10 Movies That Totally Destroyed You

8. About Time

Sure, Toy Story 3 is one of the greatest examinations of mortality laid out in accessible terms and it's very sad for a while there, but the whole point of that movie is to offer hope of a happy ending despite everything. About Time, on the other hand, is all about the inevitability of mortality as a means to express the vitality of life. It does that by basically saying "everything you love will die and if you spend too much time wallowing in the past, you'll destroy yourself."

It's a heavy message for a romantic sci-fi about time travelling, but that's arguably why it's such a successful film. We watch Domnhall Gleeson's Tim discover his ability to travel back in time, guided by his sage father (Bill Nighy on sublimely charismatic form) and everything's fine until it turns out his father has terminal cancer (via the revelation that Tim's accidentally wiped his own child out of existence) and no time travelling can fix it. From that point, watching Tim try to accept his father's death and the final reveal that he can't visit him any more in the past is pretty much like having your heart plucked out.

Ultimately, the message is as sweet as Nighy's father figure's advice to live life without the tensions that stop us enjoying it, but it comes at a hell of a cost. Particularly for anyone who has lost someone that vital to them.