Line #45 FromBadToWorse/Film


1	%%%
2	%%
3	%% This page has been alphabetized. Please add new examples in the correct order. Thanks!
4	%%
5	%%%
6
7	----
8
9	* ''Film/The24th'': Racial tensions between the black soldiers of the 24th Inf. Regiment and the white local Houston police force have already gone way past boiling point due to several violent incidents between the parties. [[ReasonableAuthorityFigure Col. Norton]], their only good officer is then reassigned to another unit with the less-competent (and also racist) [[TheNeidermeyer Major Abner]] taking over, shaking the men's faith in their command's ability to protect them. It gets ''even worse'' when news of two of their men possibly being killed by the local police reaches the camp, along rumours of an angry white mob coming to kill the rest of them. All these incidents convinces the black soldiers to take up arms and pre-emptively march on the town to pacify the "mob" before they get killed themselves.
10	* At the beginning of ''Film/NinetyNineRiverStreet'', Ernie is having merely a generic crummy day due to his wife's berating and his longing for his boxing days. Then he sees Pauline kissing Victor. Then Linda and the theater guys play their prank on him. Then he punches the theater guys out of anger, incurring assault charges. ''Then'' he finds Pauline's body dumped in the back of his cab.
11	* ''Literature/{{Alatriste}}'' (the movie, not the books) is two hours of "The lead character has really hit bottom now. Wait, there's more?"
12	* ''Film/{{Aliens}}'' involves things steadily getting worse. But a particular standout is when having already had most of the squad killed and their dropship destroyed, Bishop discovers that the entire facility is about to suffer a nuclear explosion. And then the CorruptCorporateExecutive decides to stab them in the backs. And then [[OhCrap the power goes off...]]
13	* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Aladdin}}'', Jafar turns up and declares himself Sultan. Then Aladdin realizes that the lamp is missing. Then he turns around to see a giant, pupil-less Genie pick up the palace and place it high above the city. ''Then'' Jafar wishes to be the most powerful sorcerer in the world, spirits Aladdin into a tower, shoots it to the other side of the world, and turns around to laugh maniacally at the sight of Jasmine and the Sultan cringing in his shadow. And all this happens about ten minutes ''before'' the giant snake...
14	* The German movie ''Der Blaue Engel'' (''Film/TheBlueAngel''). It starts off with the main character (a respected professor) falling for nightclub singer Marlene Dietrich. He gets fired from his job because he spends the night with his new girlfriend and comes in late for work and joins her group who travel from place to place performing, where he quickly ends up spending what little money he has saved up. They can't make enough money so he's pressured into becoming a clown; part of his act involving him having eggs pulled from his ear and then crowing like a rooster. Eventually, the group decides that they should go back to his home town and make him perform there. [[spoiler:He does, to an audience of his old colleagues and students who came specifically to laugh at him. His wife, who he did all this for, cheats on him during his act and he attacks her, while repeatedly crowing like a rooster. After he fails to kill her, he goes to his old desk at the school where it is implied he kills himself. It doesn't sound so bad written out but watching it is just painful and horribly depressing.]]
15	* ''Film/{{Brazil}}'':
16	** Mrs. Terrain's declining health -- "there's been a little complication with my complication".
17	** The movie itself. [[spoiler: Any time things improve is a HopeSpot whose sole purpose is to make the protagonist fall from that much higher]].
18	* ''Film/ABridgeTooFar'': As the Allies drop in Holland for Operation Market Garden, the problems for the British 1st Airbourne present themselves early and only get worse from there. First, they find that the machine gun-equipped jeeps were lost during transport, leaving them without a form of vehicular support and forcing them to take Arnhem bridge on foot. Then they find that their radios are not functional, leaving no one outside Arnhem aware of the situation. General Urquhart journeys to the front for an update, but ends up hiding in a house for days due to an ambush. By the time he gets back to his HQ, he learns that absolutely everything has gone to hell: they are facing elite SS Panzer troops, they are now completely cut off from the troops in Arnhem, their drop zones have been overrun so their supplies are going to the Germans, the Polish reinforcements are being delayed due to fog in England, and they ''still'' can't get the radios to work. By the time they ''do'' get the radio to work, the situation has so deteriorated that Urquhart's force and Colonel Frost's troops in Arnhem are completely surrounded, and after asking ''each other'' for reinforcements, they decide there's nothing to do but wait for XXX Corps to arrive, which is completely exhausted by the time they do and so the British are forced to withdraw.
19	* ''Film/TheButterflyEffect'' takes this trope and runs away with it. The main character is ''responsible'' for the worsening situation, by his attempts to make things better. The message of the film, more or less, is "Make your peace with 'imperfect,' because trying to make everything perfect will screw it up unbelievably." There's an alternate ending that seems to suggest a message of "The mere presence of certain people just messes everything up."
20	* ''Film/TheCatInTheHat'' has this: first, the [[spoiler: the beetle that is the key to the box gets attached to a dog, which runs away, then, the attempts to ensure the crate stays closed fail, leading to the house being transformed into an EldritchLocation. And then when the house is transformed back, the strain wrecks the actual house...]] Of course, everything is back to normal by the very end, but still...
21	* Roman Polanski's ''Film/{{Chinatown}}''. When we say that Jake Gittes, the protagonist of the movie, does not know what he is dealing with, we [[ParentalIncest mean]] [[DownerEnding every]] [[ShootTheShaggyDog word]].
22	* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Coco}}'', it's bad enough to learn that your best friend got famous off your music without ever giving you any credit but worse to discover that he murdered you for your music and wants to erase you from everyone's memories for good.
23	* The short film ''The Dance Of Jim Beam'' lives off this trope. The main character's day starts off bad and gets worse- by the end of it, he's lost several fingers, a substantial amount of money and his wife.
24	* ''Film/TheDarkKnightTrilogy'':
25	** "From Bad to Worse" is a fairly good summary of the second half of ''Film/TheDarkKnight''. [[HopeSpot The Joker and all the gangsters are in custody, the city is safe,]] [[spoiler:Gordon is alive and the new commissioner]]...then it's revealed that [[spoiler:The Joker's gang took Harvey and Rachel and strapped them to bombs. Batman goes after Rachel and the police after Harvey, but Joker switched the addresses, so Batman saves Harvey, with serious injuries, while the police are too late for Rachel. Meanwhile, [[ActionBomb one of the Joker's men has been fitted with a bomb]] that destroys the police station, allowing everyone else, including the Joker, to escape. Then Batman's SecretIdentity is compromised until the Joker puts out a general hit on the blackmailer with the consideration of blowing up Gotham General...which he ''does'', right after giving Harvey a BreakingSpeech that turns him into the AxCrazy villain [[ForegoneConclusion we know and love]] and sends him on a RoaringRampageOfRevenge. Then he threatens the ''whole city'', with an implied threat to destroy the bridges and tunnels out - naturally, him being the Joker, this is just a ruse to get everyone on the ferries for a "[[SadisticChoice social experiment]]."]] Only ''then'' does the film present a glimmer of hope.
26	** ''Film/TheDarkKnightRises'' also fits From Bad To Worse; Bane breaks Batman's back, takes over Gotham, turns it into an anarchist/communist shithole, LaResistance are captured and sentenced, and all along Bane wants to blow the city sky high. [[spoiler: It finishes on an EarnYourHappyEnding.]]
27	* ''Film/DeepwaterHorizon'': First the negative pressure test has a pressure reading into the red, then the same test on the bleed pipe leads to a blockage in that pipe that gives a 0 psi reading in the control shack, but leads to a pressure buildup in the pipe that then comes gushing up in a fountain that reaches to the top of the derrick. This causes fumes to get into the air intakes, leading to the engines to overclock to the point that they jam, and then explode, catching all that free oil on fire.
28	* ''Film/TheDescent''. A group goes caving, there's a cave in, it turns out that the group leader lied and took them to an unknown cave without telling anybody where they were going, one of them breaks her leg... Oh, and there are cave beasties trying to eat them, the main character is losing her mind, and they still haven't found another way out.
29	* The whole plot of ''Film/{{District 9}}'' is a series of things going FromBadToWorse on both overall and individual scales:
30	** A horde of aliens strands to Earth after their superiors die of an epidemic. They have no way to return home and are starving. Then humans relocate them to the surface and establish contact of a sort but then quickly get disillusioned about them and leave them to the mercy of a greedy and unscrupulous corporation. Ensures 20 years of neglect and oppression, 20 years of living in unbelievable slums, starving and dealing with cannibalistic criminals and cruel mercenaries. And then aliens are finally moved...into a regular ''concentration camp''.
31	** The pen-pusher desk-jockey pin-stripper Hero Wikus "Spineless" Van Der Merwe resided more or less happily in his cubicle in the bowels of the [[strike:Omnicidal United]] MNU, when he is yanked out of there and entrusted with evicting a horde of extra-strong irascible aliens from their slums into the said concentration camp and is accompanied by a ColonelBadass who despises him and treats him like crap. Then he accidentally [[spoiler: gets sprayed with an alien substance which slowly, seemingly painfully and oh so gruesomely mutates him into an alien.]] Then the CorruptCorporateExecutive decides to [[spoiler: dissect him ''alive'' so they could study the mutation process and gain access to the alien DNA-based weaponry.]] Then he [[spoiler: escapes but has nowhere to go since MNU spread lies about him being a terrorist and having sex with aliens and his wife denounced him. So he rushes to find the alien who created the substance, finds him, together they obtain the substance needed for the cure.]] Then [[spoiler: Wikus learns that the alien was forced to change plans and will only be able to cure him in three years.]] then [[spoiler: panic-stricken Wikus knocks the alien down, hijacks his shuttle and makes a desperate rush to the mothership but gets shot down and is forced to fight a whole platoon of mercenaries while wearing alien power armor.]]Ok, the rest perhaps classifies as "It got worse but hell more awesome" but still worse.
32	* The events of ''Film/DrStrangelove''. [[spoiler: The human reliability tests failed to catch the paranoid General Ripper, who launches a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. If that wasn't bad enough, it's later revealed that the Soviets installed the Doomsday Machine, which is set to go off and sterilize the entire Earth if Ripper's attack succeeds on Soviet soil. To makes things worse, the machine is also set to go off if anybody tries to disable it. They eventually succeed in either recalling the planes or shooting them down, but the plane piloted by the Leper Colony crew is still airborne and has no way of receiving the signal after a missile has damaged their radio, and they're now traveling below Soviet radar. In a last-ditch effort, President Muffley gives them the location of the Leper Colony's primary and secondary targets and tells the Soviet Premier to focus all of his air force on those two areas. Unfortunately, the fuel tank was also damaged in the missile attack, leaving the Leper Colony unable to reach their two targets and opts them to drop a nuke on an entirely different target, causing the Doomsday Machine to activate and cause the end of the world.]] In short, anything that could go wrong in the prevention of the end of the world does.
33	* ''Film/ErinBrockovich'' begins with Erin being turned down at a job interview. Disappointed, she walks back to her car to find a parking ticket. She accidentally drops her sunglasses and breaks a nail trying to pick them up. Then she drives off, and a Jaguar crashes into her car at high speed. She loses the personal injury lawsuit but does turn her life around after that.
34	* If you've never seen ''Film/FallingDown'', watch it. This movie is quite possibly the best example of this trope. It paints the picture of just how much one man can take before he has a complete mental breakdown and crosses the MoralEventHorizon. The main character even [[LampshadeHanging lampshades]] this when he [[spoiler: calls his wife after killing the surplus store owner]].
35	-->'''Bill Foster:''' I've passed the point of no return. Do you know what that is, Beth? That's the point in a journey where it's longer to go back to the beginning. It's like when those astronauts got in trouble. I don't know, somebody messed up, and they had to get them back to Earth. But they had passed the point of no return. They were on the other side of the moon and were out of contact for like hours. Everybody waited to see if a bunch of dead guys in a can would pop out the other side. Well, that's me. I'm on the other side of the moon now and everybody is going to have to wait until I pop out.
36	* The entirety of ''Film/FirstBlood'' can be summed up as this. The film opens with John Rambo going to visit an old friend from his time in the army... only to find out he died of Agent Orange several years prior. After hitchhiking to the fictional town of Hope, Washington, he's picked up by [[SmallTownTyrant Will Teasle]] who basically tells him to get out of town. When Rambo decides he doesn't like Teasle's attitude, he tries to return only to be [[DisproportionateRetribution arrested for vagrancy]], beaten and abused by Teasle's fellow cops while in custody, and pushed to the point where his PTSD couldn't take it anymore, causing him to fight back. Things only go further out of control from there, as the conflict eventually escalates to a small scale war, with Rambo and Teasle both going to extreme lengths to either survive or get revenge against the former respectively.
37	* ''Film/{{Frostbite}}'': As the third act begins, the heroes not only have to deal with a crazy Nazi-vampire haunting the [[TheNightThatNeverEnds polar night]], they have to deal with the uncontrollable horde of teen vampires emerging.
38	* ''Franchise/{{Godzilla}}'':
39	** ''Film/Godzilla1954''. Boats mysteriously sinking? That's bad. Explosions causing it? Worse. People dying of radiation sickness? Much worse. A radioactive dinosaur bent on [[KillAllHumans wiping out all of humanity]] and destroying Tokyo in the process? OhCrap.
40	** ''Film/GodzillaMothraKingGhidorahGiantMonstersAllOutAttack'' has this as well. Godzilla has returned and is driven by the souls of those who died in WWII and want revenge on Japan. Not too bad so far. Then Godzilla brutally kills the three gods (Baragon, Mothra, and Ghidorah) that were awakened to kill him. Oh, wait... [[HopeSpot one of the human protagonists]] [[spoiler:just blew Godzilla up]]. YAY! Godzilla has been defe-- [[spoiler:What do you mean Godzilla's dismembered heart is still beating at the bottom of the ocean!?]]
41	** ''Film/GodzillaVSKingGhidorah''. Okay, a bunch of people from the future want to go back in time and erase Godzilla from existing? Doesn't seem too bad so fa-- Wait, what do you mean they just left behind three cute creatures that will mutate into a three-headed dragon? That doesn't seem so ba-- Wait, what do you mean said three-headed dragon is under their control and they're using it to destroy Tokyo and prevent it from becoming a superpower. Well, it can't get any worse, right? [[spoiler:What do you mean Godzilla's back and he's bigger and more powerful than ever before!?!]]
42	** ''Film/GodzillaVsDestoroyah''. First Godzilla Junior seemingly vanishes, then it's revealed that Godzilla is dying of "Nuclear Overload" and will essentially go into a meltdown, and it's revealed that the Oxygen Destroyer (the very device which killed the original Godzilla) has spawned something much eviler than Godzilla. At least there's a HopeSpot where Junior and Godzilla reunited and-- [[spoiler:oh, wait, Destoroyah just brutally killed Junior and is now tormenting the mourning Godzilla. Oh, and Godzilla's grief has caused him to go into a meltdown]].
43	** ''Film/Godzilla2014'': The [=MUTOs=] rampaging, pursued by Godzilla, and the {{kaiju}} causing destruction to humanity where they go with little more than their presence is bad. But when Admiral Stenz and the military [[NiceJobBreakingItHero attempt luring the MUTOs with a nuclear warhead]], the [=MUTOs=] instead steal the armed nuke and set up nest in the middle of San Francisco, with the nuke counting down and hundreds to thousands of people still trapped in the city.
44	** ''Film/GodzillaKingOfTheMonsters2019'': An even graver case than in the 2014 film. After the incident in Antarctica, Godzilla's {{Kaiju}} rival Ghidorah (who turns out in his EstablishingCharacterMoment to be nightmarishly AxCrazy and {{sadist}}ic) is loose, and Jonah and Emma are set on releasing all the dormant Titans one-by-one so they'll inflict GaiasVengeance. Surely it can't get any worse? The military drop the Oxygen Destroyer on Godzilla and Ghidorah in an attempt to kill them, but it only cripples Godzilla, while Ghidorah is revealed to be an alien who has no ties to maintaining Earth's biosphere; and with Godzilla inert, Ghidorah promptly forcibly awakens and takes control of all the planet's kaiju and uses them to start inflicting a Class 3-6 ApocalypseHow.
45	** ''Film/GodzillaMinusOne'' has this right in the title -- at the film's beginning, Japan is at a "zero state" after UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, with their economy and infrastructure in ruins. Two years later, they're just starting to recover... and then Godzilla shows up and starts causing [[TheTokyoFireball his usual amount of mass destruction]], jeopardizing the country's already-fragile recovery and dragging them into a "minus state".
46	* ''Film/{{Gravity}}'' is essentially an astronaut getting into progressively worse situations. Space debris destroys her ship, her oxygen is running low, her companion sacrifices himself, a fire starts on the space station she enters, the escape pod is out of fuel, the other space station is already in freefall, the reentry capsule gets damaged and when it lands on sea starts to flood...
47	* At the end of ''Film/TheGuardian2006'', Jake is attempting to rescue the crew of a small ship and only has the captain left, who's pinned by machinery in the hold. He manages to get him loose, but soon after high waves roll the ship, killing the captain and trapping Jake in the hold which begins filling with water.
48	* Disney's version of ''WesternAnimation/{{Hercules}}'':
49	** As a teenager, Hercules crashes into a pillar. While stopping it from falling, he hits another which starts a domino effect, destroying a marketplace.
50	** While training to be a hero, Hercules has to save a "damsel" which is portrayed as a dummy. The dummy is barely in pieces by the time his training was finished.
51	** When Hercules confronts Nessus to save Negara, Meg didn't want to be saved. Then Nessus punches Herc into the water. Instead of his sword, Herc wields a fish, causing Nessus to laugh and punch Herc again.
52	** After freeing two boys, Hercules unintendedly releases the Hydra from its cave. Then, while battling the monster, Herc realizes that his sword is missing, and landed behind him. Then Herc throws a rock at the Hydra, who crushes it with its teeth and laughs at the hero. ''Then'' when Herc retrieves his sword, the Hydra swallowed him whole. After Herc cuts his way out through decapitation, the Hydra grows more heads.
53	* ''Film/HouseOf1000Corpses'' is just one "bad to worse" moment after the other. To sum it up: The good guys do not win.
54	* ''Film/{{Hunger}}'': As the film is about prisoners dying on hunger strike, this is essentially the entire plot. When a film starts out with characters smearing their own feces on the walls and being beaten by prison officers whilst naked and goes downhill from there, you know things are pretty grim.
55	* ''Film/IndianaJonesAndTheLastCrusade'' has the title character go to an Austrian castle to rescue his captured father Henry from the Nazis. After he rescues Henry, their escape is thwarted when [[spoiler:their companion Elsa reveals she's working for the Nazis.]] After that, they're forced to sit in chairs back-to-back and are tied up. When they're left alone, Indy gets Henry to take a lighter out of his pocket and burn through the ropes. Henry then drops the lighter and sets fire to the entire room. They seek shelter in the fireplace and Indy accidentally triggers a hidden passage to a Nazi command center full of guards and officers.
56	-->'''Henry:''' Our situation has not improved.
57	* The 1956 ''Invasion of the Body Snatchers'' is a very big "It's getting better! A happy ending in sight!-- Hah! Fooled you!" It got way, way worse...
58	* ''Film/JurassicPark1993'' is built on this trope, with a dose of GoneHorriblyRight. The tour goes downhill rapidly when [[FatBastard Dennis Nedry]] sabotages the containment systems, allowing dinosaurs like the ''Tyrannosaurus rex'' to escape and start killing people. Nedry himself, the only one who knows exactly how to fix everything, [[LaserGuidedKarma gets eaten by one of the dinos he released]]. And then the ''[[RaptorAttack raptors]]'' escape...
59	* ''Film/KickAss'' does this at a few different points. [[spoiler: Most notably when the mobsters first kidnap Kick-Ass and Big Daddy... then pummel them half to death... then make preparations for burning the two of them alive on a live camera feed]].
60	* ''Film/TheLifeOfOharu'' -- ''Jesus Christ''. Your boyfriend is executed? That's bad. Exiled from the imperial household? Bad. Sold as a glorified Sex Slave to a lord? Bad. Left to work as a high-class hooker after being separated from your son? Bad. Get married, only for your husband to be murdered? Pretty bad. Left to work as a low-class hooker? Pretty darn bad. Left as a homeless beggar when you're too old and unattractive for hooking? Wow, that is super bad.
61	* ''Film/LittleShopOfHorrors'' The original ending: As Audrey enters the shop near the end, she gets attacked by Audrey II. Seymour, however, arrives just in time pulls her out. Cue DarkReprise as she dies in his arms and he has to feed her to the plant anyway. Then he goes berserk and attacks Audrey II and ends up getting himself killed and eaten also. Then a canny businessman comes in and takes clippings of the plant and plans to sell them every home in every town, causing the alien plants to take over the world!
62	* ''Film/TheLordOfTheRingsTheFellowshipOfTheRing'':
63	** The Fellowship is at one point bracing themselves for an attack by a large horde of orcs. Boromir peers out the door and (after narrowly dodging two arrows) utters the line "They have a cave troll."
64	** And after fighting off said orcs + troll, another example occurs shortly after ''that''. Hearing more orcs on the way, the Fellowship flees, but eventually they end up completely surrounded by another, much larger horde. The two sides square off against one another, and just as it looks like they're about to fight...a loud roar is heard in the distance and the entire horde of orcs flees in terror. From [[TheLegionsOfHell a Balrog]].
65	* [[http://www.lovehkfilm.com/ LoveHKFilm]] uses the phrase "IT ALL GOES TO HELL" to describe things in an HK movie taking a sudden and dramatic turn for the worse.
66	* ''{{Film/Martyrs}}'', another one that starts out pretty unpleasant already, but just keeps topping itself.
67	* A filmography example. Creator/LarsVonTrier has described his film ''{{Film/Melancholia}}'' as the ''first'' of his films to have a sad ending. Previous Lars films had such [[SarcasmMode happy]] endings as -- [[{{Film/Dogville}} A town being slaughtered after systematically torturing a woman]] and [[{{Film/Antichrist}} A man killing his wife after she is driven crazy by grief]], among others. Reassuring.
68	* ''Film/TheMist''. The final ten or so minutes. [[spoiler: David Drayton survives the horrors of a past few days, escapes with his son and three other people, sees his wife killed by spiders from hell, only to get stuck in the mist in the middle of nowhere, without fuel and with a gun. Then they all decide to kill themselves, so David kills them all, including his 10-year-old son, only to discover that the gun only had four bullets, leaving only him still alive. He THEN discovers 1.5 minutes later that the mist is beginning to clear and the army is successfully battling the creatures from the mist.]] Three things make this scene particularly depressing -- [[spoiler:the army caravan was headed in the same direction they were so they had been driving away from help the entire time, he sees the woman with kids whom he refused to help in the beginning of the movie]] and the Dead Can Dance song "The Host of Seraphim" is playing during the whole scene.
69	* ''Film/MonsterTrucks'': Tripp's dad betraying him to Terravex is pretty awful. [[TheDragon Burke]] [[WouldHurtAChild cheerfully threatening]] him with [[ElectricTorture a cattleprod]] is worse. The fact that he does so in front of Tripp's father, who doesn't offer a word of protest when someone literally threatens to torture his teenage son? That's chilling.
70	* Any time the ''Film/MysteryTeam'' follows a lead.
71	* ''Film/NoCountryForOldMen'': It's bad enough that [[spoiler:Llewelyn Moss, the protagonist of the story, gets caught in the motel and is shot to death]]. And then [[spoiler:that rotten scum Chigurh hunts down the protagonist's widow and kills her too]]. Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, [[spoiler:Chigurh, after killing Mrs. Moss, successfully evades the area with the cash in hand and disappears, but not before breaking his arm in a car wreck]]. Last, but not...uh...best...[[spoiler:the sheriff vaguely reminisces on his attempt to bring the villain to justice and admits defeat]].
72	** It's based on a Creator/CormacMcCarthy book. Things going FromBadToWorse is practically his trademark.
73	* Creator/StanleyKubrick film ''Film/PathsOfGlory''. When soldiers in [=WWI=] refuse to continue with an impossible attack, their superiors decide to make an example of them. [[spoiler: The commanding general orders an artillery strike upon his own men]]. It gets even worse: [[spoiler: when the men fail from achieving their goal, the General orders three men to be picked to be summarily executed by firing squad.]] Colonel Dax (Kirk Douglas) attempts to save his own men. It gets even worse: [[spoiler: the men are shot, even though Dax successfully defends them in the justice. Instead, the general is sacked.]] The worst of all: [[spoiler: the film [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A9raud_R%C3%A9veilhac is based on real-life events]].]]
74	* In the film ''Film/{{Precious}}'', the titular character grows up poor, abused, and raped by her father which results in two children, one of which suffers from down syndrome. After the father [[spoiler:dies of AIDS]] everyone involved [[spoiler: finds out they too are infected.]] Then [[spoiler: Precious finds out her mother hates her because she believes Precious stole 'her man'.]] Roll credits. Suffice to say it starts out bad, got worse... [[DownerEnding then worser]].
75	** It's more of a BittersweetEnding if anything. [[spoiler: While Precious escaped the hell her parents put her through and her education kept improving, getting infected with HIV puts a damper on her victory. And yet, even HIV hasn't kept her spirits down entirely. In some sense, things get better for her]].
76	* ''Film/ThePurge1'': Everything started out normally for the Sandins. Then a stranger on the run ends up in their home. Then, the psychopathic gang chasing after the stranger decides to invade their home. [[spoiler:Finally, after the gang is dealt with, their neighbors attempt to kill them.]]
77	* The ''Film/ReAnimator'' franchise is ''made'' of this trope. Just when you think it can't possibly get any worse, it does, and then keeps going off into the sunset. It doesn't help that Dr. West has the unfortunate habit of reanimating people who are either crazier than him, hold a severe grudge against him, or ''both''.
78	* ''Film/RequiemForADream'' is 90 minutes of "bad to worse" put through a pain distillery until it's pure enough to make BSG step back and say "...whoa."
79	* [[{{Film/Scanners}} Darryl Revok]]'s backstory.
80	* In {{Film/Scenes from a Marriage}}, Johan informs his wife Marianne he had been having a love affair with a woman named Paula for several months. He is only telling Marianne now because he will leaving the next morning to spend up to eight months in Paris with Paula. In the ensuing argument, he tells Marianne he had wanted out of their marriage for ''four years'', well before the affair began. He tells her that sex with Paula is great (the film earlier established Johan and Marianne's sex life had reached a nadir). The next morning, Johan leaves despite Marianne's descent into begging, refusing to even give her the (probably false) hope he'd return to her. Marianne desperately calls a family friend for help, only to learn that he, and most of her other family friends, already knew what was happening and did not inform her.
81	** The original TV series partly foreshadowed this when Johan told Marianne the maid knew about the affair, but it is still a blow that hits Marianne and the audience like a sledgehammer.
82	* ''Film/SchindlersList'' is a steady descent to hell for the Jews in Poland, even when some of them say that things cannot get any worse, ''they do''.
83	** Given the story's setting and subject matter, this isn't surprising at all -- the Holocaust, in general, was a long series of things getting ''very, very worse'' for the Jews during World War II, along with everyone else that the Nazi regime considered undesirable or inferior.
84	* The Australian MadeForTVMovie ''{{Scorched}}'' can be described as "and then things got worse".
85	* ''Film/ASeriousMan'' has a snowballing string of problems mounting on Larry Gopnik, the main character. Lawyers for divorce, lawyers for property claims, lawyers for his brother in law, a colleague who's cheating on his wife, blackmail. Just as Larry starts to see a little bit of light, [[spoiler:after accepting a bribe for much-needed money. The doctor calls with news about x-rays. And his son might be about to get sucked up by a tornado.]] It's unclear what is going to happen in the minutes after the movie ends, which is probably the point.
86	* ''Film/TheShawshankRedemption''[='s=] plot is full of this. [[spoiler:First, Andy Dufresne is wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife. He gets gang-raped by a group of perverts. He tries to fight back at first but is outnumbered and overpowered. After he finds a way out of that torture, it gets worse when a new inmate reveals information that could prove his innocence. The warden has the young inmate killed off to keep his silence and to keep Andy under his control. Then he forces Andy to do two straight months in solitary confinement to break his spirit.]] Fortunately, Andy wins in the end.
87	* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsonsMovie'', when Homer gets into the dome over Springfield and unwittingly thwarts everyone's attempts to escape before the city is destroyed by a bomb, he laments that he can't do anything right. He kicks the bomb over, causing the countdown to be halved from 8:23 to 4:11.
88	* ''Film/SleepingDogs1977'' starts as the Prime Minister of New Zealand is coming home from the Middle East, having been unable to restore oil supplies. The waterfront workers go on strike as shipping stalls, then it grows into a general strike. Soldiers sent in to take over at the waterfront clash with pro-union protesters. A member of the government has thugs fire on the soldiers, giving them an excuse to institute a police state. Then it erupts into open civil war...
89	* ''Film/StarTrekNemesis'' has the ''Enterprise'' under attack by a battleship commanded by the new Praetor of the Romulan Empire, one which is more heavily armed and shielded and can fire while cloaked. As it becomes clear how much the ''Enterprise'' is outmatched, two more Romulan warbirds decloak. After Riker points out how much worse things are now, the commander of one of the warbirds hails the ''Enterprise''...and [[SubvertedTrope offers Picard her assistance]].
90	* ''Franchise/StarWars'':
91	** ''Film/ANewHope'': Bad enough that the heroes find themselves trapped in the detention area with stormtroopers crowding through ''the only exit'' and have to resort to throwing themselves into the garbage compactor, but then a horrible sewer monster starts swimming around them.
92	--->'''Leia''': Well it could be worse.\
93	* unsettling noise*\
94	'''Han''': It's worse.
95	** ''Film/ReturnOfTheJedi'': The rebels have launched their attack on the half-finished and defenseless Death Star...except the DeflectorShields are still up. Not only that, but the Imperial Navy is lying in wait, pinning down the rebel fleet and keeping them from a HyperspeedEscape. How can this get worse?
96	---> '''Palpatine:''' Now witness the [[WaveMotionGun firepower]] of this ''fully-armed and operational battle station''! Fire at will, Commander!\
97	''(The Death Star fires, and a rebel ship goes boom.)''\
98	'''Lando:''' That blast came from the Death Star! ''[[OhCrap That thing's operational!]]''
99	** ''Film/TheRiseOfSkywalker'' begins with Rey [[spoiler: having accepted that she is TheUnchosenOne, after learning in ''Film/TheLastJedi'' that her parents were filthy drunk traders who sold her for drinking money. But it's actually ''worse'' than this, as Kylo Ren reveals, because she is in fact the granddaughter of ''Emperor Palpatine,'' and that she is the AntiAntiChrist in Palpatine's final bid to restore the Sith Empire and destroy the Jedi. Of course, Rey goes ahead and says ScrewDestiny.]]
100	* Ice-T's character goes through this in ''Film/SurvivingTheGame''. It's bad enough [[spoiler: he lost his family and became homeless from his depression. But then he gets tricked into [[HuntingTheMostDangerousGame becoming human game for a bunch of wealthy murderers.]]]]
101	* This is the last third of ''Film/ThirteenDays''. After a HopeSpot in which it seems Nikita Khrushchev is extending an olive branch, [[spoiler: another message arrives before morning with a much more hard-line tone and sends the situation spiraling down again. Then one of their U-2s is shot down over Cuba, and then they find the nuclear missiles stationed there have become operational and the only option left to them is to invade Cuba.]]
102	* ''WesternAnimation/ToyStory2'': After jumping back into his case when Al shows up to take photos of his collection, Woody unknowingly caused part of the stitching to get caught on the case's stand. As such, his arm winds up falling completely off due to the stitch getting pulled out when Al grabs him.
103	* ''Film/TradingPlaces'' does this to Winthorpe. After being used to a luxurious lifestyle his whole life, he is framed for embezzlement and loses all of his money and friends. Later, after committing several crimes at a banquet, he is out on the street wearing a filthy Santa costume. Then a dog whizzes on him. Then the sky whizzes on him (i.e. it starts raining). He tries to commit suicide, but his gun jams... then fires accidentally when he throws it away, breaking a window and scaring (just scaring, hopefully) a poor cat.
104	** The kicker ''really'' comes when he learns that his bosses put him through the ordeal ''for a bet''! The money they bet with? [[spoiler:''One dollar'']]!
105	* ''The Wind That Shakes The Barley'': Set in Ireland, 1920. The British are committing atrocities against the Irish. [[LaResistance The Resistance]] is fighting back. Yeah...
106	* In ''WesternAnimation/TurningRed'', a third through the movie, Mei is turning into a red panda whenever she gets upset. She's confined to her bedroom, which has been stripped to bare walls to keep her things from being damaged by her transformations, her parents are giving her no support at all, and all she can do is wait for the day a month away when the panda can be banished. Then she finds out her favourite band is coming to Toronto on tour -- one week ''before'' the banishing ritual.
107	-->'''Mei''': ''I hate this!'' I'm slobby, I'm smelly, my mom won't even ''look'' at me ... and now 4*Town?

Context FromBadToWorse / Film