth.
Bleak as that sounds, between the trailers focusing on the kooky absurdity of the premise and the lightness of touch in McKay's prior films (ranging from Anchorman to The Big Short), it seemed to be more of a comedy than a tragedy.
But the final film is so thickly, darkly cynical in its portrayal of humanity - filtered through politics, media, and everyday apathy - that it's ultimately more of an epic downer than a thigh-slapping black comedy.
Its demonstration of the forces which continue to ravage our world is so infuriatingly on-point that there's really a lot less here to laugh at than you might expect.
And fittingly, McKay commits to the full apocalyptic vision laid out at the beginning: the world is destroyed in the end, along with almost all of humanity, while the only people to escape are the wealthy elite. Go figure.