Grimmest documentaries you've seen

[Ringside]

I had a look too. Got tired of seeing that anus banner flashing up every time I clicked on something.

[Brundle-Fly]

Although this wasn't particularly grim, the recent BBC doc, The Age Of Loneliness made for a low level depressing watch. It's very affecting because it's likely to have happened, happening or going to happen to all of us at some point in our lives. You do wonder what a refugee sat shivering in a crowded tent in Calais would make of this programme though.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b06vkhr5/the-age-of-loneliness

6 days left

[Retinend]

Review of Zoo (2007) (aka the 2 Guys 1 Horse film, aka the Mr. Hands film, aka the horse-fucker film)

This documentary about the death of a group of zoophiles whose club
disbanded with the death of a Boeing engineer, "Mr. Hands," illustrates
phone interviews with the perpetrators with dreamy imagery of dew-
sprayed orchards, rolling mid-western highways and slow motion
panoramas of farmstead porches.

The film makes no judgement of the men, who were not found guilty of
any crime due to the niceties of state-specific lawmaking. The love of
horses is portrayed as a mystical, philosophical longing to connect
with nature. A dissenting voice, an investigator who first visited the
scene of the non-crime, gives her reaction of horror and sympathy for
the animals, but her case is not strongly made, since the sordid
details are left out of the film. By so emphasizing the
mystical-philosophic- longing-nature side of things, the film seems
unnaturally sanitized and the elephant in the room looms large
throughout (probably deliberately out of sight, with it's back to the wall):

Watch the infamous video and you see a man with a manifold metal-studded
ballsack eagerly prostrating himself in front of a member the size of a
man's extended arm. The horse's penis is guided into Mr. Hands by a second
man who asks "yeah, you like that, don't you?" in a lascivious tone, to
the man soon to die. In the film, Mr. Hands is portrayed as a
family man who had a bright future... I find it more convincing that he
had a strong drive towards death, and that at least his sexual being
was pleased to die in this way.

My negative opinion of this film is not so much about its filmic
aspects, but of its morality. Sure, the film does not explicitly
endorse what these people did. However, I find the film perverse in its
avoidance of simple questions that spring to most peoples' minds: what
did they do with the horses? what sexual history did these men have?
how did they get started? Typical of over-intellectualized analyses,
these simple questions are discarded in favour of equivocation and
obfuscation of the moral matter.

Outside of these general questions, specific questions posed by the
interviews themselves are unanswered or obfuscated by a chronology that
seemed to have been cut up and stuck back together at random for a
shallow intellectual effect. Who is "Cop #2" and what film was he
hired for? Who was the boy who died? Who did the horses belong to? How
can two horses give and receive a blowjob? Were they trained to do it?
I'm barely scratching the surface because so little of the historical
information hinted at is given it's proper providence, and so falls
easily out of memory.

As its fundamental moral angle and narrative loose ends are so
dissatisfying for me, that stylish visual elements and overall
technical quality is abundant was more irritating than it was
palliative, for me. I wondered even more, on account of this, why such
a film could even be made by intelligent, resourceful and skilled
filmmakers, without thought for what they were implicitly advocating.
Still, for the quality and style alone it is a convincing package, but
is the lush surface texture an indication of its profundity? A loud
"neigh" from me.

[Blinder Data]

I did not expect to find a proposed entry to this thread on BBC1, but My Baby, Psychosis and Me was an extremely affecting watch.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b07187xv/my-baby-psychosis-and-me#group=p03hybyj

Shot in a totally bland mainstream way, it intimately follows two mums who have suffered post-partum psychosis as they try to recover at a Mother and Baby unit in Winchester. You track their progress with various treatments as their medical staff and family offer revealing interviews about their condition.

Compared to Chinese babies being neglected for money or Swansea drug addicts, it might be small fry in the grim stakes - and maybe some of the subjects' middle-class status and the fact someone close to me has had a baby recently made this hit home for me. But it still makes for very uncomfortable viewing. I've read about the issue but as someone not much exposed to mental illness, to see mothers lose it before your eyes was difficult.

Spoiler alert

Because it's BBC1 it had to have a happy ending of sorts - though the way the women totally regressed just when they were making progress earlier shows you you never can know for certain.

[close]

Worth a watch - but if you're particularly sensitive about mental health and/or babies, might be one to avoid.

[Colin Sanction]

Does anyone have any links to the Australian ABC documentary Facing the Demons?

Any help appreciated

[hewantstolurkatad]

I did not expect to find a proposed entry to this thread on BBC1, but My Baby, Psychosis and Me was an extremely affecting watch.

Sure wasn't the hunt for Britain's pedophiles a bbc1 after the ten o clock news dealio

[Blinder Data]

Sure wasn't the hunt for Britain's pedophiles a bbc1 after the ten o clock news dealio

Quite possibly. I'm at work so I'd rather not google to check.

BBC1 in late 90s/early 2000s is very different to the BBC1 of today though. What they got away with showing on THFBP is crazy - no way you'd be able to replicate that nowadays.

[TheFalconMalteser]

Am I Imagining a documentary about two guys who went to China to try to eat a baby?

[Steven]

Am I Imagining a documentary about two guys who went to China to try to eat a baby?

Was that the one with Tom Selleck and Steve Guttenburg?

[Glebe]

Am I Imagining a documentary about two guys who went to China to try to eat a baby?

I certainly hope so.

[biggytitbo]

Am I Imagining a documentary about two guys who went to China to try to eat a baby?

That was that controversial episode of Blue Peter with Peter Duncan and Simon Groom I think.

[AsparagusTrevor]

Am I Imagining a documentary about two guys who went to China to try to eat a baby?

See, now my brain is just trying to figure out whether this is worse than Ian Watkins' extracurricular activities or not.

[TheFalconMalteser]

Yep Zhu Yu, 'Eating People', in a 2003 C4 documentary.  Not banter.

[Puce Moment]

Yep Zhu Yu, 'Eating People', in a 2003 C4 documentary.  Not banter.

I love that you have to put a disclaimer with your posts.

[anxious mofo]

Yep Zhu Yu, 'Eating People', in a 2003 C4 documentary.  Not banter.

http://www.snopes.com/horrors/cannibal/fetus.asp

NSFW obvs.

[Pinckle Wicker]

http://www.snopes.com/horrors/cannibal/fetus.asp

NSFW obvs.

Was that not just an outlandish art project and was all fake?

[hewantstolurkatad]

Why did we let this thread die? Surely there's been some good grim recently?

[biggytitbo]

Not sure if it counts as grim or just mind boggling but Mommy Dead and Dearest is 'interesting'...

[Lost Oliver]

Yeah, let's keep this going. Anyone seen, or know where I can get my hands on a film called 66 Months?

[Steven]

Yeah, let's keep this going. Anyone seen, or know where I can get my hands on a film called 66 Months?

It's been gone over a few times in this very thread, fucking bleak. It's available to rent here.

[Moribunderast]

Not sure if it counts as grim or just mind boggling but Mommy Dead and Dearest is 'interesting'...

Just watched this one today. It's definitely grim and, yes, also mind boggling. At times I felt like I was watching a documentary set in an alternate reality created by Harmony Korine or something. It was just grimy and yuck. It was like a grotesque version of The Staircase, where instead of being surprised and compelled by each twist, you just kinda squeemishly groan as this story just keeps getting more odd and dark.

[MjjW]

When I first saw the trailer for "66 months" it was so depressing and intriguing I think it was actually one of the first things I actually paid to watch off the internet. Well worth it, though I never want to watch it again. Sign of a good grim documentary.

[Steven]

When I first saw the trailer for "66 months" it was so depressing and intriguing I think it was actually one of the first things I actually paid to watch off the internet. Well worth it, though I never want to watch it again. Sign of a good grim documentary.

Yes, I saw it at the time and thought it might need a revisit, the trailer brought it all back. Brr, no.

I did rewatch The Man Whose Mind Exploded the other day, and though less horrible I found it similarly depressing by the end.

[Ringside]

God 66 Months was a bleak watch.

I'd never heard of The Man Who's Mind Exploded, I'm not sure if I want to watch it though. I don't think I'd want to see anything else particularly awful befall that man.

[Ringside]

Just watched this one today. It's definitely grim and, yes, also mind boggling. At times I felt like I was watching a documentary set in an alternate reality created by Harmony Korine or something. It was just grimy and yuck. It was like a grotesque version of The Staircase, where instead of being surprised and compelled by each twist, you just kinda squeemishly groan as this story just keeps getting more odd and dark.

I watched this two or three weeks ago and it has really stuck with me. So odd and distressing on many levels.

[BlodwynPig]

So I dug deep into this thread and just watched Deep Water and was fascinated by it, especially the denouement and almost Lovecraftian cosmic horror of Crowhurst's final log.

I did wonder, however, why they showed Alexander Armstrong on the high seas, rather than Crowhurst.

[Phil_A]

So I dug deep into this thread and just watched Deep Water and was fascinated by it, especially the denouement and almost Lovecraftian cosmic horror of Crowhurst's final log.

I did wonder, however, why they showed Alexander Armstrong on the high seas, rather than Crowhurst.

Oddly there seem to be two films based on this story due out at some point in the near future, Crowhurst and The Mercy.

[biggytitbo]

There's apperently a Russian film from the soviet era about Crowhurst that paints him as a tragic victim of the pressures of capitalism.

[Sebastian Cobb]

If anyone knows where I can get my hands on Channel 4's The Wet Room, that'd be fantastic.

[Steven]

If anyone knows where I can get my hands on Channel 4's The Wet Room, that'd be fantastic.

You mean The Wet House, about alcoholism? Part 4 here, sadly the rest seems to have been taken down.

The similar and even bleaker Rain In My Heart is still up though, brr.