Best Gloomy Movies
Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of gloomy cinema — measured across 1,311 indexed frames from 18 films, against a 404,689-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.
Gloomy films over-index on doll, striped shirt and child — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.
- 1
Curse of Chucky (2013)
Don ManciniDP Michael MarshallIMDb 5.6TMDB 5.9See in full on FrameThrower →
After the events of Seed of Chucky, Nica, a young woman forced to a wheelchair since birth, has to regroup her sister, Barb and her brother-in-law, Ian for a funeral after the death of her mother. While dealing with Barb, Ian, along with their 5-year-old daughter, Alice; Nica receives an odd package - a creepy doll. After people start showing up dead, the fearless Nica soon suspects that the creepy doll is much more than just a doll.
- 2
Seed of Chucky (2004)
Don ManciniDP Vernon LaytonIMDb 4.9TMDB 5.5See in full on FrameThrower →
Brad Dourifas Chucky (voice)
Jennifer Tillyas Tiffany (voice) / Jennifer Tilly
Billy Boydas Glen / Glenda (voice)
The killer doll is back. Glen, the orphan doll offspring of the irrepressible devilish-doll-come-to-life Chucky and his equally twisted bride Tiffany. When production starts on a movie detailing the urban legend of his parents' lethal exploits, Glen heads for Hollywood where he brings his bloodthirsty parents back from the dead. Although Glen - or is it Glenda? - is immediately accepted, the family dynamics are far from perfect. Chucky and Tiffany go Hollywood and get rolling on a new spree of murderous mayhem, much to gentle Glen's dismay. Chucky can't believe that his son doesn't want to walk in his murdering footsteps, while star-struck Tiffany can't believe that the movie will star her favorite actress, Jennifer Tilly, who soon becomes an unwitting hostess to this new family in more ways than one.
- 3
Cult of Chucky (2017)
Don ManciniDP Michael MarshallIMDb 5.3TMDB 5.8See in full on FrameThrower →
After accused of murdering her family, Nica is taken to an asylum and thinks that she's the cause of the deaths of her family. However, when grisly deaths start to occur, she then realizes that Chucky, her illusion might not be make believe. She also finds out that the doll is slowly starting to possess anyone or anything to join a huge cult to kill off Chucky's victims, but things don't go to well in the asylum, including for Chucky's long lost friend, Andy, who tries to stop the cult from getting bigger while also trying to get past Chucky's wife, "Tiffany."
- 4
It (2017)
Andy MuschiettiDP Chung Chung-hoonIMDb 7.3TMDB 7.2See in full on FrameThrower →
In the Town of Derry, the local kids are disappearing one by one. In a place known as 'The Barrens', a group of seven kids are united by their horrifying and strange encounters with an evil clown and their determination to kill It.
- 5
Mirrors (2008)
Alexandre AjaDP Maxime AlexandreIMDb 6.1TMDB 6.3See in full on FrameThrower →
In New York, the former NYPD detective Ben Carson is hired to work as night watch of the remains of the Mayflower Department Store that was partially destroyed by fire many years ago. Ben became alcoholic and was retired from the police force after killing a man in a shooting. His marriage was also destroyed and now he is living in the apartment of his younger sister Angie. However he has not been drinking for three months and sees the employment as a chance to rebuild his life. When he goes to the rounds in his first night, he finds that the mirrors are impeccably clean and his colleague explains that the former night watch was obsessed with the mirrors. After a couple of nights, Ben sees weird images in the mirrors, but due to the lack of credibility of his past, his ex-wife Amy believes he has hallucinations as a side effect of his medication. When Angie is found brutally murdered in her bathtub, Ben discovers that there is an evil force in the mirror that is chasing him and jeopardizing his family.
- 6
The Ring Two (2005)
Hideo NakataDP Gabriel BeristainIMDb 5.4TMDB 5.8See in full on FrameThrower →
A high school student named Jake tries to make his girlfriend Emily watch a cursed tape. But then Jake finds out that Emily covered her eyes and didn't watch the tape, and then Jake is killed by Samara Morgan (from the first The Ring movie). Rachel Keller learns of Jake's death and finds his twisted body in the back of an ambulance. Rachel then realizes she once again has to save her son Aidan from Samara the evil ghost child.
- 7
Black Christmas (1974)
Bob ClarkDP Reginald H. MorrisIMDb 7.1TMDB 6.9See in full on FrameThrower →
It's time for Christmas break, and the sorority sisters make plans for the holiday, but the strange anonymous phone calls are beginning to put them on edge. When Clare disappears, they contact the police, who don't express much concern. Meanwhile Jess is planning to get an abortion, but boyfriend Peter is very much against it. The police finally begin to get concerned when a 13-year-old girl is found dead in the park. They set up a wiretap to the sorority house, but will they be in time to prevent a sorority girl attrition problem?
- 8
Halloween 2 (2009)
Rob ZombieDP Brandon TrostIMDb 4.8TMDB 5.3See in full on FrameThrower →
Michael Myers is still at large and no less dangerous than ever. After a failed reunion to reach his baby sister at their old home, Laurie Strode is immediately taken to a hospital to be treated by the wounds that had been afflicted by her brother a few hours ago. However, Michael isn't too far off and will continue his murdering 'Halloween' rampage until he gets his sister all to himself.
- 9
Speak No Evil (2022)
Christian TafdrupDP Erik Molberg HansenIMDb 6.6TMDB 6.7See in full on FrameThrower →
A Danish family visits a Dutch family they met on a holiday. What was supposed to be an idyllic weekend slowly starts unraveling as the Danes try to stay polite in the face of unpleasantness.
- 10
Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
Guillermo del ToroDP Guillermo NavarroIMDb 8.2TMDB 7.8See in full on FrameThrower →
In 1944 Falangist Spain, a girl, fascinated with fairy-tales, is sent along with her pregnant mother to live with her new stepfather, a ruthless captain of the Spanish army. During the night, she meets a fairy who takes her to an old faun in the center of the labyrinth. He tells her she's a princess, but must prove her royalty by surviving three gruesome tasks. If she fails, she will never prove herself to be the true princess and will never see her real father, the king, again.
What gloomy films are made of
How much more often each element appears in a gloomy frame than in an average frame from the catalogue. A ratio, not a share — doll is not in most frames, it is simply far more common here than anywhere else.
- doll36.4×
- striped shirt3.3×
- child2.1×
- girl2.1×
- doorway2.1×
- asphalt1.9×
- eyes1.9×
- shadow1.8×
How gloomy films are shot
Weaker signals than the objects above, and worth saying so: most dramatic genres skew dark and night-heavy, so these numbers separate gloomy from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.
- 10%low anglevs 5% baseline
- 26%naturalvs 44% baseline
- 60%low keyvs 39% baseline
- 28%dayvs 43% baseline
- 60%nightvs 42% baseline
What breaks the pattern
Ammonite (2020) is the least typical film here — it carries the least of what the rest of this list is made of. Which is either a failure of the genre label, or the most interesting film on the page.
Method
Every frame in the FrameThrower catalogue is tagged for shot size, lighting, time of day, camera angle, colour and the objects visible in it. This page aggregates those tags across 1,311 frames from 18 films carrying the gloomy label, and compares each figure to the same measurement across the whole catalogue (404,689 frames). Films are ranked by how closely they match the theme’s over-indexed elements, weighted by how distinctive each element is; one film per series. Only films with at least 20 indexed frames and 500 TMDB votes are listed.
Machine-readable: /api/list/gloomy
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