Every dark comedy movie streaming on Max in the US right now — 30 films ranked by rating, checked against Max’s live catalog.
Updated July 2026 · Availability refreshed from Max US
Directed by Charlie Chaplin
✦ MovieMuse AI takeChaplin's final monologue inverts slapstick tyranny into sincere humanism, making fascism's absurdity the vehicle for tragedy.
Dictator Adenoid Hynkel tries to expand his empire while a poor Jewish barber tries to avoid persecution from Hynkel's regime.
Directed by Todd Phillips
✦ MovieMuse AI takePhoenix's stand-up bombing sequences visualize society's cruelty as punchline, collapsing comedy and violence into one devastating act.
During the 1980s, a failed stand-up comedian is driven insane and turns to a life of crime and chaos in Gotham City while becoming an infamous psychopathic crime figure.
Directed by Ernst Lubitsch
✦ MovieMuse AI takeLubitsch's greatest weapon: making Nazi occupation hilarious through theatrical absurdity and moral inversion.
During the Nazi occupation of Poland, an acting troupe becomes embroiled in a Polish soldier's efforts to track down a German spy.
Directed by Pietro Germi
✦ MovieMuse AI takeCefalù's baroque scheming to orchestrate his wife's murder exposes how patriarchal desperation becomes absurdist farce when law and desire collide.
Ferdinando Cefalù is desperate to marry his cousin, Angela, but he is married to Rosalia and divorce is illegal in Italy. To get around the law, he tries to trick his wife into having an affair so he can catch her and murder her, as he knows he would be given a light sentence for killing an adulterous woman. He persuades a painter to lure his wife into an affair, but Rosalia proves to be more faithful than he expected.
Directed by Jūzō Itami
✦ MovieMuse AI takeRamen obsession treated with operatic reverence undercuts its own earnestness, finding cosmic humor in culinary passion's ridiculousness.
In this humorous paean to the joys of food, a pair of truck drivers happen onto a decrepit roadside shop selling ramen noodles. The widowed owner, Tampopo, begs them to help her turn her establishment into a paragon of the "art of noodle-soup making". Interspersed are satirical vignettes about the importance of food to different aspects of human life.
Directed by Federico Fellini
✦ MovieMuse AI takeAmarcord's fascist-era Italy dissolves into dreamlike vignettes where historical darkness and adolescent absurdity occupy the same sardonic space.
In an Italian seaside town, young Titta gets into trouble with his friends and watches various local eccentrics as they engage in often absurd behavior. Frequently clashing with his stern father and defended by his doting mother, Titta witnesses the actions of a wide range of characters, from his extended family to Fascist loyalists to sensual women, with certain moments shifting into fantastical scenarios.
Directed by Federico Fellini
✦ MovieMuse AI takeVitelloni's aimless drifting mutes expected tragedy into resigned comedy—these young men fail so gently we laugh at destiny's indifference.
Five young men dream of success as they drift lazily through life in a small Italian village. Fausto, the group's leader, is a womanizer; Riccardo craves fame; Alberto is a hopeless dreamer; Moraldo fantasizes about life in the city; and Leopoldo is an aspiring playwright. As Fausto chases a string of women, to the horror of his pregnant wife, the other four blunder their way from one uneventful experience to the next.
Directed by Charlie Chaplin
✦ MovieMuse AI takeChaplin's casual monstrosity—a serial killer banker treated as mundane entrepreneur, scoring dark laughs through bureaucratic evil.
The film is about an unemployed banker, Henri Verdoux, and his sociopathic methods of attaining income. While being both loyal and competent in his work, Verdoux has been laid-off. To make money for his wife and child, he marries wealthy widows and then murders them. His crime spree eventually works against him when two particular widows break his normal routine.
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
✦ MovieMuse AI takeStoned paranoia meets deadpan absurdism as a failed revolutionary's delusions become indistinguishable from actual threat.
Washed-up revolutionary Bob exists in a state of stoned paranoia, surviving off-grid with his spirited, self-reliant daughter, Willa. When his evil nemesis resurfaces after 16 years and she goes missing, the former radical scrambles to find her, father and daughter both battling the consequences of his past.
Directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski
✦ MovieMuse AI takeHulot's wordless incomprehension of modernity creates comic pathos—suburban aspiration collides with humane chaos.
Polish immigrant Karol Karol finds himself out of a marriage, a job and a country when his French wife, Dominique, divorces him after six months due to his impotence. Forced to leave France after losing the business they jointly owned, Karol enlists fellow Polish expatriate Mikołaj to smuggle him back to their homeland.
Directed by Jim Jarmusch
✦ MovieMuse AI takeJarmusch's deadpan trio defies prison-escape conventions, treating their predicament with existential cool rather than dramatic urgency.
A disc jockey, a pimp and an Italian tourist escape from jail in New Orleans.
Directed by Jacques Tati
✦ MovieMuse AI takeHulot's silent physical comedy exposes consumerism's emptiness through bumbling grace, finding tragedy in mechanical living.
Genial, bumbling Monsieur Hulot loves his top-floor apartment in a grimy corner of the city, and cannot fathom why his sister's family has moved to the suburbs. Their house is an ultra-modern nightmare, which Hulot only visits for the sake of stealing away his rambunctious young nephew. Hulot's sister, however, wants to win him over to her new way of life, and conspires to set him up with a wife and job.
Directed by Luis Buñuel
✦ MovieMuse AI takeBuñuel's protagonist treats serial murder as career ambition with bureaucratic earnestness, mocking both crime and aspiration itself.
A bizarre black comedy about a man whose overwhelming ambition in life is to be a renowned serial killer of women, and will stop at nothing to achieve it - but not everything goes according to plan...
Directed by Bruce Robinson
✦ MovieMuse AI takeWithnail's magnificent desperation; unemployment becomes cosmic tragedy wrapped in quotable drunken philosophy and withering British wit.
Two out-of-work actors -- the anxious, luckless Marwood and his acerbic, alcoholic friend, Withnail -- spend their days drifting between their squalid flat, the unemployment office and the pub. When they take a holiday "by mistake" at the country house of Withnail's flamboyantly gay uncle, Monty, they encounter the unpleasant side of the English countryside: tedium, terrifying locals and torrential rain.
Directed by Rémy Belvaux
✦ MovieMuse AI takeFormal innovation becomes moral quicksand: we laugh at murder until complicity makes us monsters too.
The activities of rampaging, indiscriminate serial killer Ben are recorded by a willingly complicit documentary team, who eventually become his accomplices and active participants. Ben provides casual commentary on the nature of his work and arbitrary musings on topics of interest to him, such as music or the conditions of low-income housing, and even goes so far as to introduce the documentary crew to his family. But their reckless indulgences soon get the better of them.
Directed by Federico Fellini
✦ MovieMuse AI takeFellini weaponizes Giulietta's paranoia and surrealism against marital betrayal, transforming infidelity into hallucinatory spectacle.
Middle-aged Giulietta grows suspicious of her husband, Giorgio, when his behavior grows increasingly questionable. One night when Giorgio initiates a seance amongst his friends, Giulietta gets in touch with spirits and learns more about herself and her painful past. Slightly skeptical, but intrigued, she visits a mystic who gives her more information -- and nudges her toward the realization that her husband is indeed a philanderer.
Directed by Charlie Chaplin
✦ MovieMuse AI takeChaplin's bricklayer remains noble even in slapstick ruin, finding pathos-tinged humor in working-class marriage's cyclical disappointments.
A bricklayer and his wife clash over his end-of-the-week partying.
Directed by Bertrand Tavernier
✦ MovieMuse AI takeTavernier's humiliated cop's revenge spree escalates with darkly logical efficiency, transforming victimhood into systematic horror.
A pathetic police chief, humiliated by everyone around him, suddenly wants a clean slate in life, and resorts to drastic means to achieve it.
Directed by Benh Zeitlin
✦ MovieMuse AI takeBenh Zeitlin fuses apocalyptic Louisiana decay with a child's unbowed wonder, where environmental collapse becomes perversely whimsical.
Hushpuppy, an intrepid six-year-old girl, lives with her father, Wink, in 'the Bathtub', a southern Delta community at the edge of the world. Wink’s tough love prepares her for the unraveling of the universe—for a time when he’s no longer there to protect her. When Wink contracts a mysterious illness, nature flies out of whack—temperatures rise and the ice caps melt, unleashing an army of prehistoric creatures called aurochs. With the waters rising, the aurochs coming, and Wink’s health fading, Hushpuppy goes in search of her lost mother.
Directed by Věra Chytilová
✦ MovieMuse AI takeThe girls' escalating nihilism—destruction as philosophy—defies morality itself, making anarchism oddly exhilarating.
Two teenage girls embark on a series of destructive pranks in which they consume and destroy the world around them.
Directed by Peter Medak
✦ MovieMuse AI takeO'Toole's schizophrenic earl bursts into song; hereditary insanity becomes musical theatre, privilege rendered deliriously absurd.
When the Earl of Gurney dies in a cross-dressing accident, his schizophrenic son, Jack, inherits the Gurney estate. Jack is not the average nobleman; he sings and dances across the estate and thinks he is Jesus reincarnated. Believing that Jack is mentally unfit to own the estate, the Gurney family plots to steal Jack's inheritance. As their outrageous schemes fail, the family strives to cure Jack of his bizarre behavior, with disastrous results.
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos
✦ MovieMuse AI takeAbsurdist bureaucracy forces human connection through dystopian law, rendering romance and violence as interchangeable state requirements.
In a dystopian near future, single people, according to the laws of The City, are taken to The Hotel, where they are obliged to find a romantic partner in forty-five days or are transformed into animals and sent off into The Woods.
Directed by Isao Takahata
✦ MovieMuse AI takeTakahata's domestic vignettes use geometric austerity to expose family rituals' inherent comedy without sentimentality or artifice.
The Yamadas are a typical middle class Japanese family in urban Tokyo and this film shows us a variety of episodes of their lives. With tales that range from the humorous to the heartbreaking, we see this family cope with life's little conflicts, problems, and joys in their own way.
Directed by Greg Mottola
✦ MovieMuse AI takeBaumbach's road-trip claustrophobia traps middle-class dysfunction in a minivan, letting awkwardness metastasize into cringe poetry.
Eliza D'Amico thinks her marriage to Louis is going great until she finds a mysterious love note to her husband. Concerned, she goes to her mother for advice. Eliza, her parents, her sister Jo, and Jo's boyfriend all pile into the station wagon and go to the city to confront Louis with the letter. On the way, the five explore their relations with each other and meet many interesting people.
Directed by Richard Benjamin
✦ MovieMuse AI takeBurtt mines Pentagon bureaucracy for absurdist comedy, proving institutional incompetence funnier than any scripted villain.
From the director of “Made In America” and “The Money Pit” comes a hilarious look at one of the most expensive blunders in military history. Over 17 years and almost as many billion dollars have gone into devising the BFV (Bradley Fighting Vehicle). There's only one problem. . . it doesn't work. (Spoiler alert: 25 years later ... it does work.)
Directed by Terry Zwigoff
✦ MovieMuse AI takeSanta as unrepentant criminal demolishes holiday sentiment; dark comedy thrives in refusing redemption arc entirely.
You'd better watch out - Santa Claus Willie T. Soke is coming to town, and he doesn't care if you've been naughty or nice. Wille's favorite holiday tradition is to fill his sacks with loot lifted from shopping malls across the country. But this year his plot gets derailed by a wisecracking store detective, a sexy bartender, and a kid who's convinced Willie is the real Santa Claus.
Directed by John Francis Daley
✦ MovieMuse AI takeDaley-Goldstein weaponize game-night structure itself, folding mystery-trope expectations into genuine suspense wrapped comedically.
Max and Annie's weekly game night gets kicked up a notch when Max's brother Brooks arranges a murder mystery party -- complete with fake thugs and federal agents. So when Brooks gets kidnapped, it's all supposed to be part of the game. As the competitors set out to solve the case, they start to learn that neither the game nor Brooks are what they seem to be. The friends soon find themselves in over their heads as each twist leads to another unexpected turn over the course of one chaotic night.
Directed by Aaron Schimberg
✦ MovieMuse AI takeNew face, same soul: transformation becomes cosmic joke when privilege proves more monstrous than ugliness ever was.
Aspiring actor Edward undergoes a radical medical procedure to drastically transform his appearance. But his new dream face quickly turns into a nightmare, as he loses out on the role he was born to play and becomes obsessed with reclaiming what was lost.
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard
✦ MovieMuse AI takeGodard's bourgeois apocalypse treats revolution and cannibalism as logical conclusions to traffic-jam frustration—absurdity demanding absurdity.
A supposedly idyllic weekend trip to the countryside turns into a never-ending nightmare of traffic jams, revolution, cannibalism and murder as French bourgeois society starts to collapse under the weight of its own consumer preoccupations.
Directed by Harry Lighton
✦ MovieMuse AI takeInsufficient data: plot synopsis cuts before establishing dark comedy premise or thematic intent.
Colin, a timid gay man, is swept off his feet when Ray, an enigmatic and impossibly handsome biker, takes him on as his submissive in a crazy and erotic BDSM-focused relationship.
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