At the Sundance Film Festival in January, I saw many movies about drugs and alcohol. They were everywhere—comedies, dramas, horror films, and biopics—all filled with stories about dealers, addicts, and different kinds of drugs like pills, marijuana, meth, and cocaine.
The movies were so depressing that by the end of the week, I felt overwhelmed. It seemed like the Sundance Film Festival had become all about drugs.
It’s true that drug abuse is a big problem in America, but flooding the movies with stories about drugs isn’t going to bring more people to the theaters. Some of the films were good, but many were bad. Watching so many of them together wasn’t a good experience.
You might think that this trend was just a one-time thing at the Sundance Festival, which is known for showing edgy independent films. But the festival is still important in the movie world, and it often shows what filmmakers care about. Some years, the festival focuses on true stories or heartwarming films, but in 2023, drugs were a big theme.
One movie, “Little Death,” showed David Schwimmer as a TV writer who struggles with pills. Another, “The Outrun,” had Saoirse Ronan playing an alcoholic in London. Even a romance film called “My Old Ass” had a scene where a young woman takes mushrooms and sees her future self.
By the end of the festival, I was hoping for something more uplifting, but I didn’t find it. The last movie I watched, “Rob Peace,” was about a black teenager from New Jersey who goes to Yale but ends up selling drugs and getting killed. It felt like every movie was about drugs, and it was depressing to watch. These movies might try to be brave or risky, but after seeing so many of them, they just seemed lazy.
source: New York Post
