Best Suicide attempt Movies
Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of suicide attempt cinema — measured across 2,472 indexed frames from 39 films, against a 404,689-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.
Suicide attempt films over-index on dress, mirror and curtain — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.
- 1
The Virgin Suicides (1999)
Sofia CoppolaDP Edward LachmanIMDb 7.2TMDB 7.1See in full on FrameThrower →
A man about forty years of age tells the story from when he was a teenager in upscale suburban Detroit of his and three of his friends' fascination with the mysterious and doomed Lisbon sisters. In 1974, the sisters were seventeen year old Therese, sixteen year old Mary, fifteen year old Bonnie, fourteen year old Lux, and thirteen year old Cecilia. Their fascination still remains as they try to piece together the entire story. The sisters were mysteries if only because of having a strict and overprotective upbringing by their father, who taught math at the girls' private co-ed school, and overly devout Catholic mother, who largely dictated the household rules. The story focuses primarily on two incidents and the resulting situations on the girls' lives. The first was an action by Cecilia to deal with her emotions over her life. And the second was the relationship between Lux - the sister who pushed the boundaries of the household rules most overtly in doing what most teenagers want to do - and Trip Fontaine, he who could have any girl he wanted but wanting solely Lux.
- 2
Vertigo (1958)
Alfred HitchcockDP Robert BurksIMDb 8.2TMDB 8.1See in full on FrameThrower →
James Stewartas Det. John 'Scottie' Ferguson
Kim Novakas Madeleine Elster / Judy Barton
Barbara Bel Geddesas Marjorie 'Midge' Wood
Following his early retirement as a detective from the San Francisco Police Department, John Ferguson - Scottie to his friends - becomes obsessed with two women in succession, those obsessions which trouble his long time friend and former fiancée, Midge Wood, a designer of women's undergarments. The first is wealthy and elegant platinum blonde Madeleine Elster, the wife of his college acquaintance Gavin Elster, who hires John to follow her in Gavin's belief that she may be a danger to herself in thinking that she has recently been possessed by the spirit of Carlotta Valdes, Madeleine's great-grandmother who she knows nothing about, but who Gavin knows committed suicide in being mentally unbalanced when she was twenty-six, Madeleine's current age. The second is Judy Barton, who John spots on the street one day. Judy is a working class girl, but what makes John obsessed with her is that, despite her working class style and her brunette hair, she is the spitting image of Madeleine, into who he tries to transform Judy. The initial question that John has is if there is some connection between Madeleine and Judy. What happens between John and individually with Madeleine and Judy is affected by the reason John took that early retirement: a recent workplace incident that showed that he is acrophobic which leads to a severe case of vertigo whenever he looks down from tall heights.
- 3
Delicatessen (1991)
Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Marc CaroDP Darius KhondjiIMDb 7.5TMDB 7.3See in full on FrameThrower →
Centered on a post-apocalyptic society where food is scarce and used as currency. In an apartment building with a delicatessen on the ground floor. The owner of the eatery also owns the apartment building and is in need of a new maintenance man since the prior one "mysteriously" disappeared. A former clown applies for the job and the butcher's intent is to have him work for as little as possible. The clown and butcher's daughter fall in love and she tries to foil her father's plans by contacting the "troglodytes", a grain eating sub-group of society who live entirely underground.
- 4
8 1/2 (1963)
Federico FelliniDP Gianni Di VenanzoIMDb 8.0TMDB 8.1See in full on FrameThrower →
Guido is a film director, trying to relax after his last big hit. He can't get a moment's peace, however, with the people who have worked with him in the past constantly looking for more work. He wrestles with his conscience, but is unable to come up with a new idea. While thinking, he starts to recall major happenings in his life, and all the women he has loved and left. An autobiographical film of Fellini, about the trials and tribulations of film making.
- 5
City Lights (1931)
Charlie ChaplinDP Roland TotherohIMDb 8.5TMDB 8.3See in full on FrameThrower →
A tramp falls in love with a beautiful blind girl. Her family is in financial trouble. The tramp's on-and-off friendship with a wealthy man allows him to be the girl's benefactor and suitor.
- 6
Pedro AlmodóvarDP José Luis AlcaineIMDb 7.5TMDB 7.4See in full on FrameThrower →
Pepa's lover, Iván, leaves her and she tries to contact him to find out why he's left. In her search for Iván, she confronts his wife and son, who are as clueless as she is. Meanwhile, Candela, her friend, is afraid the police might be looking for her because of her ex-boyfriend, a muslim terrorist, and his criminal activities. As the plot develops, it is revealed that everyone's lives are more intertwined than they could have ever expected.
- 7
The Lobster (2015)
Yorgos LanthimosDP Thimios BakatakisIMDb 7.1TMDB 7.0See in full on FrameThrower →
A love story set in a dystopian near future where single people are arrested and transferred to a creepy hotel. There they are obliged to find a matching mate in 45 days. If they fail, they are transformed into an animal and released into the woods.
- 8
21 Grams (2003)
Alejandro G. IñárrituDP Rodrigo PrietoIMDb 7.6TMDB 7.3See in full on FrameThrower →
Paul Rivers, an ailing mathematician lovelessly married to an English émigré; Christina Peck, an upper-middle-class suburban housewife and mother of two girls; and Jack Jordan, a born-again ex-con, are brought together by a terrible accident that changes their lives.
- 9
Gattaca (1997)
Andrew NiccolDP Slawomir IdziakIMDb 7.7TMDB 7.6See in full on FrameThrower →
In the not-too-distant future, a less-than-perfect man wants to travel to the stars. Society has categorized Vincent Freeman as less than suitable given his genetic make-up and he has become one of the underclass of humans that are only useful for menial jobs. To move ahead, he assumes the identity of Jerome Morrow, a perfect genetic specimen who is a paraplegic as a result of a car accident. With professional advice, Vincent learns to deceive DNA and urine sample testing. Just when he is finally scheduled for a space mission, his program director is killed and the police begin an investigation, jeopardizing his secret.
- 10
Harold and Maude (1971)
Hal AshbyDP John A. AlonzoIMDb 7.8TMDB 7.6See in full on FrameThrower →
Young adult Harold Chasen, solitary and friendless by choice, is obsessed with death, this fascination manifesting itself in he staging his own fake suicides, driving a hearse and attending funerals, even of people he doesn't know, all to the chagrin of his exasperated wealthy mother with whom he lives. Mrs. Chasen is determined for Harold to be "normal", including her sending him into therapy to deal with his issues and finding him a girlfriend through a computer dating service. It is at a series of funerals that Harold meets Maude, on the cusp of her eightieth birthday, she who too attends funerals of strangers. Unlike Harold, Maude is obsessed with life - her own life to be more precise - she does whatever she wants to please herself, damned what others may think or how they may be affected. Since she can't take material possessions with her, she is more interested in experiences, with whatever material possessions she has - often "borrowed" without asking - only to further those experiences. Their friendship is initially based on how the other can further their own priority. But as Maude shows Harold how to truly live, Harold falls in love with her. Their relationship, already limited in time by the sheer math, is curtailed even more as Maude shows him only not how to live well, but die well.
What suicide attempt films are made of
How much more often each element appears in a suicide attempt frame than in an average frame from the catalogue. A ratio, not a share — dress is not in most frames, it is simply far more common here than anywhere else.
- dress2.8×
- mirror1.9×
- curtain1.8×
- water1.6×
- glasses1.5×
How suicide attempt 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 suicide attempt from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.
- 84%eye levelvs 69% baseline
What breaks the pattern
The Kid (1921) 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 2,472 frames from 39 films carrying the suicide attempt 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/suicide-attempt
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