Don't Look Up. As an environmental biologist, I feel they really nailed the constant feeling of crisis that everyone either chooses to ignore or use for greed. There came a point where I couldn't stomach it anymore, I watch TV to escape reality not be reminded of it lol.
Breaking bad
SPOILERS
Specifically this was 2 episodes away from the end of the show but I just could not handle it. It was just so depressing. Family and friends being murdered, almost everything walt has worked for squandered, Skyler trying to kill him, having to steal the child and Skyler's anguish. Man it was just too much to handle because EVERYTHING was just crumbling and collapsing in on itself.
What made it cut so deep is that Walter tried to provide for his family, so they could have a good life and for a time was extremely successful. After multiple missteps, some of his family is murderer or they hate him, trying desperately to remove him from their lives and resent his very existence. While Walter still loved them, he realized his and his family's was utterly ruined. The second hand crushing and crippling guilt was too painful to bear.
Waler's psychopathy and coldness was also building up at this point, killing, using and manipulating a lot of people. He began with good intentions but directly and indirectly ended and ruined countless people's lives.
CW: Trump, uspol
Trump separating families at the border. Children being put in cages. Americans waving the fucking nazi flag.
It's one thing to read about genocide. Another thing is to see it with your own eyes, even on TV.
And if any of you fuckers tries to tell me that both "sides are the same" or that "democrats did the same" or something in that vein, they are obviously doing this in bad faith and they can go fuck themselves. 🖕🤬
Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice. Played it with headphones as many suggested. I had recently lost my uncle, who by the time he died, was in a pretty bad state mentally. Seeing and hearing things that weren't there. Everyone out to get him. Calling to say the cops were trying to break into his home. No one was there.
He was a good guy and incredibly funny. Introduced me to the greatness of Monty Python at a young age. He was getting some better help near the end, finally. In part because he finally was accepting help.
He was a Vietnam vet, and from what everyone told me came back changed like so many did. This, in part, led to drug use that spiraled him down. Much better handled than some as he always held a job and such.
But the game made me think of what he might have been experiencing, and it was overwhelming for me. I think I stopped a third of the way through. It is very well done, but I just couldn't deal with it.
It Takes Two.
There's a point where your characters brutally murder the only nice thing thing in the entire story while it's begging for its life (your characters are pieces of shit, but the gameplay is good, so you can kind of ignore it). It happens to be the characters' daughter's favorite stuffed elephant.
Then your characters dance gleefully in their daughter's tears and show no remorse at their daughter crying or any emotion other than woe is us, our brutal murder didn't work.
Seriously, one of the most horrific things my husband and I have ever played through in a game. It made us feel sick. We stopped playing after that. The best thing I can do for that little girl is for her shitty ass parents to never waje up so she becomes an orphan. That's honestly a better outcome for her than having to live with her shitty abusive parents another day. I only wish it had been earlier in the game so we could have gotten refunds.
I can't believe they market that game to play with your kids and put that scene in it.
The Curse
It's Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone, and has to be the most embarrassing cringe inducing show ever made.
It's amazing, but a lot of episodes I've had to stop and do something else and finish it later.
I can't even imagine trying to binge it all at once. Fielder is just too good at that stuff
The Walking Dead TV series- Great show, but it was legit giving me nightmares, and I couldn't handle the storyline once they killed Glenn off. I'm reading the comics now years later and it's much more enjoyable
The Handmaid's Tale TV series-- I think I got like 4 episodes in, and then they hung that one woman's wife in front of her and sewed her vagina shut and I just couldn't handle the graphics. I did read the book later on, though. My own imagination is just so tame compared to what they show on TV, I think
Revenge of the Sith - I was deployed to Iraq when I saw it, and was in a really bad headspace, and that scene where Anakin gets burned up and then you see them putting the Vader mask on him just really fucked me up at the time. Absolutely will never watch that one again.
I don’t know if this counts, but I own multiple copies of Spiritfarer and haven’t played it yet, because my mother suddenly passed away shortly before I learned about the game, and just watching the trailer still breaks me up a bit.
edit: sigh correction, just thinking about the trailer breaks me up a bit
Jesus Camp
Made me so angry for those kids
Recently, For All Mankind, Season 1, the episode where the kid gets hit by a car and is in the hospital with a brain bleed. My son was in the hospital with a brain bleed right after his birthday and spent months in the hospital recovering. This episode hit real close to home.
I had to take a break half way through the episode and didn't finish it until 2 weeks later.
Silent Hill 2.
I was playing it at night at a campground that was terrifying by itself at night. My roommate had gone to sleep and I was getting more and more scared as the night went on. I couldn't find a save point and I was getting frantic just trying to save my game and go to sleep. I couldn't find one after an hour or so so I said fuck it and turned it off.
Cue a mouse eating something in our loft or some other small animal making it so I had to wake up my roommate telling him I need to talk for a minute to a real person before falling asleep. I didn't sleep much that night and didn't pick the game up for another 6 months.
Played it in the day time with people in the room. Fuck that game and it's still one of my favorites of all time to make me feel that way.
The documentary Dominion that is narrated by Joaquin Phoenix.
I had to stop about 16 minutes in. I did come back and finish it the next day.
The Handmaid's Tale (TV Show), hands down.
The first season was emotional but I've gotten through it multiple times as I've tried re-watching to get through season 2. I got a little farther the last time I tried, but man, it's so visceral and constantly beating down the protagonist and everyone around her. That's the point and it's great, it's just so depression-inducing when there's just no uplifting points. IT does not let up in beating you down with the horribleness. I just can't keep going when it goes on for so long.
Show: Love, Death and Robots. It's fantastic but some of the episodes just hit too hard. I'll eventually get back to it, I just need some time
Game: Cyberpunk. I was looking something up and found out what happens to Evelyn. I kinda look like her a bit, and have also dealt with (much milder) issues in the same category. Too brutal
Movie: I actually watched it all the way, but the first time I watched American Beauty is just fucked me up for like, a week
I don’t know about emotionally overwhelming but we stopped watching the walking dead when they introduced Neegan because the shit he did was so fucking over the top brutal. I didn’t want to have that shit in my head
Just around the time COVID hit I had started reading The Road. Man is it a bleak book, which isn't something I normally have a problem with, but it hit way too close to home at a time when grocery store shelves were looking pretty picked-over and people were getting into fights over toilet paper.
I put it down and haven't gotten around to picking it back up yet.
Possibly the worst part is that I've been in a bit of a reading slump for the last few years, and I was just really starting to work my way out of it and had read a few books but that kind of hit my reset button and I haven't been able to really get restarted again.
I do intend to go back and restart it at some point though, I really enjoyed it, just really unfortunate timing.
The graphic novel for The Walking Dead
SPOILER
When Glenn was murdered with the baseball bat - the picture and him saying Ma- Mag- Ma It was just too intense for me. I just closed the book and walked away for a long time.
When my husband saw that part in the show he just stopped watching. Also too intense for him
German movie 'Der goldene Handschuh' which tells the true story of 70's serial killer Fritz Honka. When a friend proposed to watch it, I seriously thought it to be a sports movie (the german 'Handschuh' translates to glove and my association instantly was a goal keeper's glove...). Well, I was wrong. The dense and depressing atmosphere of Honka's childhood and life, together with the derogatory, very hard and profane language and of course depiction of sexuality and violence towards women was simply too much for me. It sucked away all positivity at that moment. I finished it later and the director hit me once more, because in the end credits real pictures of the true locations where shown, proving the film's sets where simply identical. That ripped away the last imagination that what I've just seen was just a very dark fantasy and too bad to be real. Brilliant movie and actors (the main actor in his role is simply not recognizable any more from his real life appearance, just like Charlize Theron in 'Monster'), but too hard to for me to take.
La La Land. I had just been unexpectedly dumped by my anchor partner a few days earlier. Crashed at another partners place and did a bunch of mushrooms, they put the movie on without thinking just trying to fill the time to keep me distracted. The movie about two people having a very sweet relationship then breaking up and not getting back together again was maybe a poor choice lol. We had to stop it part way through so I could ground myself but after a while I did end up pulling it together enough to finish the movie (with some crying breaks here and there). 10/10, would mushroom and watch again. Helped me process tbh, after I knew what I was getting into, very emotionally draining on me though.
I didn’t stop it, because I was in a theater, but when Les Mis the movie came out I was at my peak with it as a special interest, so I was very in tune with the film. When Anne Hathaway sang I Dreamed A Dream it was so raw and devastating that I sobbed straight through the next two scenes. This was in a packed theater mind you, and I was sitting next to strangers.
I left the theater and realized I’d had an experience and if I ever watched the movie again it wouldn’t be the same and would diminish the moment I’d just had. And despite my ex-wife trying to get me to watch it again with her I’ve not watched it and never will. That memory is precious and I have gone bit overboard with it 😅
12 Years a Slave, I stopped when they were breaking him. Watching someone go from living their life to suddenly being dehumanized was too awful and terrifying. I was not in the mood to see that.
The Last Of Us.
Because it could happen. It's unlikely yes, but all it takes is one lucky mutation and we're done. They were correct in that game, our understanding of fungal infections in humans and our ability to treat it is almost non existent.
We were able to product a vaccine for COVID, a far, far less disruptive illness, within two years (via huge global effort) because we'd been focusing on that area of research for decades very closely and producing similar treatments for a long time already.
But something fungal, and highly contagious? There's nothing we could do except try to quarantine, bomb and napalm every infected area, and hope we got it all.
And we've already seen how an easy to contain illness like COVID simply can't be contained even when we've had a heads up and some time to prepare. It will suddenly explode into the population, and once it's out there it's out there.
Long ago, we used to be protected from extinction due to disease as a species due to our inability to travel long distances to spread it. Now? All it takes is one infected person to spend a few hours at a large airport, and within 48 hours it's reached the doorstep of vast majority of the populated world, and is already behind our best pandemic defences.
If a fungal infection that serious ever does make the leap to humans (which again while unlikely, is also entirely possible, it's like winning the lottery - it could happen tomorrow or maybe never), we have an extremely tiny, almost non existent window in which we must identify how dangerous it is, quarantine the entire region it was located in, bomb it off the face of the earth and hope to the gods we got it all.
But, our morals, humanity and our indecision will stop us from committing what would normally amount to serious war crimes to save the human race, and that tiny window will slip by.
And then we're done.
Irreversible. A French film (alarm bells already) that disturbs me even to this day.
Makes you grateful for your loved ones and how fragile life can be, how one unlucky encounter can flip everything on its head and you may have no influence over any of it.
Difficult viewing for sure and the message shouldn't be to live in fear but to enjoy every good moment you get.
Sons of Anarchy. The show portrays so many people living in ever-increasing states of desperation. One episode ends with a character hanging himself and I almost quit right then and there even though there were multiple seasons left. I had never seen so much depression and crushing desperation portrayed like that. I took a break from it after that episode.
I did finish the show and it was indeed horribly depressing, but incredibly well-done and well-written.
Omori opens with an intense depiction of self-cutting and I noped out right there.
It gets much darker, I'm told. Glad it made the point early; I would not have enjoyed it.
Old yeller.
Notice: Some moderate spoilers for the two media sources listed below:
Book: Misery, by Stephen King.
This is a horror story about a bestselling author whose car gets buried in a snowstorm. He's rescued by a huge fan of his, but it turns out the fan is the crazy stalker type, and she keeps the author trapped in her farm house, demanding he write her perfect version of a sequel to his novel series.
I was reading it during class in high school one day and I got to the part about the "hobbling." Anyone who saw the movie version remembers this part as where the crazy lady takes a sledge hammer to the captive author's foot and breaks it at the ankle, effectively hobbling him so he can't run away anymore.
But the book was worse. It was so much worse.
In the book, she takes an axe and cuts his foot off. But because it's a dull rusty axe, it takes her several swings to effectively hack it off, all the while the author is screaming bloody murder, unable to stop this woman from painfully hacking away at his foot. The way Stephen King described the way the axe embedded deep in the author's leg and squeaked on his bones as she dislodged it for another swing... /shudders
I had to set the book down for a moment. My teacher asked me if I was okay, because he said I was suddenly as white as a sheet of paper. When I couldn't find the words to explain what was wrong with me, he told me to go to the nurse. He sent someone to help me walk there, as I was light-headed and wobbly, and having trouble standing on my own. Never in my life have I ever had a book affect me so physically and emotionally in my life, and I'm a huge fan of gory and grotesque horror.
TV show: Season 4 finale of Dexter.
I really enjoyed Dexter, a show about a serial killer who lived by a code and tried to only murder bad people. And my all-time favorite character on the show was his girlfriend, Rita.
When the series began, she was a broken shell of a human being. Which Dexter preferred, because the relationship was simple. She didn't need much affection or attention and was the perfect cover to make him appear to have normal relationships without having to fully commit to someone emotionally.
But as the series went on, Rita became stronger, more capable, and more confident and outspoken. Through a relatively healthy relationship with Dexter, she was learning how to heal and grow as a person. She was even changing Dexter for the better; he found himself feeling attached to her and daydreaming about giving up the serial killer life to settle down and be a good father and husband.
Throughout season 4, Dexter met his match in another serial killer, Arthur Mitchell, who also had a family of his own, except he kept them under his control by fear and intimidation. It was an incredible acting performance by John Lithgow, who up until this point, I had only known as the funny man on 3rd Rock from the Sun. He was absolutely terrifying as a serial killer!
In the season 4 finale, Dexter finally gets his hands on Arthur and dispatches him, as he's done with many other bad people. But the finale twist was that Arthur had gotten his hands on Rita shortly beforehand, and Dexter returns home to find her in the bathtub, murdered.
I was so enraged that they killed off my favorite character that I shut off the TV and never watched another episode of Dexter again. Which was apparently a wise decision, as the show apparently took a nosedive after that season and never recovered. To this day, most fans agree that Dexter ended at season 4.
Hachi: a Dog Tale
I didn't see anyone else mention it, but the scene in King Kong where one of the guys is eaten alive by four or five giant worms, each one starting from a different limb (the last one swallowing his fucking head).
Doesn't matter that they were setting him up for you to root for him to die, it's still way too much for me.
Walking dead (after rick got kidnapped?)
it was just so depressing and everything went to shit all the time
Fear the walking dead
Same, too depressing and cruel at times
Revenge
At times its ok but you never know when the next depiction of cruelty and emotional abuse hits
The A word
Can only watch it in small doses since the depiction of parents failing is hard if you have abuse history
The last one I still watch but not as the last thing before bed, otherwise I will dream horrible things.
Outer Worlds. Specifically when you have the conversation with Parvati in the bar about asexuality.
As someone who's generally not been sexually attracted to anyone but is masculine, I felt a connection in the dialogue that I've never really felt from any media before, ever.
"I've tripped up folks in the past. Folks I thought cared about me for me. People said I was Cold."
Man I've never felt representation like that. Sex to me is so strange and often gives me a disgusting vibe, though I won't deny it to my partner, its just not in my DNA I guess.
Anyways. Never finished that game. After that conversation, I lost most interest in any other dialogue in the game. Might go back at some point, but not yet.
I am very late to this, but the movie The Road written by Cormac McCarthy. I had watched this movie several times and what changed you ask? I have a little boy now. Can’t watch it. Just can’t
Ohchr.org daily reports
Platoon.
Made me feel sick
Public media everytime somewhere is a war.
Not in the same league as most of the other responses but I cannot watch About a Boy. Yes the Hugh Grant film written by Richard Curtis. I’m not a big crier but that film is like a giant TEARS ON! Button for me.
I tried to watch it again last year as it’s one of my Wife’s faves and it was on already. I was in floods even before I’d sat down.
Something to do with the boy, his situation and the fact his only friends are adults kind of resonates with my childhood.Them. Too brutal, cannot watch.
I didn't turn it off but that scene in Farha with the baby was brutal when you have one in the room with you
I finished A Farewell to Arms a few years back and I'm still hesitant to read anything by Hemingway.
"Shoah." I couldn't make it through all 9 hours.
My girlfriend couldn't continue watching Mommy when the war started, it just became too intense for her.
127 Hours
I won't spoil it, if you know the story/movie, you can probably guess which scene I turned it off during...
I did come back and finish it a few hours later, but it's the first movie/show I've turned off because it was just too much.
The snowpiercer series.
Has never happened to me.
I didn't stop but 1917 was very intense for me. I felt emotionally and physically drained after watching it in the cinema.
Nothing. The most emotionally overwhelming thing I saw was 'Breaking the waves' but I just finished it.
