10 Movies It's Impossible To Finish Without Crying

4. The Impossible

The Impossible is a surefire tear-jerker from premise alone; the true story of a family who become separated from each other during the real-life Indian Ocean tsunami that hit Thailand (among dozens of other countries) in 2004 and their journey to make their way back to each other against insurmountable odds. Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor play husband and wife Maria and Henry, parents to three children; Lucas, Thomas and Simon. When the tsunami hits, as the family are chilling poolside, Maria and Lucas (Tom Holland) are separated from Henry and the other two boys, and the film is assuredly harrowing in its depiction of the disaster and its ensuing grisly injuries.

The majority of the film depicts the splintered family's desire to stay alive and find each other, and the audience's relentlessly-harrowing viewing of the movie is rewarded when the family are (spoiler alert) finally reunited at the end. When the three boys find each other is when the blubbering begins. For anyone who has a brother out there, they'd be putting themselves into that emotional mindset, which is where the scene takes its power from. Heck, you don't even have to have a brother to relate - just a human heart. Of course, it's not over yet, as Maria's life hangs in the balance, which pushes us to yet another emotional journey in a film packed full of them as we await her fate. Director JA Bayona puts us through the damn ringer and once done you'd be swearing that you'd probably never put yourself through all this again by watching The Impossible a second time. One and done.