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.

The Cook, the Thief, his wife and her lover. I loved the way it was so macabre. I'm worried if I watch it again I won't enjoy it so much as you need to be in the right frame of mind.

Book: We Need To Talk About Kevin. Harrowing and haven't watched the film.

Film: The Orphanage ( the foreign language one, not the American one) Couldn't talk about it for days and when I tried to discuss it with a friend who'd also seen it, neither of us could find the words.

On the beach. Aftermath of nuclear war and the end where they know everyone will die so the family kill themselves. I have never cried so much. I'm too young to remember Cuban missile crisis but remember my mum talking about the level of fear around that time and I think the book was just too close for comfort.

Requiem for a Dream. Absolutely broke me. The music still kills me

Film - A time to kill. I saw it when I was at uni and I recall I struggled to sleep for a few nights afterwards. I've never watched it since but I do think of it, it really upset and stuck with me. And that was 1997!

Top of the lake. Still haunts me

I find The Cook, The Thief really harrowing too; Michael Gambon is hideous but amazing when he’s eating at the end.

Dancer in the Dark stayed with me. The Silent Witness about gangs, where the informant little kid was killed by pit bull (or similar) because of the police cocking up, really shook me up.

Harry Brown. It gave me nightmares for days, just a really depressing and scary storyline based on how ugly and violent people can be. Horrible film.

The Lobster

I've attempted to watch a few times but just get lost and confused. I often think about it.

I finally finished ‘1984’ before Xmas and I am still affected by the ending.

Still haunted by :

End of Nocturnal Animals
End Of Rosemary's Baby
End of Sophie's Choice as said above
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri in general
Iris in general

The book The Wasp Factory

Oh and the Spanish film The Skin I Live In

The original version of the Korean film Oldboy and its sister film Lady Vengeance

Oldboy will come back to me for the rest if my life as one of those Fucking Hell films

We Were Young and at War, which is a collection of teenagers' diaries from all round the world during WW2. One was from a boy in Leningrad, which starts off really positive, what he'll do when he's older, games at the People's Palace and so on. Then during the Siege of Leningrad, his world and outlook become more and more restricted, thinking mostly about food. At the end, his mother and younger sister are evacuated, but they are too weak to take him, and he is too weak to walk - so they have to leave him and the diary just trials off, as he doesn't even have the strength for that any more. I cried in the canteen at work, where I was reading it (and not starving, unlike him.)

Blackfish- still think about it every single day
Irréversible- horrible
I spit on your grave- again horrible
Get out- thought provoking
American history X- again thought provoking

@sudky fab - who's that directed by? I always enjoy good documentaries about emotionally stunted men with sexual insecurities

Books:

1984 - read at school so intense & thought provoking

Animal farm - read at an early age and really made an impression led to a fascination with Russia ussr and cold war

The silver sword - again read at school first time I’d really been confronted with life in wwii

Z for Zachariah - I’m of the generation that grew up under what felt a very real threat of nuclear war or other nuclear disaster - Chernobyl happened when I was 14 I found this harrowing. I once as a child asked an adult I respected & admired what they’d do if they heard the 4 min warning their reply? Head ASAP for the nearest city in hopes they’d be killed by the actual blast rather than risk a slow death from radiation sickness, starvation etc

The lovely bones - just so sad

Before I go to sleep - I have issues with my own memory and this tapped into my fears on that

My sweet Audrina - read far too young! Distressing but oddly fascinating

Films

A time to kill - could only watch once incredibly disturbing and powerful

An eye for an eye - again tough watch and I’ve only seen once

Boy in the striped pyjamas - a nonsense I know but still hit me emotionally

American history x - powerful and thought provoking

Tv

Top of the lake - again only watched once, but very well made and an important watch I think

Morvern Callar - Book and film

*@AnyFucker’
The rape scene in "This is England '86"

This. I can’t even bear to watch the actor in anything else now, he terrifies me.

On the beach, it's never left me.

@AnyFucker

Which one? Poor Trev or when Lol ends up killing him with a hammer? This Is England is awesome, has you laughing hysterically then crying your eyes out 5 minutes later.

All of it really @MindYours

Like you said, it's an affecting programme.

The book The Road, post apocalyptic survival.

The film City of Life and Death, based on the Japanese invasion of China and the enforced sexual enslavement of many women they were called comfort women and it was officially sanctioned rape on an epic scale. Still the most distressing thing I have ever seen or read. A few of those women are still alive.

The magdelen sisters.
Execution scenes in the Tudors.
Nowhere in africa
The constant gardener
Boy in the striped pajamas. I know it was a cautionary tale but still.

American Pyscho (the book). Some of the descriptions of what he did will stay with me forever.