Why Do People Like Watching Sad Films?

Read Time: 3 minutes

Here’s why some people appreciate a sad ending

Throughout time

Hamlet, Macbeth, and Romeo and Juliet to name a few. Ever since then, people have been drawn to these plays with tragic endings, whether it be novels, theatre plays, or in films.

Whenever we read or watch something with a tragic twist, we instantly experience an emotional response to it. Even though we know none of it is real, if its well written, we will have an automatic emotional response to it.

If the character roles, the scene, and the situation were even slightly comparable to what we’ve encountered in real life, we feel the need to connect with it. We feel like crying, catching a lump in the throat, connecting to the narrative and it pulls us in deeper.

Sadness without anxiety

It also lets us experience sadness without the need to feel anxious about it. In real life, when we’re facing a tragedy, we’d feel anxious because we know that we have to deal with it. If its a loss of someone dear to us, we need to grieve, and that’s a process anyone wouldn’t want to undergo. But if its a fictional story and we’re just spectators, we can feel vulberable, sad, even cry at times, without anxiety in the mix.

Even if the story is far from your reality, you’d still connect with it emotionally, not because you know how it feels, but because of gratitude. Gratitude it didn’t happen to you, that you still have your loved ones beside you.

Experiential feeling

The deepest meaning I think is the experiential feeling when viewing a film that strucks a chord with you, be it positive or negative. We ask the bigger questions in life:

“Who are we?”
“Am I of value?”
“Will people miss me when I’m gone?”
“What do I really want in life?”

Some films will also leave you wondering about many things, you’d wonder what the director wants to convey so you’d go to forums and threads and look for a community that discusses that particular topic. It creates a bond between strangers with one common thing in mind.

Across different forms of media

This doesn’t apply only to novels and live-action films, but also cartoons, animation and anime media. Such as Watership Down (1978), The Land Before Time (1988), Bambi (1942), Fox and The Hound (1981), Your Lie in April (2014), and Grave of the Fireflies (1988) to name a few.

Even in video games, specially nowadays, a game that is well written will make you weep and would make you not want to finish it. Games such as To The Moon (2011), Nier Automata (2017), Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, and Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII (2007) to name a few.

Watching and feeling these emotions will make you appreciate the small (and of course, the big) things in life even more. And appreciation would lead to personal growth. Makes you want to be better at things to protect those you love.

Don’t be afraid to feel vulnerable whenever an instance arises, even if you read the synopsis of a film or heard about it from a friend, let yourself get enveloped by it.