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  • ️Tue May 07 2019

Darker and Edgier in live-action movies.

Films with their own pages

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General 

A 

  • The events and the characterisation of the family members in the The Addams Family films are significantly darker than they were in the TV series, although still not as dark as some of the original Charles Addams single-panel cartoons.
  • An in-universe example in the obscure flick Adventures In Dinosaur City, where a trio of kids find themselves zapped into the world of their favorite cartoon. Where things aren't just good guys and bad guys like they are on the show, and the story's about as gritty as they could get away with in a kids' film while not losing the Aesop about there being no such thing as Black-and-White Morality.
  • Alien:
    • Alien³ is a much darker film compared to the one that preceded it. In fact is like riding a train to downer land. Aliens was a fairly standard action film with an overall happy ending (and that isn't a bad thing). Its sequel however has an air of hopelessness that just pervades the entire thing. Two major characters are killed right at the start and another one is damaged beyond repair, the film is set on a grimy prison planet populated by murderers and scum, there is almost nothing to fight the alien off with so more characters, even likeable ones, die left and right (often with no build-up), and even Ripley is killed off at the end because it's the only way she could stop The Company from bringing the Alien gestating inside her back with them. Sure things get better with Alien: Resurrection, but that doesn't exactly raise spirits either (due to quality rather than tone).
    • Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem is easily one of the darkest and most viscerally horrific Alien or Predator films ever produced. Set in 21st century Earth, the film sees far more brutality and downright nasty violence than is usual for either IP. A young boy gets brutally face hugged and gets a Chest Burster in the first act, a pregnant women gets horribly incubated with her child getting turned into Xenomorphs that burst from her belly and multiple teenagers get brutally killed in as grisly fashion possible. Then the whole town gets nuked. It’s also literally the darkest movie in the franchise with one of the biggest complaints about the film being that is nigh-impossible to see what’s going on and which monster is which during action scenes.
    • Alien: Covenant is the bleakest and most nihilistic of the Alien franchise. Rather than being about plucky characters encountering the Xenomorphs and a Final Girl managing to escape with one or more companion, the film is a double Gut Punch with utter bastard synth David having already killed Prometheus' heroine Shaw off screen while vast majority Too Dumb to Live USCSS Covenant crew are killed and then as a last blow to the audience it’s revealed David switched himself with Walter and taunts Daniels as she’s trapped in her cyropod as he places two facehugger embryos next to the human embryos that are to be used to colonize a new planet. It’s basically a protracted The Bad Guy Wins, with none of the actions of the heroes able to prevent it.
    • Alien: Romulus manages to be Darker and Edgier and even more messed up than most of the films in the franchise, and has some scenes reaching Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem-level in impact. Notably, the film highlights the soul crushing dystopia of Weyland-Yutani and the protagonists rather than being world wearily adults who are used to it, they’re instead attractive teenagers who just want to escape the depression of their lives and live free in a different place — and most of them are horrifically killed for it. The ending in particular has the poor pregnant Kay unthinkingly infect herself with the black goo that horrifically mutates her unborn baby into a Engineer-Xenomorph abomination, which she graphically gives birth to, and kills her when she rejects its affection. However Final Girl Rain is able to kill it and goes into hypersleep with her synth brother Andy, which isn’t the most happy or most idyllic outcome, but does ultimately nudge the film into one of the more optimistic entries in the franchise.
  • In An American Christmas Carol, not only does Scrooge analogue Slade fire Thatcher and send him to the soup line, he rips up books, steals his clients' goods, and it's shown how his business practices drove the Fezziwig analogue, Mr. Brewster, to an early death.

B 

  • Babe: Pig in the City is very much this trope compared to the original. The original was about a little pig on a farm who was taken in by the female sheepdog and was mostly lighthearted. Tear Jerker here and there, but the darkest element was when Babe's parents are herded to the slaughterhouse. In Babe 2, there's a hotel with illegal pets, animal control, a vicious bulldog that nearly hangs him trying to kill Babe, and one of those little wheelchair dogs who almost dies. Terrifying for some kids. On the other hand, in the first part a duck is killed for the Christmas dinner and a sheep is killed by feral dogs and in the second part no animal is Killed Off for Real.
  • Back to the Future Part II compared to the first movie. Why? 3 reasons. 1, the alternate 1985. 2, in the alternate Bad Future timeline, Biff marries Lorraine after killing George. And 3, Doc Brown is institutionalized in the alternate timeline. That being said the first film did contain an Attempted Rape in its climax, which is much darker than anything from the second film.
  • Bad Black when compared to Who Killed Captain Alex?. While both films have the low-budget and VJ Emmie's charm, Captain Alex has their antagonists being mostly Laughably Evil, not to mention how over-the-top some of them can be. Bad Black, on the other hand, focuses on a girl's rise from orphan to a crime lord, and while VJ Emmie still delivers comedy, it's usually (no pun intended) Black Comedy.
  • Although Bad Boys for Life still maintains its "buddy cop" humor just like the previous two, it's tenser in plot and has a number of dramatic moments.
  • Beauty and the Beast (2017) isn't too much darker than its animated counterpart, but still includes some distinctly darker elements. Instead of just trying to commit Maurice to an insane asylum to manipulate Belle into marrying him, Gaston knocks out Maurice, ties him up and leaves him in the woods to be eaten by wolves after he refuses to give Gaston Belle's hand in marriage. Only when Maurice survives and reveals to the village that Gaston tried to kill him does Gaston resort to framing him as insane to save his own skin. We also learn the dark fate of Belle's mother (she died of the bubonic plague – and Maurice was forced to abandon her while she was still alive to protect the infant Belle from the disease), the Beast is given a tragic Freudian Excuse for his initial cruelty (his mother died young and his father is implied to have abused him), and near the end all the Enchanted Objects turn inanimate after the last petal falls from the rose, bidding each other farewell as they slowly die... though of course they all come back to life as humans when the spell is broken.
  • Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure was a relatively tame (by today's standards, at least) family-friendly comedy involving two Idiot Heroes being granted a Time Travel device to research historical figures (including Bowdlerised versions of Napoleon and Billy the Kid) in a Race Against the Clock to pass a history test. Contrast this with Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, which would quite likely scare the original film's target audience shitless. Unlike in the previous film where their biggest threat was Ted's dad sending him to military school, Bogus Journey has a legitimate, politically-driven Big Bad who builds robot versions of the protagonists who hunt down and actually kill them. This leads the film into a Back from the Dead storyline where the two meet Death himself, wander around Sand Dimas as ghosts, get sucked into Hell via occult magic where they encounter a rather convincing Satan and crawl through a fire-and-brimstone lit air duct maze where they encounter exaggerated versions of their childhood traumas. There's also numerous homages to R-rated sci-fi and horror films amongst other added horrors, a subplot involving plenty of Squicky incest jokes, drastically harsher and more frequent profanity (including a Precision F-Strike at one point), and some Ho Yay dialogue. All this in a film that came out a mere 2 years after the original; hardly the most ample time for its audience to prepare for it.
  • The Black Hole itself qualifies on its own. Released in 1979 it was controversial for being Disney's first PG-rated film, and featured numerous violent and disturbing sequences the likes of which no Disney film had ever shown before. Even the resident "funny robots" were not actually that funny and were played straight. Although it took a few years, the move towards more adult fare exhibited by Black Hole, Tron, a rather adult comedy called Trenchcoat and others eventually led Disney to establish the Touchstone brand for releasing films in the PG, PG-13 and R-rated realm, while reserving the main Disney brand for (mostly) G or the occasional PG film. This later went by the wayside however, as the Disney brand came to be used for dark, PG-13 rated films like Pirates of the Caribbean.
  • The Bourne Series:
    • The Bourne Legacy is darker than the first three films. Unlike Jason Bourne, Cross and Shearing are complete innocents who never intend to get out, let alone expose the project, and yet they are marked for death anyway. The film also has more nightmarish moments, with the vicious wolves, the laboratory massacre, and Shearing nearly being executed in her own home by agents who'd seemingly come to help her.
    • Jason Bourne surpasses the events of Legacy. Even by the standards of the series, this film is the darkest of them all. Robert Dewey and the Asset are easily the most villainous characters of the series. Between the way they casually murder their own people, the death of Bourne's most trusted ally, and the portrayal of institutionalized corruption in the American government and society, there are virtually no bright sides to the story. Of course, the kicker of it all is the last two scenes of the movie, where it's revealed that Heather Lee is much less benevolent than Pamela Landy before her and is not an ally at all, just another power-hungry bureaucrat intending to use Bourne as her pawn and willing to kill him if he refuses, and that Bourne rightly distrusts her.
  • Bruce Lee: Lee's first "big film", The Big Boss, is a martial arts story about a young Chinese man who uncovers a drug smuggling operation at the ice factory he works at, and it's just an over-the-top kung fu flick with some cheesy cartoon violence. Lee's second film, Fist of Fury is a much more somber story about a young Chinese man living in Japanese-occupied Shanghai who discovers that his beloved martial arts teacher was murdered via poison by a rival Japanese school, and sets out for revenge; this film explores themes of revenge and anti-Chinese racism, as well as violence much more seriously (at one point Chen brutally beats a Japanese man to get information out of him) and the consequences of escalating violence (things go From Bad to Worse when the Japanese authorities take notice of a Serial Killer targeting Japanese people, and ultimately a lot of the students at Chen's Pacifist Dojo are killed by the Japanese dojo, while Chen himself is shot by Japanese policemen who betray him when he turns himself in.)

C 

  • Cape Fear (1991) is this in comparison to the original, partly because of what one could get past the censors in 1991 versus 1962, and partly because of some changes to the story:
    • There's a graphic scene of Cady beating, mutilating, and raping Lori, one of Bowden's colleagues. In the 1962 film, the implied rape occurs off-screen.
    • In the original film, Bowden's actions against Cady were entirely legal and ethical: he was a witness who testified against Cady in a trial. In contrast, in the remake, Bowden was Cady's attorney who intentionally withheld evidence that could have helped Cady's case. Despicable as Cady is, what Bowden did was against his role as Cady’s lawyer and probably illegal.
    • In the 1962 film, Bowden has a perfect, loving family with a supportive wife and obedient, dutiful children. In this version, his wife suspects him of adultery (due to past episodes) and his rebellious teenage daughter is initially attracted to Cady.
  • The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. One of the characters even tells the returning heroes that Narnia is no longer the welcoming place they remember.
  • The Color of Friendship is this to most other Disney Channel Original Movies. While still a lighthearted kid's film, it deals with the difficult issue of race and racism in a frank manner.
  • Cool World: The entire movie to Who Framed Roger Rabbit. It's reflected in its environment as well. In contrast to the goofy buildings, The world of Doodles is a violent hellscape comprised of grotesque buildings with disturbingly human features such as mouths or faces/warped version of cartoons, with the residents comprisded with demented and violent lunatics except for a very select few individuals with any morality and sanity, the Jessica Rabbit counterpart is the Big Bad willing to use her feminine charm to get what she wants at the expense of two realities even resorting to murder, the sexual aspect of the story is more explicit, and the detective is even more wracked with guilt and trauma than Eddie that he prefers the madness of the Cool World over the real one.
  • Cruella is this to Disney's previous adaptations of One Hundred and One Dalmatians, garnering a PG-13 rating and featuring far less of the humor present in the animated film and earlier live-action remakes.

D 

  • The Dark Crystal is a Jim Henson film, the guy who did The Muppets and Sesame Street. Storywise, it involves mass genocide, gruesome deaths, Fate Worse than Death and Everything Is Trying to Kill You thrown into the mix.
  • Dead Calm is leagues darker and more disturbing than the book it’s loosely based on. In Charles Williams’ novel, the antagonist Hughie commits an Accidental Murder having agoraphobic reaction while diving with the captain’s wife, and accidentally killed her by trying to climb onto her shoulders. He has a psychotic breakdown and takes the heroine Rae hostage as he steals Rae and her husband The Hero John’s boat, leaving the latter stranded with the widower captain and Hughie’s wife. Despite what the captain claims to John, Hughie doesn’t sexually assault Rae whatsoever, seeing her as a mother figure, while she’s able to take advantage of this Manchild behaviour to drug Hughie into unconsciousness and return to save John, the captain and Hughie’s wife. The worst thing that happens is Hughie taking his own life when he hallucinates that the captain is his abusive father. In the movie however, everything is far worse as Hughie (terrifyingly played by Billy Zane) has slaughtered and mutilated the women and man he was having a sleazy cruise with, and when captured by him, Rae is forced into having sex with Hughie just to get him to lower his guard. The ending is much darker and violent than the book too, with Hughie getting shot repeatedly with a harpoon gun before popping again for another Jump Scare like Jason Voorhees until John finally finishes him off with a flare. Not to mention the opening the movie is far more bleak than the book, with Rae losing her and John’s son in a horrific car crash.
  • Die Hard 2 is the darkest of the Die Hard series. Colonel Stuart ends up having the highest body count of any villain in the films, and the movie itself is much more violent than the other films, with highlights including Baker and Grant's deaths.
  • Sudden Impact would qualify in the (already fairly dark) Dirty Harry film series. For one thing the movie has Harry Callahan going after a gang of rapists who brutalized and raped a female artist and her sister, leaving the latter all but catatonic. It's also considered by many to be the darkest, dirtiest, and most violent of the series as well.

E 

  • Ebenezer (1998) has an extremely villainous takes on Scrooge, set in the Canadian frontier. In the past, young Scrooge married Bess only to cheat her father-in-law out of his land, and in the present he cheats Sam Benson out of his land and abuses and threatens his former partner's daughter. In the future sequence, Scrooge fatally shoots Sam and dies trying to get Erica not to reveal how he cheated in the poker game.
  • End of Watch, when compared to other buddy cop movies.
  • The Equalizer is so very much this when compared to the original series that this was based on. A typical plot in the CBS series has McCall pulling an elaborate mindgame with his associates helping him, one that usually forces the guilty party to incriminate themselves and sometimes leaves them at the mercy of those they've wronged. In the movie, McCall simply takes out everyone in his path personally, using such delightful tactics as a shotglass to the eye socket, corkscrew to the jaw, a barb wire noose, a tree trimmer through the neck, and gunning someone down with a high-powered nailgun.
  • Even the classic E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial was not immune to this trope. When E.T. first became a hit in theaters, Steven Spielberg and E.T. screenwriter Melissa Mathison came up with a treatment for a sequel: E.T. II: Nocturnal Fears, in which Elliot and his friends are kidnapped by evil albino offshoots of E.T.'s species. Fortunately, E.T. returns to Earth and rescues them, but not until after the kids have all been tortured. They thought better of it.
  • After an increasingly comedic trilogy, Evil Dead (2013) is fairly jarring in tone. It edges pretty close to Torture Porn as the main characters mutilate themselves and each other, the teenagers aren't at the cabin for a party, it's nearly devoid of jokes or one-liners, and it's entirely lacking the original trilogy's camp value.

F 

  • Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 11/9 is this compared to Fahrenheit 9/11 as well as Moore's previous documentaries. While all of his documentaries pull no punches on the social issues that plague America, in this one Moore specifically warns of America's collapse as a nation.
  • Fantastic Beasts: While Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is pretty consistent in tone with the Harry Potter movies, both sequels, The Crimes Of Grindelwald and The Secrets Of Dumbledore, are significantly darker than the first movie and dive deeper in more adult themes and darker cinematography than any previous entry of The Wizarding World so far.
  • Josh Trank's Fantastic Four is this compared to the previous adaptations. The film has been compared to thriller/horror films like Alien, Scanners, and The Fly (1986) by those involved with the production, and a common complaint is exactly that — it takes a lighthearted source material too seriously to work.
  • The Foreigner (2017) completely drops the lighthearted kung-fu antics Jackie Chan is famous for in favor of Black-and-Gray Morality, much more brutal violence, and next to no moments of comic relief, making it quite possibly the darkest movie in his entire career.
  • Forrest Gump is a unique case of this. In general it’s considered one of the most heartwarming and uplifting films of all time, but compared to the original book by Winston Groom, it’s actually far darker and much more of a Tear Jerker. The original novel barring Vietnam is a ludicrous comedy, with Forrest getting into endless hijinks such as wrestling, going into space, hanging out with Raquel Welch and owning a pet chimpanzee. Jenny is a regular vanilla Love Interest and Lieutenant Dan is simply the disabled war buddy of Forrest. The film expounds upon Jenny, making her a Broken Bird due to her sexually abusive father, with Forrest being the one who saves her from suicidal depression after she makes enough bad choices. In the book she simply leaves Forrest, while in the film she dies of Hepatitis C, with Forrest left to raise their son as a single father. Likewise Lieutenant Dan is much more complex and tragic, his Death Seeker status and depression as a disabled veteran who has to find the will to live again being not at all present in the original book. Funnily enough Forest himself is a lighter character compared to the book, but everything else is a Dramedy.
  • Free Willy 2 & 3. Compared to the first movie, in which the only tearjerker was Willy almost dying. The second has Jessie nearly drowning and getting incinerated by an oil tanker fire. While the dangers there are unintentional, the third amps it up by having human villains not capture the whales, but try to kill them and sell their meat to underground markets. Willy's not exempt from this either since in the climax of the film, he actually almost kills the captain of the whaling ship for attacking him, his mate and their unborn child.
  • While Alfred Hitchcock never shied from dark subject matter, Frenzy goes further in terms of violence/sex/language and has a bleaker outlook than most. The title intentionally recalls Psycho, but while Norman at least kills his victims quickly, Rusk is a sadist who likes to take his time.

G 

  • Gamera: The Showa series started out kinda dark before going Lighter and Softer, but the Heisei Trilogy goes headlong into being dark as hell.
  • Ghostbusters II might not be as good as the first movie, but it sure is darker than the first, involving an ancient god in a painting looking to be reborn in a baby, people's emotions manipulating and being manipulated by pink slime under the city, and our heroes (temporarily) being put in an insane asylum at the beginning of the Darkest Hour.
  • G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra had EVERYONE wearing black and a knives and bullets always finding their way into enemy eye sockets. Then we have the Baroness display her cleavage and the buxom Scarlett wearing a sports bra while on a treadmill. Not to mention a guy's face is literally DISSOLVED by his own nanites!
    • The sequel, G.I. Joe: Retaliation, was darker and less cartoonish than the original, even featuring the death of Duke, the hero of the first movie.
    • The original animated TV series, despite being about a paramilitary group assigned to combat a terrorist organization, was nonetheless intended to be child-friendly, i.e. A-Team Firing galore, and despite the fact Scarlett was armed with a crossbow, she'd never consider using it to actually, you know, kill anyone. Perhaps reflecting the post-9/11 attitudes that A Team Firing is unrealistic and cheesy, the GI Joes of the live action film (and recent-vintage animated reprises and the comic books) are depicted as you'd expect a paramilitary force fighting terrorists would be - ruthless killers each with double- and triple-digit body counts. Even Scarlett.
      • The original G.I. Joe: The Movie is way darker than the animated show. Its revealed Cobra are led by an ancient race of reptilian beings, most of the familiar cast are held prisoner by giant alien plants for the entire film, we follow a new team of rookies as they struggle to replace the Joes, Cobra Commander devolves into a giant snake with 100 eyes, Roadblock goes blind, Duke DIES (and is revived thanks to Executive Meddling adding unconvincing ADR).
  • The Godfather. In the original there are certainly some dark and violent moments but ends on triumphant note for the main protagonist and leaves us rooting for the ‘heroes.” In the sequel innocent people are threatened or killed, Michael becomes so obsessive about keeping his power and family legacy that he essentially becomes an emotionless machine and ultimately has his own brother killed just to follow some honor code. All of this was actually a deliberate attempt on the filmmakers part as they felt audiences missed the point of the original.
  • The Godzilla franchise jumps between this and Lighter and Softer. No film has ever topped the original but some try pretty hard. Mothra vs. Godzilla was bleaker than the goofy King Kong vs. Godzilla, Godzilla vs. Hedorah had people melting and one of the biggest body counts of all the franchise after the kid-centered Godzilla's Revenge. Terror of Mechagodzilla was Darker and Edgier than Godzilla Vs Mecha Godzilla which featured violence but had a very pulpy story; Terror even deals with the issue of suicide. Godzilla 1985 dealt with a possible World War III and was politically heavy, Biollante was just a tad bit lighter but very dark still. Godzilla vs. Destoroyah dealt with Godzilla dying, Jr. dying, and Godzilla possibly undergoing a nuclear meltdown that would destroy the Earth. GMK was even bleaker than Megaguirus thanks to an even more vicious Godzilla terrorizing Japan. And then there is Godzilla (2014), which while perhaps not as dark as the trailers for the film suggested, the film lacks any cheesiness or family-friendliness of the series post-Godzilla Raids Again, hearkening back to the dead-serious 1954 original, though Godzilla himself is still portrayed in a somewhat positive light. Then after the 2014 film came Shin Godzilla, which like GMK, was an attempt to return to the darker roots of the 1954 original, taking its cue from 9-11 and that 2011 Tsunami and Earthquake that struck Japan (along with the subsequent Fukushima nuclear plant disaster). Shin Godzilla also features what is by far the most grotesque and disturbing incarnation of Godzilla himself to date, with ample amounts of Body Horror and a larger emphasis on his Animalistic Abomination traits. Godzilla Minus One followed suit, taking place in postwar 1947 Japan and tonally resembles the 1954 Gojira. Godzilla himself is The Dreaded, and the film does not hold back in depicting its impact on humanity. (the 2014 film's own sequel also counts, featuring many more monsters, including the dreaded King Ghidorah, with a resulting destruction escalation, and even the Big G himself temporarily dying!)
  • The Grey Zone is Darker and Edgier... for a Holocaust film. While films about the topic all depict the unimaginable human suffering of that period, most (such as Schindler's List, The Pianist, or Escape from Sobibór) also try to portray a narrative of courage and hope amidst all that horror, with at least some characters managing to survive against all odds. This film takes place entirely in Auschwitz, focusing on the prisoners who were forced to assist the Nazis by disposing of the bodies, making the protagonists much more morally ambiguous than is typical. It ends with almost every character of note dying, and most of their efforts throughout the film either resulting in a rather minor victory (half the crematoria remain after the uprising, and the death industry continues) or simply rendered pointless (the little girl they tried to save, who's killed by the Nazi captain after a Hope Spot).
  • The Guillotines, a remake of the Shaw Brothers duology Flying Guillotine. In the original the tyranny of the Manchurian Emperor is hinted at most (and only shown in the second film, and even then not by much), the hero Ma-Deng gets over being betrayed by his friends from the former Guillotine Squad rather easily, and most of the onscreen deaths are either rebels, Guillotine Squad members or Imperial soldiers. The remake instead opens with the new Guillotine Squad's graphic massacre of several people, the suffering of civilains in an age of tyranny shown in full detail, an execution scene where a dozen prisoners are sentenced to Off with His Head! and their craniums shot into the air, and a sub-plot about a plague outbreak and the population suffering for it. The movie's also Bloodier and Gorier for good measure.

H 

  • Rob Zombie's remake of Halloween (2007) and its sequel fits this trope. While the originals were fairly dark in their own right, Zombie creates a darker, gritter world filled with rapist orderlies, necrophiliacs, Abusive Parents (namely Michael Myers'), and a barrage of characters who swear like sailors. Even Michael himself kills in a more violent, brutal manner. Not everybody was fond of these changes.
  • As with their book counterparts, the Harry Potter films became increasingly dark and serious starting with Prisoner of Azkaban, but this is evidenced most in the last three sequels, both in terms of cinematography and subject matter. The first two films were full of warm golds and reds, while the later films favour cold blues and Deathly Hallows is almost black and white. To further hammer this fact in, "Hedwig's Theme", which introduces each film, sounds slightly shriller and more discordant in each consecutive film. But after Voldemort was defeated in the last film, the vivid colours of the first movies return.
    • At some points in the final three films the action, which is easy to see when watching in a dark cinema or room, is hard to see in a bright room with sunlight shining in.
    • The Warner Bros. production logos evolve to reflect how the films progressively get darker with each installment.
      • Even the early movies when Harry was young were already Darker and Edgier despite not bringing more gore and other mature content (and despite cutting plenty of stuff from the books). Simply because the film's use of cinematic techniques gave it a more somber atmosphere. Just listening to the main theme, introduced in the first film Sorceror's Stone, alone would make you feel its a darker story than the book would imply and thats not counting other film technology and tricks such as white and black flashbacks, a dark portrayal of Hogwart's architecture and interior with dim lighting, and so much more. Even knowing its a children's story, the atmosphere the film invokes makes gives the impression its aimed at older audiences.
  • Hellboy (2019), unlike the previous Hellboy movies, was rated R and contained horror elements and lots and lots of gore.
  • The original draft screenplay for Highlander was quite a bit darker than the one used in the final film. Connor Macleod was born in 1408 rather than 1518, and he lived with his mother and father; rather than enjoying a happy marriage to Heather (her character was not in the story), Connor was promised to a young girl named Mara who rejected his immortality and drove him away (aspects of this character survive in his Evil Redhead girlfriend who wanted him burned at the stake). He spent the next five centuries as a sword-collecting recluse and had 37 children with a load of different women. And rather than a Laughably Evil Russian barbarian dressed up as a biker, the film's villain was envisaged as a deeply disturbed and depressed Englishman named Carl Smith but known as the Knight, who wore a suit and bowler hat and had no reason to live without the Game.
  • Richard Kelly wrote a screenplay for Louis Sachar's lighthearted Black Comedy, Holes, that went in this direction. Instead of searching for buried treasure at a juvenile delinquent summer camp, the movie would have had the boys searching for nuclear weapons in a post-apocalyptic Texas. One scene has Stanley visiting a prostitute. The studio instead used the screenplay written by Sachar himself.
  • Home Alone 2: Lost in New York is much less lighthearted than the first film, taking place in New York rather than a Chicago suburb, and with Kevin using traps that would easily be deadly in real life. Also, the Bandits have a gun this time and when they catch Kevin, Harry fully intends to use it on him. Ultimately, it ends up arguably being an Even Better Sequel.
    • The third film takes it even further...but is generally considered a flop.
  • The 2002 Hound of the Baskervilles TV movie starring Richard Roxburgh transforms Conan Doyle's classic detective novel into something much more like a "gritty" modern crime drama, featuring more blood; more violence (Holmes has to beat the information out of the cab driver instead of bribing him); more death (Beryl Stapleton is killed in this version); Holmes gratuitously shooting up coke in the middle of the case; and an ending suggesting that Watson has genuinely resented Holmes's manipulation of him and others during the investigation and that their friendship may have been permanently damaged.
  • The Hunger Games:

I 

  • The classic Singaporean dramedy, I Not Stupid, and its (standalone) sequel, I Not Stupid Too. The first movie has its share of serious moments, but mostly revolves around three kids trying to excel in their studies with an optimistic ending where everything works out in the end (despite the odds). In the sequel two of the three protagonists are teenagers, and the film delves into more mature topics like Parental Neglect, the main characters getting expelled and joining a gang, and a Bittersweet Ending where one of the fathers died to save his child, after realizing his ignorance of his son is what drove his child into becoming a criminal.
  • It (2017) is not only is darker than the 1990’s miniseries, but in some respects it is actually darker and even more messed up than the book (albeit, still not by much). Case in point Beverly’s father Alvin having Pervert Dad incestuous feelings for his daughter was merely implied in King’s book, whereas in the 2017 film has him explicitly trying to rape Beverly in the third act. Not to mention Bev’s mother dying before the events the movie (unlike the book where she was still around to offer some support) makes Beverly’s situation all the more distressing. Additionally, in this version, as revealed by a Deleted Scene Henry Bowers influenced by Pennywise slashed Vic and Belch’s throats, unlike the book where Henry legitimately cared for his cronies with their deaths at Pennywise’s hands making him go even more insane.
  • Independence Day: Resurgence is this to its predecessor. While there are still corny jokes and one-liners here and there, the overall tone of the movie is more serious.
  • Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, with its Satanic? Religion of Evil, Human Sacrifice by Beat Still, My Heart, child slavery, a villain that actually says that he is trying to commit global genocide (unlike the first film, where the Nazis are just said to be trying to Take Over the World) and generally dark and oppressive tone is this to the preceding Raiders of the Lost Ark and largely responsible for the creation of both the USA PG-13 rating and the British 12 (yep, Doom was released as PG, and that's after they were forced to change the original title, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Death). Making it worse, the movie is the only one in the franchise where Indy has a Kid Sidekick and there are other child characters, which probably led parents to think that it was actually more child-friendly back when it was released. Both Steven Spielberg and George Lucas were actually going through respective break ups when they making Doom, and it very much shows.
  • Amazingly, all four Invasion of the Body Snatchers adaptations are darker and bleaker than the original novel by Jack Finney. In the 1956 and 1993 films, humanity has been reduced to tiny pockets by the Pod People with Miles in the 1956 version losing his girlfriend Becky and only able get any help at the very end, while the protagonists of the 1993 film barely survive against the duplicates and it’s implied the Pods have spread across the globe. In the 2007 film while the invasion is stopped, it’s still stated Humans Are the Real Monsters and the Pod People were better. Then there’s the beloved 1978 adaptation, where the Assimilation Plot is successful and the film ends on a famously upsetting and terrifying note. This flies in the face of Finney’s original book which has a Surprisingly Happy Ending with anti-nihilistic themes, Miles is able to prevent Becky from being assimilated and in the face of the sheer Determinator resilience of the human race who will fight to survive no matter what, the Pods ultimately do a Screw This, I'm Outta Here! The books ends with Miles, Becky, Jack and Theodora living peacefully together.
  • Invisible Mom II: In the first movie, the worst thing Dr. Woorter had intended to do was to steal credit for Karl's Invisibility invention and then frame Karl himself as a legally insane individual. In this movie, Olivia and Bernard intend to murder their younger cousin Eddie to inherit the fortune that corresponds to him after the passing of Randolph St. John, and will also attempt to kill the Griffin family to Leave No Witnesses.
  • Aces: Iron Eagle III is noticeably dark in comparison to the other Iron Eagle movies. In addition to not being the only one directed by Sidney J. Furie, it's the only one rated R and it is also Bloodier and Gorier.

J 

  • James Bond films:
    • Licence to Kill is by far the darkest of the series to that point. It starts with Colombian drug lord Franz Sanchez feeding Bond's longtime friend and ally to a shark (after raping and killing his new bride), followed by Bond resigning from MI6, going rogue, and killing every member of Sanchez's organization in increasingly violent ways.
    • The Daniel Craig Bond films, starting with Casino Royale are generally darker and more realistic than previous Bond films, going deeper into Bond's pathos and doing away with most of the wisecracks, gadgets and slapstick. Skyfall also goes in for Deconstructor Fleet, Dented Iron, serious questions about everyone's sanity, and The Bad Guy Wins by killing M although his victory is indirect as he is killed by Bond before M kicks the bucket.
      • The theme song gets in on this too, with the lyrics and the melody probably being the most somber in the franchise's history. And even if not, the credits sequence certainly is—instead of the usual silhouettes of gyrating nubile women, we get numerous scenes of death and destruction.
      • Spectre: The sequel to Skyfall is quite dark, and the Big Bad, Franz Oberhauser is the darkest version of 007's Arch-Enemy Ernst Stavro Blofeld yet. He relishes in sadistic glee than most of his predecessors, and has developed an irrational grudge against an orphaned 007 for being favored more by his father when the two were in their teens. He later commits Patricide to spite 007, fakes his own death and stays low for a brief time before reemerging as the leader of the titular criminal organization and orchestrating numerous tragedies in 007's personal life in later years. Add to the fact that instead of just focusing on manipulating events to his organization's favor via proxies as his past incarnations did, Blofeld also dabbles in chillingly realistic crimes such as sexual slavery, narcotics and actively overthrowing governments to put in Spectre-aligned henchmen. Thus, Spectre is now more a subversive organization than its previous incarnations, combined with the fact that Blofeld runs it like a tyrannical dictator with an iron fist, killing any underling who double-crosses him or gets out of line as a warning to others.
      • No Time to Die is easily the bleakest of the series, culminating with Bond dying at the end. The film opens with a child witnessing her mother's murder and nearly being killed herself, Bond and Madeleine get a major Happy Ending Override, there's a plot to wipe out potentially millions of people with a virus that can be altered to target specific people or even entire families, Bond loses yet another person close to him and the climax involves a child in mortal peril, all of which is played very seriously.
    • There is often a tendency for the franchise to follow-up a particularly campy film with a Darker and Edgier entry, such as On Her Majesty's Secret Service after You Only Live Twice, For Your Eyes Only after Moonraker, and Casino Royale after Die Another Day.
  • John Wick: Chapter 2 is quite a bit darker than the first movie in tone and theme. While the first movie was a more straight-forward revenge plot, this one deals with themes like honor, duty, destiny and death. Markedly, while the first was a lot more humorous in showing Iosef and Viggo panicking over Wick's wrath, this time Wick's foes are deadly serious. It's even noticeable every single victory Wick achieves over the movie are Pyrrhic at best, unlike the first.
    • John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum follows the above by being a movie where danger lies on every corner, given Wick is a wanted man and the High Table of the assassin "syndicate" brings some of their worst to stop him. The ending is similarly downbeat: John is shot by one of the few people who had his back and left for dead, but rescued by another High Table victim seeking revenge.
  • The Jungle Book (2016): While the plot mostly follows the 1967 Disney adaptation, the overall tone seems much more faithful to Kipling's original text, with far less goofy comedy and more epic dialogue and gritty action scenes.
  • Jurassic Park:
    • The Lost World: Jurassic Park is remembered as the most violent of the franchise, notably for being the film with the highest body count and the most violent death scenes (at least until Jurassic World came along, anyway). Oddly enough, at the same time it attempts at humor far more frequently than either of the other installments, mostly due to the fact that Malcolm takes the reins as the main protagonist, making for some weird Mood Whiplash. On a further note, this was the only film in the entire franchise to have gotten the 14A rating in Canada instead of the PG rating until Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, which was then bumped down to PG for the home release.
    • Jurassic World is this to the older Jurassic Park movies. The creation of the Indominus Rex is easily the most ethically questionable of all compared to the other, more "natural" dinosaurs, and she's the only dinosaur antagonist in all the films to be unquestionably and actively malicious rather than merely a very dangerous animal. For the first time ever in a Jurassic Park film, her creators have ulterior and devious motives for doing so. The film also has the highest body count of the series if you include dinosaur and human victims (though even with human victims alone, it still ranks as the highest even over its own sequel), and it's the first film to feature the on-screen death of a woman (which has also gained a lot of attention in internet circles for being particularly disturbing).
    • Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is even darker, particularly given director J.A. Bayona's horror credentials. The opening scene takes place on the dinosaur-infested Isla Nublar in a rainy night, and features both the T. rex and the Mosasaurus stalking their human quarries. The Indoraptor is possibly one of the most disturbing dinosaurs in the franchise, doling out several vicious deaths, demonstrating sadism and a sense of psychopathic humor, and being a Flawed Prototype. Eli also has the most violent death in the series, slowly being brutally devoured by several predators - and he himself dished out a shocking end to Benjamin Lockwood, making him the first character in the films to explicitly try - and the first in the franchise to succeed in killing another human. The death of Ken Wheatley comes quite close to the top of brutal deaths as well, courtesy of the above-mentioned Indoraptor. The film also ends with an ecological disaster, and the dinosaurs escaping into the mainland. It is also the second film in the entire franchise to get 14A in Canada.

K 

  • King Kong (2005) in comparison to King Kong (1933), with more gore, nighttime scenes, darker behaviour from the heroes, and more horrifying monsters.
    • An unspoken conceit of the Peter Jackson remake is that the original 1933 story of King Kong was Hollywood's Bowdlerised version of events, and that what we're seeing in the remake is what really happened.
  • 1928 film West of Zanzibar was already a pretty dark and edgy tale, about a bitter, rage-filled Evil Cripple who takes custody of a little girl and turns her into an alcoholic whore as part of a revenge plot against her father, the man who crippled him. The 1932 remake, Kongo, amazingly, manages to make this even darker. The first version includes an opening act that shows the protagonist (named Phroso in that film) as a decent and honorable man, who is then dumped by his wife and crippled in a fight with his wife's lover. Kongo omits that whole opening act, which served to humanize the protagonist, and instead opens with protagonist Flint already in Africa, an evil cripple scheming to destroy an innocent woman as part of a revenge plot. The addition of Tula, Flint's slutty companion, and Dr. Kingsland with his crippling drug addiction also serve to make this film even nastier than the already nasty 1928 version.

L 

  • Leapin’ Leprechauns! is a family film where the villain is a man who wants to turn his father's land into an amusement park. In the sequel, Spellbreaker: Secret of the Leprechauns, the queen of the dead kidnaps the heroes and takes them to the underworld.
  • Lethal Weapon 2 is the darkest and the most violent of the series, with very ruthless villains who even kill Riggs' love interest. Says something that Riggs ends the movie very injured, and the original script even planned for him to die.
  • Look Who's Talking, Too! focuses on James and Mollie's marriage possibly faltering and Mikey & Julie's Sibling Rivalry. It climaxes with James fighting an armed robber and their apartment almost burning down.

M 

  • Maleficent was this to Sleeping Beauty (1959), being a Perspective Flip focused on the villainess and featuring a rape analogy (namely, Maleficent has her wings forcibly cut). And sequel Maleficent: Mistress of Evil managed to push things further, given there's attempted genocide of magical creatures with plenty of Family-Unfriendly Violence.
  • The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015): Both Solo and Kuryakin, as well as the film itself, compared to the series and its versions of the characters.
  • The Mask of Zorro is easily darker than every previous Zorro media, film and television included. Montero stages a Hostage Situation with random people to be killed just to attract Diego (something few if any Zorro villains have done before), and Diego lives easily his darkest hours when his wife is killed, his child abducted and when himself is thrown in prison for 20 years. On top of this, Captain Love decapitates Alejandro's brother and keeps the head in a jar.
  • The Matrix is a rare case where the first couldn't be topped at this, given the very distinctive dark and oppressive mood (particularly before and up till the moment Neo is awakened) of the original is almost completely absent in further installments (bar The Animatrix). While still as (if not even more) violent, the other movies shift their focus toward overt philosophical discussions and grander action scenes, and away from the original's cyberpunk influences and horrifying, mind-bending scenes.
    • Even regarding the action scenes, the fact that Neo spends most of the first movie as a relatively normal, vulnerable human, as opposed to the sequels, where he spends most of the time as The One and wipes the floor with most of his rivals, makes the stakes feel much higher and the fights far more tense and brutal. Still, even when he fights without his powers or the action focuses on other normal humans, the fights rarely feel as desperate or bleak as those in the original.
  • Menace II Society. It's much more violent, sad, downbeat, darker and edgier than Boyz n the Hood. This film has almost no lighter moments.
  • Men in Black 3. It includes a much darker villain than any from the first two, and partly as a result of this the heroes face tougher moral dilemmas and more emotionally overwhelming circumstances than before.
  • Not only is Mission: Impossible II the darkest in the series, but like Licence to Kill, it came close to getting an R rating. It has a higher rating in most countries for this reason.
  • Monty Python's The Meaning of Life is still a comedy, but the humour is much edgier than the troupe's other two films.
  • Mortal Kombat (2021) is this to the previous live-action films in the series (being the first theatrical installment to get an R rating), featuring many Bloodier and Gorier fatalities depicted in a game-accurate fashion and much more profanity than the previous films. It also places a greater emphasis on the stakes of the tournament and integrates more of the games' Black Comedy as well.
  • Mulan (2020) is this to the animated version, with barely any comedy and much more focus on the war, with all the on-screen deaths that this implies. Says something it earned higher content ratings than the other Disney Live-Action Remakes (the film is their first live-action reversion to receive a PG-13 rating).

N 

  • New Jack City is a good example of this. Scotty is not always noble himself and actually threatens to kill Pookie if he says another word, in anger.

O 

P 

R 

S 

  • Saving Private Ryan compared to a lot of other earlier war movies. Established very quickly with the opening Omaha Beach battle - you're introduced to The Squad only for nearly all of them to be slaughtered extremely quickly, and a lot of the poor sods who bite the dust do so in extremely violent ways (the flamethrower guy who goes up and takes out a few surrounding soldiers, the man who's in a state of shock and walking around looking for his severed arm, the young soldier lying on the ground trying to hold his intestines in, the radio guy who winds up with no face, etc.).
  • In the Shaolin Temple trilogy, the third movie Martial Arts of Shaolin walks the middle line. It's far more serious that the second installment, Kids From Shaolin (a Lighter and Softer episode that's borderline made for toddlers) but nowhere as serious as the genocide-heavy first film.
  • Shaolin is a remake of Shaolin Temple, but somehow managed to be more serious than the already-dark original. Including the hero having a child who died horribly halfway through (nothing of the sorts happens in the original), the hero losing plenty of friends, a higher bodycount of named characters, even more emotional moments, the hero getting back-stabbed and an ending where The Hero Dies.
  • Snow White & the Huntsman compared to almost any other adaptation without a doubt. From the trailers alone, we can already see that this movie is way more violent, with epic-scale battles and soldiers smashing each other to pieces left, right and center, has very scary-looking creatures, and throws in a few nasty twists such as the Queen really being a much older woman that sucks the life out of much younger women to preserve her youth. Oh, and if that weren't enough, almost the entire film and its settings are very dull and colourless, whereas in most other versions, the kingdom and most parts of the forest are much more colourful and presented as nice places to live. Here? Not so much.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022) is slightly darker in tone compared to Sonic the Hedgehog (2020). Even though the second movie still had a similar comedic tone to the first movie, it featured more intense scenes, such as Knuckles hunting down Sonic to kill him, the grudge between Sonic and Robotnik being much more personal and Robotnik trying to destroy the town of Green Hills in the climax.
    • Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024) takes it further with Shadow's story, with much of the focus of his time held with his vendetta against GUN for causing the death of Maria Robotnik. Gerald Robotnik's plan to use the Eclipse Cannon also causes far more damage to the moon than in the games and ends on Robtonik committing a Heroic Sacrifice to stop the cannon.
  • While it could also be seen as Denser and Wackier due to it's cartoonish elements being cranked up (with the inclusion of 3-D of all things to boot) and it's copious amounts of Narm Charm, and still has a lighthearted, silly and fairly optimistic tone, Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over is actually much more serious, darker, deeper, grittier and emotional than the first two films in the Spy Kids franchise. There is much less humor when compared to the first two films (which focused more on the comedy than the action elements), only really being limited to comic relief at best, and the film focuses more on the action and emotional circumstances that our protagonists go through this time round, complete with a rather darker storyline focusing on Juni having to save his sister Carmen from inside a video game created by the Large Ham Big Bad portrayed by Sylvester Stallone of all people, whilst enlisting the help of their grandfather, who actually has a beef with the Big Bad. What is also noticeable is that the protagonists here are put through more life-threatening situations than in the first two movies combined, and also the fact that the color palette is much more subdued to fit the movie's more serious tone. Also, the action sequences themselves are more serious albeit still PG-level cartoonish-looking fight scenes when compared to the comedic martial arts slapstick of the first two films.

T 

  • The original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) film is rife with drama, Family-Unfriendly Violence and street gangs. And it doesn't let you forget that the majority of the Mooks and the eponymous characters are just teenage kids dealing with quite adult issues for their age.
  • Terminator: Dark Fate is this big time, especially after the much Lighter and Softer Terminator Genisys. While not without humor and action, it's darker than even the first film, being almost as if not even more gritty than Terminator Salvation. The new dystopian future strips away all the glory that previous films had and hearkens back to Kyle's flashbacks from the very first Terminator film, with people living off dirt and hiding in ruins.
  • The Transformers Film Series in general. Robots are getting ripped apart, blown up, or their faces bifurcated. The added sex appeal (and not much else) is supplied by Megan Fox. Although amputation, decapitation, and on at least one occasion, crucifixion, were all features of the 80s transformers comics. And Transformers: Dark of the Moon cranks it up, with humans being assassinated, as well as having Sentinel Prime launch a full-scale Decepticon assault on Earth, complete with scenes of carnage.
    • From the rebooted continuity of the film series that started with Bumblebee, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. While it's a bit downplayed due to ROTB not being as dark as the previous sequels in the original 5-film continuity by director Michael Bay, such as the aforementioned DOTM, in no part due to the Breakout Character and instantly comedic Autobot Mirage delivering some well-needed laughs to lighten the tone a bit, and, like the aforementioned Bumblebee movie, has a character-focused narrative at its core, it is this to the preceding movie of the rebooted continuity of the film series, and that is partly due to both the Big Bad and the secondary villain, respectively, of the movie: the Terrorcon commander Scourge and his master, the planet-devouring God of Evil, Unicron. Scourge is a sickening and reprehensible villain himself, being a psychopathic trophy-hunting bot whose monstrous behavior matches that of his appearance - complete with a demonic Nightmare Face, dark coloring, and savage design in both his vehicle and robot alt-modes. Unicron, too, also qualifies as a sickening villain, as he is no other than the Satan of the entire franchise. The movie itself has higher stakes, and it also has dark scenes, such as Unicron torturing Scourge because he only got the first half of the key, as well as the Eldritch Abomination chowing down on the Maximals' home planet at the beginning of the film, and it isn't afraid to show both human and heroic Cybertronians alike at risk or in danger, such as Mirage getting a Near-Death Experience after protecting his human friend Noah from Scourge, Bee getting slayed by the Terrorcon commander, and Optimus Prime trying to outrun the collapsing Transwarp vortex, nearly getting sucked in before Noah and Optimus Primal both save him. One of the supporting protagonists, Airazor, is killed off for real, and the movie ends on a bittersweet note with the surviving protagonists having saved the world from being decimated, and become different, better and close-knit individuals because of it, but the Autobots have lost their only way back home, Unicron still being alive and a threat, and with the aforementioned fact that Airazor has died and her Spark is no more.
  • The German TV two-part version of Treasure Island from 2007 does this a lot. Half of the good guys get an update in evil (Captain Smollett whips crew members only on suspicion, Livesey is much more lascivious and greedy which turns him into a rival to Jim and he even dies in the attempt to save the gold when it's sinking into a swamp, and Ben Gunn becomes more hostile against everyone and Guerilla-like), even the bad guys get crazier (especially Long John Silver and Israel Hands). It also adds the character of Flint's daughter Sheila O'Donnel who is also searching for the treasure while being lusted after by the men (especially Israel Hands). It later turns out, that not Only Flint raped her mother, but later multiple of his crew members collectively did the same and Sheila isn't really Flints daughter.
  • TRON: Legacy is much more grim than the 1982 original. When you got programs violently shattering into data, genocide, a brutal dictator, and brainwashing programs to invade the real world, you got more than just the suits and the environment that's darker than the first Tron.
    • Even the 1982 Original was a D&E risk on Disney's part, their second attempt after The Black Hole. Recall that 5 years earlier, they released Pete's Dragon (1977), which was one of their most saccharine entries. The classic had a few nasty deaths (including an Involuntary Battle to the Death), Cold-Blooded Torture, and some heavy-duty religious themes. Then, there's the infamous Deleted Scene that's just shy of a full-blown sexual encounter.
    • The animated series entry, TRON: Uprising manages to get even more Grimdark. There are scenes of mass murder witch hunts the Renegade. The Renegade is painted as a terrorist by the villans. And Tron himself tries to kill his apprentice in cold blood for intervening in a rampage of revenge against the man who tortured him.

U 

W 

  • Wendy: In comparison with previous Peter Pan stories, there is a lot more grim and unsettling stuff. Some of the children die, go missing, or lose a limb. Those who lose faith in Mother, who keeps them young, will lose their youth, becoming unhappy old people.