Severance (2006)
Backwoods Brutality Comedy
Rather funny British-made parody on Backwoods Brutality cliches where a work group of a team-building exercise ending up hunted by East European locals
Black Comedy
Black Humour is a special type of comedy. While most mainstream Comedy derives its laughs from plays on words, incongruities, embarrassments and absurdities, black comedy is that which laughs at matters that people usually take seriously. Typical subjects in black comedy are matters like death and murder, war, illness, suffering and the general miseries of life.
A protagonist in a black comedy may be akin to a character in a Franz Kafka novel, finding the world and society around them seemingly run by madmen or to operate on insane principles that frequently seem to be conspiring against them. In the horror genre, Black Comedy will also laugh at murder, dismemberment, bloodshed and cruelties inflicted on people – there is a strong vein of Black Comedy in Horror Comedy.
Black Comedy also frequently maps over onto absurdist humour. This derives from the popular Theatre of the Absurd movement and involves characters caught in frequently surreal and nonsensical situations. The mix of absurdism and black comedy is frequently prevalent in British humour. Many of the entries here are listed under Gonzo Cinema.
Sightseers (2012)
Tourists on a Killing Spree/Black Comedy
The third film from Ben Wheatley who here makes a black comedy about two tourists on a murder spree, eliminating those they don’t like. A film that digs into British class and provincial small-mindedness with scabrous regard
Silence, Ça Tue (2008)
Murderous Filmmakers Mockumentary
Belgian-made black comedy where a filmmaker frustrated with trying to raise funding starts shooting producers and filming the result
Sir Henry at Rawlinson End (1980)
Surrealism
Surreal and plotless British film based on a radio show about the happenings around a country mansion
Smoking Causes Coughing (2022)
Gonzo Deadpan Vignettes
Another of Quentin Dupieux’s hilariously gonzo comedies made up a series of deadpan surreal vignettes, including a witty parody of the modern superhero film
Snowflake (2017)
Meta-Fiction/Hitmen Discover They Are Characters in a Screenplay
A insanely madcap work of meta-fiction. Imagine stupider versions of John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson from Pulp Fiction mixed with Stranger Than Fiction as they discover they are fictional characters
Songs from the Second Floor (2000)
Surreal Vignettes
From Swedish director Roy Andersson, a series of plotless, surreal vignettes pitched with black humour
Speak No Evil (2022)
Sinister Hosts/Black Comedy
A darkly funny Danish film about a couple who accept an invite to visit another couple who seem to have no boundaries, before everything gets nasty
Stuff (1999)
Resurrection Ring/Black Comedy
Canadian-made black comedy about a ring that can revive the dead
Suburban Gothic (2014)
Middle-Class Satire/Haunting
From the director of Excision, another film that satirically digs its claws into middle-class values but there is the feeling we have seen all of this before and the film fails to provide anything funny. Added to this is a barely scary ghost plot the film occasionally remembers to get back to
The Suicide Shop (2012)
Animation/Black Comedy
French animated film that is about as far from children’s entertainment as it is possible to get – a mordantly dark comedy that operates in similar territory to The Addams Family in its tale of a family that operates a shop selling items of despatch to the suicidally minded
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986)
Backwoods Brutality
The first sequel to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre where Tobe Hooper returns and pushes the series into an outrageously black sense of humour
Theater of Blood (1973)
Mad Shakespearean Actor's Revenge
Following on from the success of the Dr Phibes films, Vincent Price is cast as a mad Shakespearean actor who employs comically grotesque deaths from Shakespeare’s plays to kill his critics
There’s Something About Mary (1998)
Stalker Black Comedy
The Farrelly Brothers have become known for their crude and rude humour but this stalker comedy is one they hit with all barrels firing and has become regarded as a modern comedy classuc
Tone-Deaf (2019)
Wannabe Serial Killer Black Comedy
Dark, sardonic comedy where Amanda Crew rents a house to get away for a weekend only to face a murderous Robert Patrick. The humour is barbed and quite hilarious
Tragedy Girls (2017)
Teen Girls on a Killing Spree/Black Comedy
Darkly funny comedy where two girls in high school conduct a series of murders to create publicity for their true crime blog
Visitor Q (2001)
Catalogue of Perversions/Mysterious Visitor/Black Comedy
One of the key films in the cult of Takashi Miike that has been frequently banned for its taboo-defying outrages in which a mysterious visitor causes a family household to descend into perverse extremes
The Voices (2014)
Inside a Mentally Ill Man's Mind/Black Comedy
On the scale of weird movies, this is about as out there as it gets – Ryan Reynolds has conversations with his cat and dog who urge him to cut people’s heads off, which continue to talk as he keeps them in his refrigerator. A mind-bogglingly warped film and quite brilliant in its dark funniness when you work out what is going on
White Noise (2022)
Satire/Toxic Cloud
Noah Baumbach makes a bitingly satiric adaptation of a Don DeLillo novel about the panic caused by a toxic cloud
Yummy (2019)
Sinister Hospital Black Comedy/Zombie Oubreak
Belgian film that starts out as a blackly funny work about a cut-price East European hospital before seguing into a zombie film