10 Movies That Will Make You Cry Yourself To Sleep

3. The Boy In The Striped Pajamas

We all know that when we sit down to watch a movie about something as epically horrible as the Holocaust, we're not going to walk away from the experience unscathed. That's why Schindler's List remains the worst possible date movie. But The Boy In Striped Pajamas lulls you into a false sense of security, asking us to witness the world through the eyes of two tragically naive boys, Bruno and Shmuel. The German boy doesn't know why his new friend is kept behind an electric, barbwire fence, nor does he understand the implications of what would happen if his father - a high-ranking officer in the SS - found out he'd secretly befriended a Jewish prisoner. So at first, this is a movie about true friendship knowing no bounds. And although the reality of their surroundings hangs like a black cloud over their boyish conversations, the director often makes it feel as if, despite all reason and historical precedent, this is all going to turn out okay. These boys will never need to find out what the black smoke pouring from those industrial chimneys is made from. But slowly that naïveté is stripped away from the audience, as it is from the boys in the film, and we're dealt several, increasingly sobering gut punches until the whole damn facade comes crashing down around the film's soul-crushingly manipulative final act. You won't just cry. You will plead with the film to change directions and fall back on the old "it was all just a dream" trope. But it won't. And those angry tears will soak through your pillow.