8 Movies Too Upsetting To Watch Twice

8. The Hunt

The Hunt is a masterful piece of work by Dogme 95 filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg. You could include any film from a Dogme 95 filmmaker on this list, but I've chosen The Hunt purely because it is the most recent. Mads Mikkelsen stars as Lucas, a lonely kindergarten teacher currently suffering through a divorce and custody battle. As a teacher he is beloved by the kids, showcasing a remarkable rapport with them. In the beginning of the film, everything appears to be headed in the right direction t for Lucas. He finds a new girlfriend and he gains custody of his son. But things start getting enraging when he is falsely accused of sexual abuse by one of the female kindergartners. As we watch Lucas become an immediate pariah despite no evidence against him, we sit with a rising fury at the unreasonable townspeople. Everyone assumes Lucas is guilty right away, and even when the little girl admits she lied, her parents assume she's just saying that to make the trouble go away. It's so enraging to watch a little 8-year-old tell her parents that she wasn't abused, and then see her parents tell her definitively that she was. The whole film makes you feel completely helpless and hopeless, pulling on your hair hoping that somebody will finally wake up and see that he is innocent. But that doesn't happen. Instead someone kills his dog, and he's brutally beaten at a supermarket that refuses to sell to him. When the movie reaches it's conclusion, Lucas has indeed been cleared of charges, but something happens that lets us know that he will never be trusted by his friends again. A truly maddening experience that I never want to sit through again.