Whether we like it or not, drugs are a part of everyday life in most of the world. The drug trade can make one rich beyond one’s wildest dreams, but also places the drug users and dealers in great physical jeopardy and can ruin lives. It should be no surprise that there are literally hundreds if not thousands of films dealing with drug and alcohol use.
While some films like Dazed and Confused, Friday, and most of Seth Rogen’s work glorifies casual drug use, the films in this list all show the darker, deadlier side of drug dealing and drug abuse. Terms like 'addict' and 'addiction' are now considered to be stigmatizing and discriminative (and have been replaced with de-stigmatizing language like 'substance use disorder,' though we all know what we mean); no matter the language, however, these are the most powerful and devastating films about drug use.
11 Last Days Here
Last Days Here is a documentary about the 1970s metal band Pentagram. The documentary focuses on the desperate life of the band’s disturbed singer, Bobby Liebling, who is a crack and heroin user who lives in his parents’ sub-basement and relies on them to get through the day. Heroin releases histamines which causes the skin to itch, and cocaine abuse can cause users to believe they are crawling with bugs that are hiding under the skin. Because of this, the lead singer is constantly scratching himself, digging holes in his skin, in a frantic search for non-existent bugs.
The documentary’s big reveal comes when he rolls his sleeve up, and we see that he has dug a gigantic hole in his arm big enough to fit a fist into. It is utterly disgusting and a total tragedy, stronger than any PSA. Although he is known to some as a rock and roll star, we learn the truth, that he is a sad person who lives with and depends on his parents, and who causes disgusting harm to his body due to his substance use disorder (SUD), which eventually kills his career and is the reason that Pentagram are not a very well known band, despite a great metal sound. A nasty documentary about the tragedy of hard drug abuse.
10 Killing Zoe
Killing Zoe is a drugged-out bank robbery film starring Eric Stoltz (the heroin dealer in Pulp Fiction) that takes place in France. Stoltz is lured to Paris where he hangs out with his SUD pals as they plan a robbery - but this is like no bank robbery in film history. The lead bank robber, played by Jean-Hughes Anglade, is dying from AIDS and has no intention of actually stealing any money. He just wants to go out with a bang, killing as many people as possible.
In an astounding scene, in the middle of a bloody, deadly bank robbery, Anglade takes a bathroom break, so he can inject himself with heroin. At this point we can figure out that the bank robbery was never meant to succeed. Stoltz finds his loyalty questioned as he must decide what to do when he realizes the robbery is just an excuse for a massacre, and that he has had sexual relations with Zoe (Julie Delpy), a prostitute who works at the bank he is robbing. Written and directed by Roger Avary, who won an Oscar for co-writing Pulp Fiction with Quentin Tarantino.
9 Enter the Void
Enter the Void is an extremely controversial French film from renegade director Gaspar Noé (Irreversible, I Stand Alone). Drugs used, shown and discussed in this film include pills, alcohol, LSD, DMT, cocaine, GHB, marijuana, ice, heroin, and more.
Featuring bright flashing lights and a hyperkinetic, psychedelic style, the film is nearly seizure-inducing and attempts to be a perfect representation of an acid trip. Besides drugs and murder, the art film is a provocation that deals with a whole host of adult themes like abortion, sexuality, incest, infidelity, conception, car accidents, and stripping. It's not for the faint of heart.
The camerawork is brilliant, and most of the shots are filmed from either high up or right behind the head of protagonist Oscar (Nathaniel Brown), so that he stars in the film, yet we rarely see his face; this is meant to mimic an out-of-body experience. The film takes place in Tokyo, primarily on the street, in sex clubs, and at the apartments of drug dealers.
Like most Noe films, there is a nihilistic feel to Enter the Void that is a powerful warning against the dangers of an illegal drug lifestyle, which can lead to devastation, death, and sexual exploitation. Everything about this film is avant-garde and stunningly original, and it is a mesmerizing and hallucinatory masterpiece.
8 The Falcon and the Snowman
The Falcon and the Snowman is the true story of a high-level military contractor with access to national security matters, and his partner with SUD who sells secrets to the Soviet Union. Sean Penn plays Timothy Hutton's sleazy partner, whose heroin use spirals out of control; when Hutton catches Penn snorting it, Penn lies, arguing that he's ‘just using cocaine.' It's pretty bad when your cover-up lie is still an illegal activity.
Things get disastrous for the two when they visit the Russian embassy in Mexico, where Penn tries to make a heroin deal with scary KGB agents who don’t take too well to Penn and his addiction. As is the case of many drug films, users lose control and clear heads, forcing them to make terrible and dangerous decisions. The Falcon and the Snowman is one of Penn’s best performances as a fast-talking criminal with SUD.
7 Scarface
Scarface, written by Oliver Stone and directed by Brian De Palma, is the ultimate cocaine movie. It is a remake of the classic 1932 gangster film of the same name, but couldn't be any more different. At first glance the film seems to glorify the cocaine trade, but a closer watch reveals the devastation caused by drug use.
Al Pacino plays Tony Montana, a criminal psychopath from Cuba, who works his way up the drug dealing world until he has a massive cocaine empire. Pacino’s epic performance as a small-time criminal who moves to the top of the drug world and gets increasingly hooked on cocaine is simply impossible to ignore. Pacino doesn’t play Tony Montana as much as he transforms himself into the character.
Tony Montana makes the enormous mistake of breaking the one key rule for high level drug dealers, which is ‘don’t get high on your own supply.’ In one infamous scene, he snorts from a mountain of cocaine the size of a watermelon. His massive cocaine use totally alters his judgment and drives him mad with rage and jealousy, killing those closest to him, and making fatal mistakes. Ironically, it's a nearly canonical film for gangsters everywhere, despite depicting the epic downfall and destruction of its antihero. One wonders if director Luca Guadagnino will do the same in his upcoming remake.
6 The Salton Sea
In The Salton Sea, a terrifying portrayal of crystal meth, Val Kilmer plays an undercover agent infiltrating the crystal meth community, trying to solve a personal tragedy. The real stand out in the film, though, is Vincent D’Onofrio, who is absolutely terrifying as he re-enacts the assassination of JFK with pigeons and engages in other bizarre activities after injecting crystal meth. A man who has a fake nose because he destroyed it from snorting too much meth, and looks and sounds terrifying, this is one of the actor’s best roles.
5 Carlito’s Way
In this follow up to Scarface, director Brian De Palma and star Al Pacino again team up for another story dealing with cocaine, Carlito's Way. Unlike in Scarface, Pacino is not the person with a dangerous SUD with cocaine.
Instead, it is his lawyer, Sean Penn (again), who has a cocaine habit that degenerates to the point that he becomes a dangerous and unstable individual, committing violent acts and ultimately losing out because of terrible, cocaine-influenced decisions he chooses which make him a liability. Sean Penn’s transformation to a cocaine addict is brilliantly done.
4 A Scanner Darkly
Keanu Reeves stars in A Scanner Darkly, based on the infamous book by Philip K Dick, whose visionary stories were the basis for films like Minority Report, Blade Runner and the series The Man in the High Castle. Reeves plays an undercover cop taking Substance D (D is for Death), a drug that is taking over future America. In addition to having a SUD, he is also unknowingly tracking himself in his own police investigation.
Substance D causes a split in the user’s brain so that one man can literally be following himself and his own actions without knowing it. His wild friends (including a brilliantly manic Robert Downey Jr. before his big career comeback and a fun Woody Harrelson) are all also deep into using Substance D, with Rory Cochrane seeing bugs everywhere, especially in his own body and hair. It's a brilliant film that uses rotoscoping to solidify its hallucinogenic visuals.
3 Drugstore Cowboy
Matt Dillon leads a small group of drug users who resort to stealing from pharmacies to get powerful painkillers in Gus Van Sant's Drugstore Cowboy. Dillon’s girlfriend (Kelly Lynch) is sexually unsatisfied because his opiate use has killed his libido and made him essentially asexual. Things get worse for the group, and at one point they rent a hotel room in a hotel full of police who were there for a major conference.
This terrifies the gang, who escape into a series of adventures and meet a mix of odd characters along the way, the most memorable being a cameo by the famous writer and heroin user William S Burroughs. Things start going south for Matt Dillon and his crew after a drug tragedy strikes, and he tries to get clean. Drugstore Cowboy is a gritty and realistic look at the lives of a group of criminals with SUD in the 1970s.
2 Bug
The fact that Bug is about crystal meth and amphetamine psychosis is heavily down-played and subtle, and is hidden beneath metaphors and imagery. We only really learn that the two characters, played incredibly by Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon, are smoking crystal meth when a mysterious man enters their bizarre hotel room and takes a hit from a meth pipe, explaining to Judd that Shannon is a mental patient.
Their mental health condition as a result of their use of speed leads them to sink deeper and deeper into paranoid psychosis, imaginary bugs infecting them and infesting their world as a result. The ending is one of the most disturbing, surprising, devastating, and unforgettable scenes in film history. Bug is a brilliant movie about psychosis and paranoia from a late-career William Friedkin, director of The Exorcist and The French Connection.
1 The French Connection II
The French Connection II is unlike any other drug film because the user gets involuntarily addicted to heroin as revenge. American cop Popeye Doyle (the great Gene Hackman) travels to France to hunt down a heroin dealer, Fernando Rey, in this gritty film from John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate).
He is abducted by a drug gang and imprisoned, and they start injecting him with heroin on a regular basis. At first, he fights it, but as time goes on he develops a SUD, eagerly awaiting his next fix. The transformation is an incredibly powerful indictment of the addictive nature of heroin.
When the drug dealers are done with Hackman, they dump him in front of a police station as a message. Now a free man, he has to undergo cold turkey heroin withdrawal. He is so sick that he does everything possible to resist getting clean and going through dope sickness. Once clean, however, Popeye Doyle is on a mission for revenge in this underrated sequel to The French Connection.