The Best Sad Movies On Netflix Right Now
A24
Last Updated: February 14th
Sad movies take a lot of forms, but this list of good Netflix films hits the big buttons, including some of the most powerful movies to watch about love, star-crossed love, concentration camps, death, and children/skeletons in peril.
Regardless of what gets your tear ducts primed and pumping, there is something in this list must-watch streaming sobfests that will get at your heart’s sorrow spot. “Enjoy” the 15 saddest movies on Netflix right now responsibly.
Related: The Best Dramas On Netflix Right Now
Universal Pictures
Schindler’s List (1993)
Run Time: 195 min | IMDb: 8.9/10
It took decades in the industry for Steven Spielberg to finally earn an Oscar for one of his movies, but his win for Schindler’s List is well deserved. The film focuses on wealthy businessman Oskar Schindler, who spends his fortune and risks his life to save the lives of 1,100 Jewish men and women after taking in the horrors of WWII and the concentration camps. Between the three hour running time, the cold, unrelenting cruelty of Ralph Fiennes’ portrayal of Amon Goeth, and its realistic style, it’s a bleak film. But there’s hope to be found in the grim black and white images. It’s an important story told movingly by a filmmaker at the height of his powers.
Focus Features
Atonement (2007)
Run Time: 123 min | IMDb: 7.8/10
Is there anything sadder than young lovers torn apart before their feelings can truly blossom? Well, besides real issues plaguing the world like war and famine, but come on, star-crossed lovers are still pretty sad. Atonement paints a vivid tale of just that (along with some war as well). After a series of misunderstandings, youthful naiveté, and false accusations drive Robbie (James McAvoy) away from Cecillia (Keira Knightley), 13-year-old Briony spends the rest of her life struggling with her mistakes as the couple longs to be reunited. It’s a tragic story, but one that works beyond the tragedy and sorrow. It won an Oscar for its original score and was nominated for Best Picture, facing off against some tough competition in No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood.
Focus Features
The Pianist (2002)
Run Time: 150 min | IMDb: 8.5/10
An Oscar-winning Adrien Brody leads this World War II drama based on a true story about a Polish-Jewish pianist forced to survive during Nazi occupation. Władysław Szpilman, a talented musician, finds himself in Warsaw during the height of WWII where he helps to lead an uprising in a Jewish Ghetto before being forced to flee for his life from German soldiers. Brody went full method for the role, losing a dangerous amount of weight to play a tormented, tortured Szpilman, so you kind of owe it to the guy to watch this one.
Universal
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Run Time: 108 min | IMDb: 8.3/10
Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet star in this sci-fi romance about a couple reliving their romance following a painful break-up. The movie stars Winslet as the free-spirited Clementine, who decides to have her memories of a past relationship with beau Joel (Carrey) erased. Once Joel learns of this, he too decides to erase their time together, and the film is a reverse narrative of their love story, charting their break-up and all the things that led up to it. It’s a quirky romance, one that ends on a hopeful note.
Netflix
Roma (2018)
Run Time: 135 min | IMDb: 8.7/10
Oscar-winning writer/director Alfonso Cuaron delivers what may be his most personal film to date. The stunningly-shot black-and-white film is an ode to Cuaron’s childhood and a love letter to the women who raised him. Following the journey of a domestic worker in Mexico City named Cleo, the movie interweaves tales of personal tragedy and triumph amidst a backdrop of political upheaval and unrest.
Focus Features
Milk (2008)
Run Time: 128 min | IMDb: 7.6/10
Sean Penn won his second Oscar for his portrayal of the titular character in Milk, the biopic about San Francisco’s first openly gay elected official. From his early days of civil rights activism in the ’70s to his assassination only a few months after his election, Harvey Milk’s short story is one filled with endless struggle. But the message throughout the film is endlessly hopeful and triumphant. The saddest part, though, is that the fight for LGBTQ rights still wages every day in the U.S. That’s why it’s encouraging to keep the words of leaders like Milk alive today. He didn’t start getting involved in the movement until he was around 40, and he was able to create very real change. It’s never too late to start.
Miramax
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)
Run Time: 94 min | IMDb: 7.8/10
Any drama depicting the atrocities committed during the Holocaust is going to be a tearjerker but somehow, this film eclipses the others. Probably because director Mark Herman chose to focus that terrible time in our history through the lens of two young boys. Bruno (Asa Butterfield) is a young German, the son of a Nazi commander. Shmuel (Jack Scanlon) is a Jewish boy being kept at a concentration camp run by Bruno’s father. The two strike up a friendship in secret, one that has far-reaching consequences on both sides of the fence, and the film’s ending is a gut-punch that hits you right in the feels.
Focus Features
Dallas Buyers Club (2013)
Run Time: 117 min | IMDb: 8/10
Matthew McConaughey’s Dallas Buyer Club is a searing look at how the world failed the LGBTQ community during the devastating AIDS crisis. McConaughey stars as Ron Woodruff, a man diagnosed with the disease in the ’80s during a time when the illness was still misunderstood and highly stigmatized. Woodruff went against the FDA and the law to smuggle in drugs to help those suffering from the disease, establishing a “Dallas Buyers Club” and fighting in court to the right to aid those in need. The story is all the more powerful because it’s true and McConaughey delivers one of the best performances of his career as Woodruff, a man who changes his entire outlook on life after being dealt a tragic blow.
The Weinstein Company
Carol (2015)
Run Time: 118 min | IMDb: 7.2/10
Patricia Highsmith made her name with dark, misanthropic thrillers like The Talented Mr. Ripley and Strangers on a Train. But her early work also included The Price of Salt, a novel about the relationship between a shopgirl and an older married woman. Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett bring this doomed romance to life, playing a pair of lovers kept apart by societal conventions. Their heartbreaking romance ends as well as can be expected, but the journey definitely involves some tears.
Getty Image
Coco (2017)
Run Time: 105 min | IMDb: 8.5/10
Disney continued its trend of spotlighting underserved communities and lesser-known cultures with Coco, a Pixar project that follows a young boy learning the importance of family during a traditional Mexican celebration, “Dia de Los Muertos.” The Day of the Dead is probably a holiday you’ve heard of before, but the film adds a rich history and vibrancy to a time held sacred by so many. Coco has dreams of becoming a singer but when he finds himself amongst the dead, he must rely on his courage and his ancestors to help him return to the living. Bring your tissues for this one.
The Weinstein Company
Blue Valentine (2010)
Run Time: 112 min | IMDb: 7.4/10
This romantic drama starring Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling is equal parts sweet love story and messy, unavoidable tragedy. The actors play a pair of lovers whose relationship is charted in nonlinear fashion over the course of the film. Things begin promisingly, as they always do, before failed careers, addiction, dishonesty, and a general feeling of unhappiness slowly rot away at the couple’s marriage. It’s a mesmerizing train wreck, but honestly, aren’t all of the great love stories?
The Weinstein Company
Lion (2016)
Run Time: 118 min | IMDb: 8.1/10
Dev Patel stars in this true story of a young man searching for clues to his past as he tries to reconnect with the family he left behind. Nicole Kidman also stars, playing a woman who adopts a young Indian boy accidentally separated from his family and sent to an orphanage, but the real star/the actor that will make you reach for the tissues is Sunny Pawar, a little boy who bring emotion to every scene in which he appears.
Netflix
Okja (2017)
Run Time: 120 min | IMDb: 7.4/10
Bong Joon-Ho’s send-up of corporate farming and environmental abuses isn’t subtle. Tilda Swinton goes all-out as the CEO of an evil corporation, only to be outdone by Jake Gyllenhaal’s broad turn as an unstable TV host. But its tale of an endearing, genetically modified “super pig” and the girl who loves him is effective and contains both some terrific action set pieces and the most affecting child/strange beast relationship this side of E.T.
Netflix
Extremis (2016)
Run Time: 24 min | IMDb: N/A
Clocking in at 24 minutes, the Oscar-nominated Extremis really would only work as a short, as its subject matter is almost unbearably heavy. Following terminal patients, their families, and their doctors, the tearjerker zeros in on the decision that many people are forced to make: whether to end a life or keep struggling to hold on. Netflix’s first foray into short documentary, it’s raw insight that can be rough for anyone who has been in similar shoes or spent any time facing dire choices in a hospital.
A24
Room (2015)
Run Time: 118 min | IMDb: 8.2/10
Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay star in this gripping drama about a mother and son held hostage for nearly a decade. The film, based off a work of fiction, pulls elements from real-life trauma cases as it follows a woman named Joy (Larson) and her son Jack (Tremblay) who exists in a singular room, cut off from the outside world. The two plot an escape, are eventually rescued and must cope with the effects of their harrowing ordeal while adjusting to life outside of the room. Larson is deserving of every award she won for this film, and her chemistry with Tremblay will have you grabbing for the tissues throughout the film.
Recent Updates Through February 2019
Added: Room
Removed: P.S. I Love You
from UPROXX https://uproxx.com/movies/saddest-movies-on-netflix-right-now-sad-tearjerkers/
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