The late author Cormac McCarthy was one of the preeminent chroniclers of the American condition. His novels, often filled with harsh violence and bleak outcomes, left a scorched path of uncompromising works that detailed the depths of humanity and the moral compromises taken to get there. McCarthy’s books have been revered for their dense, often philosophical prose and unflinching content. That style bled from his novels into the cinema, as several of McCarthy’s most searing works were adapted into films.
The individual success of those adaptations is variant, but they all share some aspect of the author’s unique voice, which isn’t afraid of the dark. Each of the films based on the work of Cormac McCarthy, at the very least, touch hands with the notion of evil and tragedy, and some go further to make bedfellows with them. A marathon of McCarthy films would be an endurance test of one’s moral fortitude and how far one’s willing to dive into nihilistic uncertainty. These are the six films by Cormac McCarthy, listed based on the darkness of their content.
6
‘All the Pretty Horses’ (2000)
Directed by Billy Bob Thornton
All the Pretty Horses holds the distinction of being the first filmed adaptation of McCathy’s work, and that’s about the only distinction it holds. The author’s vivid tale of two cowboys who travel over the Mexican border to find work and love is transposed into a bland romantic thriller that loses much of the melancholy present in the text. Matt Damon leads as John Grady Cole, a farmhand gone wayward who falls for the daughter of a Mexican rancher, played by Penélope Cruz, and who is subsequently imprisoned, along with his fellow cowboy, for crimes they did not commit.
McCarthy’s novel isn’t as grim as his most apocalyptic works, but the prison section delves deeper into the hearts of darkness than the film can commit since the adaptation leans more on heavy-handed melodrama, which drains the impact and leaves it dramatically inert. The fault isn’t that of director Billy Bob Thornton, who had proven his mettle with moral relativity in his previous effort as director with Sling Blade. The blame for the dramatic neutering of McCarthy’s work goes instead to infamous producer and scum blob Harvey Weinstein, who butchered the adaptation by editing it into oblivion and plastering a generic musical score onto it. It’s a vision compromised that fails to capture the heartbreak for a lost way of life inherent in McCarthy’s text.

All the Pretty Horses
- Release Date
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December 25, 2000
- Runtime
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116 Minutes
5
‘The Sunset Limited’ (2011)
Directed by Tommy Lee Jones
A few years removed from the success of No Country of Old Men, star Tommy Lee Jones rejoined McCarthy for a television film adaptation of McCarthy’s play The Sunset Limited. McCarthy adapted the text himself, and the film maintains the sparse single setting of the stage play, which amounts to a prolonged philosophical debate between a Christian ex-con, played by Samuel L. Jackson, and a suicidal Atheist professor, played by Jones. Physical violence is never made flesh on screen, instead kept within the descriptions of the characters, and Jones, as director, is confident in letting the performances drive the dark subject material.
Jackson and Jones trade barbs, wits and stories as they battle on a philosophical impasse over the nature of man, God, and ultimate salvation. In short, The Sunset Limited is a heady mix of profound wordplay from the always-pondering McCarthy that the two actors handle with veteran skill. The ending is bitter and nihilistic, fully divorced from the hope that can sometimes infiltrate McCarthy’s darkest of works. There’s a whole lot of demon wrestling to be had in the match-up of the film, but the final blow is a gut punch to anyone who had maintained optimism.
4
‘No Country for Old Men’ (2007)
Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen
A match made in hopeless hell, the Coen Brothers‘ uncompromising adaptation of McCarthy’s most cinematic novel, No Country For Old Men, is a pretty much perfect thriller that plays out the twisted ways that fate and circumstance violently intertwine. In the aftermath of a desert drug deal gone wrong, Josh Brolin‘s Llewellyn Moss takes advantage of an opportunity that unleashes hell across West Texas in the personage of the psychotic Anton Chigurh, played by Javier Bardem. Tracking it all is Tommy Lee Jones as a county sheriff who can’t take the measure of the crime and violence he sees perpetrated.
Plenty of blood is spilled throughout the runtime, but it’s the unrelenting pace and dark tone that the Coens approach the material with that gives it the narrative weight that sinks into the stomach of the viewer early on and doesn’t release until well after the credits roll. Just as in McCarthy’s text, death doesn’t wait or discern when it comes to guilt or innocence; it just washes over everyone, leaving a trail of bodies filled with bullets behind. No Country for Old Men is a nihilistic masterpiece that resuscitated the cinematic career of McCarthy, laying a path for even further destruction to follow.
3
‘Child of God’ (2013)
Directed by James Franco
One of McCarthy’s more horror-adjacent novels, Child of God concerns an isolated, insular man who lives a violent, feral life in Appalachia. It’s rife with details of murder, assault, and necrophilia, making it a difficult read. The film doesn’t flinch in its depictions of corpse defilement, but director James Franco doesn’t have the directorial nerve to make any of it stick to the viewer’s hippocampus. To be sure, the movie is often grotesque, but the novel could simmer for days on one’s conscience while the adaptation boils over and is quickly wiped from memory.
The best of the film lies in Scott Haze‘s committed performance as Lester Ballard, a man whose only language for the living is violence and who can only find companionship with a corpse. Haze inhabits Ballard in a way that gives glimpses of interiority to the character, which eludes Franco in his direction. Under a steadier hand, Child of God could have become a Southern Gothic classic, but instead falls prey to its lofty ambitions. Both too literal in its adaptation and not secure enough to fully grapple with its ideas, its result is a downbeat series of events that Franco plods through without leaving any emotional footprint.
Child of God
- Release Date
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April 28, 2014
- Runtime
-
104 minutes
2
‘The Road’ (2009)
Directed by John Hillcoat
It doesn’t get much darker than the fall of civilization, which is what has occurred in McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic The Road, which charts a father and son’s journey of survival across a ruined America that’s populated mostly by roving gangs of cannibals. Far from the pulp energy of Mad Max or similar film dystopias, John Hillcoat’s adaptation of McCarthy’s novel is harsh and unforgiving, a gray world of violence and ash. Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee give haunted, hollow-eyed performances as they attempt to reckon with the leftovers of humanity, Mortensen always clutching close a revolver with enough rounds to end their lives before becoming some other’s next meal.
The novel was even more explicit and disturbing in its depictions of violence, but Hillcoat and screenwriter Joe Penhall preserve its bleakness and slow-burn narrative. There’s no purchase for levity or humor in the film, nor does it inject needless action or thriller tropes. What conflict there is comes quickly and leaves ugly, not allowing even for the gritty thrills like those in the highly similar The Last of Us, which was clearly inspired by McCarthy’s opus. Despite the horrors that draw out, The Road does end on a note that could be interpreted as hopeful, if not bittersweet. It comes down to one’s beliefs, but the more hopeful may choose to believe McCarthy was appealing to the better side of human nature.

The Road
- Release Date
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November 25, 2009
- Runtime
-
111 minutes
1
‘The Counselor’ (2013)
Directed by Ridley Scott
McCarthy’s only original screenplay was the forgotten thriller The Counselor, a pitch-black crime saga that charts the fallout from a drug deal orchestrated by Michael Fassbender‘s titular character. It shares DNA with No Country for Old Men but differs in that the moral compasses of all parties involved here are well and truly broken. Cartel executions are only the tip of the damned iceberg in what may be the most underrated and strangest film of director Ridley Scott’s career. Much like McCarthy’s seminal novel Blood Meridian, the initial reactions were unkind, but time and distance have slowly seen estimations grow for The Counselor.
With no heroes and filled with long stretches of poetic dialogue, The Counselor is a nihilistic, risk-taking film, the likes of which are hardly ever seen in mainstream cinema. That risk will never be repeated with McCarthy’s passing, but he left behind a dark cinematic message that’s a fitting epitaph. The Road found hope in humanity after the world went up in flames; The Counselor shows why it needed to burn in the first place.
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