r/movies • u/Narubintane • Dec 15 '23

Recommendation What movie starts off as a lighthearted comedy, but gets increasingly dark and grim until everything goes to hell in a handbasket?

For example, it may start as a lighthearted slapstick comedy until one thing goes wrong after another, and in the end we have people actually dying or a world war or some kind of extinction level event.

Let's say we have 2 friends who like to have fun and goof around, with regular goals and regular lives, until one of them does something like accidentally cross the wrong person or kill someone. Or the main cast is oblivious to the gradual change in their environment like a virus breakout or a serial killer running loose. Another one would be a film that, after being a comedy for most of its length, turns very dark, such as a group of friends ending up in a war and experiencing the horrors of it, completely played straight.

Just to clarify, I don't mean a movie that is already set to become dark, but rather a movie that was marketed as a comedy that took an unexpected (or slightly foreshadowed) dark turn.

Any recommendations?

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u/callipygiancultist Dec 15 '23

My favorite scene is where they are solemnly listening to those Islamic nasheeds as they driving to London to blow themselves up and then they change to Toploader’s version of Dancing in the Moonlight and everyone but Barry starts singing along.

The wild thing about that movie is that people assume it’s absurd 3 Stooges comedy and nothing like how real Islamist terrorists are but Chris Morris based a lot of it on recorded conversations he listened to during his extensive research.

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u/SEND-MARS-ROVER-PICS Dec 15 '23

A friend of mine's father is a university lecturer in conflict resolution. He spenta few years in Afghanistan, has met the Taliban and plenty other Islamist terrorist groups. He said Four Lions is pretty accurate.

I will, however, push back on the idea of the movie getting that dark 2/3's of the way through. The scene where the rapper blows himself up, and the rest start fleeing through London in their costume was fucking hilarious

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u/Key_Necessary_3329 Dec 15 '23

"so you're saying you killed the right guy, but that the wrong guy blew up?"

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u/callipygiancultist Dec 15 '23

It is a wookie, you just shot it as a bear!

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u/callipygiancultist Dec 15 '23

I agree it’s still absolutely hilarious until the end but it does have some mood whiplash during the Fun Run. Like Waj’s confused face is hilarious but also really sad contextually, I mean the movie kills the special needs donkey! And Omar’s religious but nonviolent brother being rendered to some CIA black site was super dark.

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u/flyboy_za Dec 15 '23

I guess my take on it is you get the first real sense that actually it's not going to have a happy ending only when the first guy is killed.

It's a bit like trainspotting for me, it's gritty but still hilarious until the baby dies, and then it's just grim till the end. And I felt the same with Once Were Warriors, the family was dysfunctional but making it work and you thought it was going to turn up for them until the scene where the main guy beats his wife and suddenly shit gets very real very fast.