What’s a movie that knew exactly how to manipulate you and you still fell for it?

The Iron Giant

Arrival on a second watch.

Pixar has a knack for being able to make you feel some strong emotions, and they really lean into the old saying of "show, don't tell." The best example I can think of is Carl and Ellie's married life in the movie *UP.* We see decades of their life together in the space of just over 4 minutes, without any dialogue at all. [Carl & Ellie | UP | 4 minutes](https://youtu.be/wisqmdAKzhw?si=PANZlZy8oUukQW7n)

JoJo Rabbit. Those shoes. not a movie, but the [jeff level](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd34m1ovR4Y) from Half Life Alyx

Funny Games

By "get me" I assume you mean "made me cry even though I was pissed about it." Dead Poet Society. I hate that movie for what it did. The acting is great, and probably the direction is too. It's just that it does what it does with a sucker punch that makes you feel cheapened. It doesn't help that the marketing for it back in the day makes you think it's a feel good Robin Williams movie. Or at least that's what I thought at 12 years old. Mork was my guy. He was my hero. And here he is ripping my heart out and stomping on it. F*** that movie. That's what my inner child says. And I can't say I've given it another chance since then because I agree with my inner child.

Most Pixar movies.  The end of Coco for example.  You know Pixar has it planned, and it happens and they suction tears out of your eyes and you think "Oh you sonofabitch.  That wasn't fair."

For me its The Act of Killing. It doesnt just show horror it implicates you in it. At some point it stopped feeling like a film and started feeling like a mirror.I finished it feeling uncomfortable… not because of what I saw, but because of how I reacted to it

A history of violence

Guardians of the Galaxy 2 ending. " I'm sorry I didn't do none of it right, I'm damn lucky you're my boy." ―Yondu's last words

Mulholland drive

Titanic. I got dragged to that movie because I had to take my 12-year-old sister and her friends at the height of Leo-mania. I was 16 and my favorite movies were Clerks and My Own Private Idaho. I was so pissed that I had to watch this stupid iceberg romance movie. Three hours later I was sobbing through the credits and wildly in love with Kate Winslet. You win this round, James Cameron.

Star Trek 2009, the death and birth of the Kirks right at the beginning

La La Land

for me it’s Interstellar, that whole father daughter thing is so obviously designed to hit you emotionally and I still fall for it every time. also The Pursuit of Happyness, that bathroom scene feels like pure emotional manipulation and yeah… it gets me every time anyway

Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father.

Serenity. Yeah we knew someone was taking the big dirt nap. Book dies valiantly (valor off screen) we have the big emotional rally. LFG. Big battle narrow escapes, big explosions Then Wash. Its out of nowhere. We're sad, but we dont get any time to process. Mid battle, Zoë gets slow motion sliced down her spine, Jane gets hit, Kaylee gets darted, the Doc gets shot. People are dropping like flies. Joss Wheaton is gonna kill everyone out of spite for the shows cancelation. Everyone's wounds now feel fatal because of Book and Wash. Everyone else does make it, but for a brief moment, its a real possibility. If Wash isnt killed, I dont think we would believe anyone else's survival is in jeopardy.

Marley and Me. You know what’s going to happen but you get attached and fall for it anyway.

Uncut Gems. First time I watched it, I turned it off after 15 minutes because I wasn't prepared for that much stress and anxiety. It was masterfully crafted to make me feel like hot garbage right out of the gate.

Never thought I would say this one day because "who the hell cries in a Bond movie?", but No Time To Die. I know it's not the best Bond movie and the ending is pretty obvious, but dammit, when >!the nukes approach the island, Hans Zimmer's score swells, Madeleine says "She has you eyes" and Daniel Craig responds "I know"!< I fall for it every time.

Toy Story 3. The incinerator scene. You know it's a kids movie, you know they're not going to kill the characters, but for three minutes you forget all that and actually think it might end there. Pure emotional manipulation and it works every single time.

Coco, after hearing the song the second time I knew we’d hear it one more time and wasn’t sure if it’d work. Got me good still as someone who has many family members with dementia/Alzheimer’s.

The Truman Show

Homeward Bound.

I just saw *Hamnet.* At the end of the movie they used the exact same music from the end of *Arrival.* *Arrival* makes me ugly cry while that music is playing every time I watch it. So of course I started crying. It felt like *Hamnet* was cheating.

Shutter island

Does M. Night Shyamalan movies count? I mean after the sixth sense we kinda knew it might happen

A Knight's Tale is so shamefully manipulative and I just love it. And it's fun watching reaction videos to it on Youtube, and watching other people get sucked into it and falling for it too.

I get this from Hirokazu Kore-eda movies

RRR

For me it was Midsommar. Each step that led further into the cult, I was like "my god they're evil" followed by "but... It seems so nice that they care so much for each other"

Eternity (2017) - [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8260948/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8260948/) If you have any regrets with your mom/dad, do *not* watch this. It is going to break you.

Aftersun. 90 mins building like a pressure cooker, and then the ugly crying release at the end.

I'd probably include Barbarian. Since I was suspicious of Bill Skarsgard's character upon his introduction in the first half & my expectations of him were subverted in his arc, I honestly gave Justin Long's character the benefit of the doubt and waited for his redemption, even though it was very clear that he was very sketchy at his core.

Land Before Time... they got me good.

The Rental Family. We all know where it was going and some of what was going to happen but dammit if you aren’t right there in the emotional trenches with Brendan Fraiser

Shudder island. I knew more or less how it ended but I still didnt see how and I started second guessing myself thinking maybe I was wrong

Oddly enough, I vote the Shining

About Time. I don't know how to do spoilers on mobile, but you get introduced to a romcom and it turns into a tearjerker. It gets better every time I watch

This isn't what you are asking for... But it was what came to mind... Not the movies but the trailers for the recent Godzilla movies. They seemed so badass they tricked me into watching basically all of them... at least one even in the theater... But I have hated every one. I was so excited after watching the most recent Godzilla x Kong trailer because it finally looked as f****** stupid as the movies are.

F for Fake

I took my daughter to see A Dog's Way Home and absolutely cried when the dog found its way home. It wasn't a good movie but I just can't help myself when I see a sad dog.

As another user said, Pixar have an amazing touch for getting the desired reaction. Up, Monsters Inc, Wall-E, amongst others. All classics. All tearful watches. Toy Story 3 though? Different level. I had to leave before the credits finished. Proper sobbing. I was with about 8 people from school at the time - I never lived that down. I have a strong connection to the originals, and I was in the perfect age group for it, the same age as Andy from the movies. I cried at Toy Story 4 and fully anticipate crying at Toy Story 5. In terms of TV, Futurama has four or five great examples where they make you feel. Lucky of the Fryish is one of the great TV reveals and Jurassic Bark know’s exactly what it’s doing. The latter might be one of the cruelest endings ever.

Every rocky sequel. The movies always start by replaying the epic ending of the previous one, and the ending is basically the same in all of them after part 1.

I had the reverse with The Matrix. No really. When Neo woke up in his pod I thought shit, this is gonna be some sort lame dream thing he’ll wake up from. I never really bought into the idea it was real until 15 minutes before the end of the movie and he still had not woken up to return to real life.

The Prestige Not really emotion-based, but I was completely duped by the magic act, hook, line, and sinker. I once read a comment that said, “My favorite movie was watching The Prestige for the second time,” and I really have to agree.

*Buried*, with Ryan Reynolds. (Spoilers ahead for a 15 year old movie) Buried is a maddeningly tense, Hitchcockian survival thriller, where Reynolds’s character has been buried alive in a coffin with nothing at his disposal except a lighter, a knife, a flask of alcohol, and a mobile phone with a rapidly-depleting charge. After 90 harrowing minutes of film, at the movie’s climax, the coffin is rapidly filling with sand, and Reynolds’s time is running out. He’s on the phone with an official from the U.S. Hostage Working Group, who is pleading with him to hold on, because they’ve found his burial site and are digging furiously to free him. We can even hear their digging over the phone as Reynolds is gasping for breath – though, strangely, we can’t hear the digging sounds in the actual coffin. Then we hear the diggers break through, and we hear the official say “Oh my God. It’s the wrong site. I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry—” as the coffin fills with sand, the screen goes black, and Reynold’s character chokes to death. When I tell you, I was F U R I O U S at this ending. I felt like I had wasted an evening of my life, getting emotionally wrapped up in the story and the main character’s survival only to have my hopes dashed and to be so disappointed. But after 15 minutes stewing, I realized that the anger I was feeling is exactly what the filmmakers intended, and it had worked on me perfectly. I had to begrudgingly acknowledge how masterfully the film played with my emotions and expectations. Really great movie.

Burn After Reading The Cohen brothers kicked me in the nuts and I'm still not sure if I should be mad or not 😂

The Usual Suspects

Every Steven Spielberg movie. That's why he is the master.

Isn't that the entire point of movies? It's called good storytelling.

The housemaid, I almost believed that the guy is a saint and he's in such trouble but turns out I was also manipulated into victimising the villian. It still gives me goosebumps and almost all of us missed the fact that the chandelier was made out of the hair she pulled back then as a task he gave her to earn the freedom she had every right on.

Hamnet. Probably talked about to death at this point, but a beautiful film with an intent to make you feel things and not in a bad way Had no idea who did the score going in but it kept hitting me in the feels like a truck, and then when On The Nature Of Daylight started playing towards the end followed by 'with music by Max Richter' in the credits, part of me was almost mad that I'd once again unwittingly let that man pull me apart and rebuild me for like the fifth time. Movie might as well have been called On The Nature Of Daylight

Oliver Stone's "JFK"

Requiem for a Dream

TENET (2020). ..but I still liked it. 😎

The Wild Robot felt pretty emotionally manipulative but I still enjoyed it