15 Feel-Bad Movies That Make You Feel Like Sh*t
11. Precious
To say the titular teenaged protagonist in director Lee Daniels’
second feature film has had a rough life would be putting it mildly. Living in
inner city poverty in a rundown New York tenement, by the tender age of sixteen
Precious is the mother of two kids (both a product of incestuous rape at the
hands of her father) and subject to daily mental and physical abuse from her
mother.
Although she finds solace by slipping into a fantasy world to escape her awful situation and eventually finds allies in her schoolteacher and social worker, the film never really lets up on her delivering another blow in the third act with the revelation she’s HIV-positive (also courtesy of her dad, now thankfully dead at least).
Precious does get a happy ending of sorts, ultimately breaking free of her abusive, rape apologist mother and determined to raise her kids and succeed but you can’t help but think that after all she’s been through she’s deserves a lot more than just that.