10 Sci-Fi & Fantasy Films That Were Much Too Depressing For The Masses

4. The Trial (1962)

The Trial may have been Orson Welles' favourite amongst his own films, but you'll find few film fans who endorse the man's view on that one. Based on the novel by Franz Kafka, The Trial is a story about fate, class and the remoteness of the law and government in contemporary society, and the tone from start to finish is very much glass-half-empty stuff, as Anthony Perkins' Josef K is accused of and tried for a crime without ever being told what he's done wrong. Welles shoots in stark black-and-white amongst desolate, monolithic Paris architecture and even more desolate Yugoslav mega-buildings, only serving to highlight the paranoia and crushing loneliness of his feature. Though Welles found his film uproariously funny, The Trial's comedy is only of the blackest, most sadistic kind, reserved for those who take pleasure in watching a lanky Andrew Garfield lookalike get punished for no reason whatsoever. Perkins' K is an ordinary, innocent man, arrested, tried and finally executed just so The Trial can make a highly cynical point about bureaucracy and the worker's insignificance in the system. The film has since been embraced by some, but its initial 1962 release saw it garner mediocre reviews and minimal box office takings. Obviously harrowing bleakness and monochrome oppression wasn't so popular during that whole hippie era.