10 Movies That Take Themselves Way Too Seriously
1. The Sea Of Trees (2015)
All great comebacks have to end somewhere, and the McConaissance ended here, with Gus Van Sant's insanely distasteful drama The Sea of Trees.
Matthew McConaughey stars as a deeply depressed man who travels to Japan's Aokigahara Forest (also known as the Suicide Forest) to kill himself. Only, before he can do the deed, he meets a Japanese man out to end his own life, and the pair soon find themselves in a bid to survive the forest and find a reason to keep living.
Manipulatively sentimental and groan-inducingly tactless -- shifting from compelling character study to survival thriller without warning -- The Sea of Trees is emotionally trite and impressively ham-fisted. Attempting to tell audiences that life is worth living, it instead falls apart trying to give the drama more layers it didn't need.
Like all the films on this list (except The Room, of course), there's a good film lurking within The Sea of Trees, but there's simply no sign of it in the finished product.