Book or film you couldn’t stop thinking about

[BethanyGilbert]

I finished the book “I’m Thinking Of Ending It” last night and I can’t stop thinking about the end. It wasn’t scary as such but so unsettling.
I read about a film (never been brave enough to watch it which makes this even more embarrassing) but the image that accompanied the article has haunted me ever since.

Dead mans shoes, must be 15 years ago but still think about it :(

"Sophie's Choice". I'd've never watched it if I'd know what her choice was.

That Torchwood episode 'children of earth' I think.
Still makes me feel bad

Schindlers list. Just....

The film Mysterious Skin. It was on Film4 on a weekday at ridiculous o'clock and I couldn't sleep and saw it was just starting so decided to put it on despite knowing nothing about it, until I fell asleep. I watched it all the way through - it ended I think at 4am and I laid away just thinking about it until it was time to get up and go to work. I couldn't take my mind off it all day. I tried to watch it a second time a year later and got about five minutes into it and started crying and turned it off.

laid (lay?) awake*

Wild Swans. I haven’t been able to look at any older Chinese people since, without wondering whether they lived through the Cultural Revolution &, if so, what lasting effects it’s had on their lives.

The Woodsman
Martyrs (French version)

Fourteen Days in May
Changeling
Schindlers List

All true stories FDIM is a documentary that should end the argument for the death penalty

Book fiction The Lovely Bones felt emotionally drained after
Non fiction Philomena and Killing for Company (so well written that you can actually feel pity at times for a murderer after he murders but it doesn’t last for long)

I wouldn’t watch Sophie’s Choice have heard too many people say how distraught they felt from seeing the film

The boy in the grey striped pyjamas. The lovely bones. Both as books.

@WhoisitnowRalph Martyr is the film I was talking about in my first post.

Books-

The Damage Done by Warren Fellows about his time in a Bangkok prison. I felt sick and panicky reading it, it haunted me for months afterwards.

Porky by Deborah Moggach, so well written but really distressing.

Cora Ravenwing by Gina Wilson, a children's book but really bleak and there is no justice or happy ending. It broke my heart as a child and I still think of it.

Taken gave me nightmares.
We’re supposed to watch it and then feel all great at the end that he saved his daughter.
But all those other women and girls he saw on the way...

TV series not a film, so hope this counts: cucumber. Not the end but the end of episode 6. If you’ve seen it you’ll know what episode I’m talking about. I was stunned. Couldn’t sleep, couldn’t think about anything else for, genuinely, days. I have never managed to watch the episode in full ever again, it disturbed me so much. That said- It was absolutely brilliant. The writing, acting and execution of something so powerful was amazing.

Also a film I couldn't stop thinking about in a good way is God's Own Country. It was so mesmerising and beautiful and moving, I kept re-watching it, and googling the actors, and reading all the reviews and interviews etc. Gorgeous film.

Stuart: A Life Backwards
Tom Hardy and Cumberbatch but still think about it now.

Not a film or book but I saw a stage production of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman and was so blown away by it that I sat up all night thinking about it.

Not a book or film, but the Inside No 9 episode The 12 Days of Christine. Genuinely the best piece of TV I've ever seen, and it often crosses my mind.

If we can include TV shows I would also add an episode of Glee, "The Quarterback" which was about Finn being dead after the actor died in real life. Because it was one of the few TV shows I watched regularly at the time and got to know the characters and saw how all the other characters reacted to it and weren't really 'acting' at being upset, it really got to me and I think back to it from time to time.

Film - Twelve Years a Slave.
Horrendous. I still get flashbacks to some truly awful scenes. I watched most of it from behind my hands but even so it has stayed with me for the six years since.

Books:
The Handmaid's Tale (I haven't seen the series).
Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam series
The Wasp Factory
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit

Film:
Silent Running (1972 film about the three last robots in space taking care of an Earth garden after Earth has been destroyed, they're called Huwey, Dewey and Lewey, I saw it as a child, I cried for days).
Letter From An Unknown Woman (1948 b/w film, fabulous).I saw it at an impressionable age and it stuck with me.

Oh and the episode of X-Files when the ghosts of many children come out of the ground and walk across a field to a Moby song

The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas

The rape scene in "This is England '86"

Film: Hotel Rwanda - just horrendous

TV: The Great Hack on Netflix - makes you think a lot about the internet and it's bad side