Comedy means joy, usually. When we go to the theater to see a funny movie, we expect hysterical laughter, goofy situational humor, the endorphin surge of a well-placed punchline, even the primal rush that comes with slapstick physical comedy of the Looney Tunes persuasion. To suggest that a comedy movie could ever make you feel bad would be crazy talk — unless we’re talking cringe comedies.
Cringe comedies walk the fine line between harmless jokes and something darker, more violent. They poke and prod at our deepest fears, force us to watch beloved characters lay bare their utmost insecurities, comment cruelly on the peculiarity of social norms and the lengths we ourselves go to in order to fit ourselves into a society that would cast us out after one wrong move, weird quirk, or awkward dinner party joke. They’re inspired by feelings we’ve all felt, situations we hope we never find ourselves in, and confirm for everyone watching that at least we’re all worried about the same things.
But watching through our fingers brings us together just as effectively as yukking it up to a well-deployed one-liner, and as the world becomes stranger by the day, we turn more and more often to movies whose sense of humor is just as strange. Dinner parties that devolve into fights, if they even start at all; people who go to extreme lengths to gain the acceptance of their peers; outrageously weird characters who document the equally weird ways in which we live. They’re uncomfortable, often mean, and always somewhat difficult to watch, and if we’re laughing, it’s usually out of relief that at least whatever is happening onscreen isn’t happening to us.
The 10 Most Uncomfortable Cringe Comedies
We watched these through our fingers, but we still watched.
Gallery Credit: Emma Stefansky
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