Some comedies just want to jump all over, lick your face and have a great time (we’re looking at you, Seth Rogan movies). And then there’s comedies where you question whether you’re supposed to be laughing at all. Comedies where the performances are as deadpan as the wit. Where the body count can be higher than a Liam Neeson film. And where some truly bizarre things can happen.

Welcome to our rundown of the driest comedies around. Expect engrossing stories, Oscar-worthy acting, and plenty of nervous laughter.

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Knives Out (2019)

The family members in Knives Out standing outside of the house, all looking up.

At the forefront of a wave of contemporary whodunits, Knives Out twists the conventions of the Agatha Christie country house murder just enough to make them feel fresh. Most significantly it makes a member of the household staff, Marta Cabrera (Ana de Armas), the hero and uses the family of murdered novelist Harlen Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) as comic relief. Thrombey’s children are an entitled bunch who become even less sympathetic as they reveal their true natures, such youngest son, Walt (Michael Shannon), threatening Marta’s mother with deportation. On hand to burst their bubble is Daniel Craig’s private detective, Benoit Blanc, a winning mash-up of Hercule Poirot and Lieutenant Columbo. His scenes are funniest when he attacks their pomposity with the precision of a well-timed piano note.

Thrombey’s games obsession and the class warfare of the piece recall the classic Sleuth, where upstart Michael Caine faces off against posh Laurence Olivier. Fans of Succession (one of TV’s driest comedies) will recognize the venality of a family living off the decaying successes of their paterfamilias, either in cushy jobs or by taking handouts. The film’s final image is a role-reversal corker that will leave you with a grin.

I Care a Lot (2020)

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Image Via Netflix

Pitting two highly unlikeable characters against one another, I Care a Lot leaves the viewer with a dilemma: just who am I supposed to root for here? It’s a testament to Rosamund Pike’s ice-cold performance that she manages to make her character even more fascinatingly evil than Peter Dinklage’s mobster. Playing a scam artist who gains guardianship of the elderly to strip their assets, she gets in over her head after forcing Dinklage’s mother (Dianne Wiest) into a nursing home. The ensuing battle of wills is fantastic to watch, even if it pulls its punches at the very last moment.

A scathing satire of a system that disempowers the elderly and sick, it’s hard to remember a recent comedy that’s darker than I Care a Lot. Pike’s character is a true sociopath, using contacts in the medical and legal systems to take control of people’s lives. The polished veneer of respectability she employs to achieve her aims is chilling.

A Simple Favor (2018)

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Image via Lionsgate

Stephanie (Anna Kendrick) is a small-town “mommy vlogger” who over-volunteers at her son’s school and makes a mean chocolate brownie. Befriending PR consultant Emily (Blake Lively), she’s introduced to an enticing world of martinis, threesomes and expensive clothes. When Emily disappears, Stephanie starts true crime vlogging, even as she moves into her friend’s designer house and marital bed.

“Are you trying to Diabolique me?” Stephanie asks her lover midway through the film, referencing Henri-Georges Clouzot’s twisty-turny French noir. The characters in A Simple Favor seem only too aware they're playing out thriller conventions and director Paul Feig has fun ticking genre boxes, slyly mining them for laughs. Stephanie being questioned by a suspicious detective while she’s stuck inside one of Emily’s dresses is hilariously cringe-inducing. Kendrick excels as the buttoned-down mom with dark desires of her own. While at first glance the unrepressed Lively seems to be everything she's not, they're more than equally matched. Sending up the popularity of true crime in the same dry manner as Only Murders in the Building, it’s no surprise that the lead actors are returning for a sequel. Long may their love-hate battle continue.

The Lobster (2015)

Two people in a field

Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos is a modern master of absurdist comedy. He’s never been better than in this take on the rites and rituals of dating. In a world where single people are given 45 days to find a mate or get turned into an animal, recently jilted David (Colin Farrell) attends a singleton’s hotel to find a mate. The brilliance of The Lobster lies in its surreal comedy of manners, as participants awkwardly look for partners based on surface traits (liking biscuits, for example) and hunt the “loners” who have escaped to the woods. The underground organization formed by the loners is equally militant in its approach to love, strictly forbidding any kind of romance on pain of mutilation. Real world attitudes to relationships are taken to ridiculous extremes here.

Amid this, there’s an affecting love story between Farrell and Rachel Weisz (who is short-sighted just like him), although in keeping with the extremist parallel universe of the film, it ends in tragedy. As a romantic comedy with a prickly take on its subject, The Lobster might leave you feeling that real world dating isn’t so tough after all.

Burn After Reading (2008)

Brad Pitt, Frances McDormand and Richard Jenkins as gym staff in Burn After Reading (2008)
Image via Focus Features

“What did we learn?” muses J.K. Simmons’ CIA supervisor as he tries to understand Burn After Reading's many coincidences and contrivances at the end of the film. The plot is certainly labyrinthine in the Coen Brothers’ bone dry spoof of Le Carré. The cast list (including George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, and Frances McDormand) promises an intelligent take on the spy genre, but its deluded characters are far from smart. More like Get Smart.

The story, revolving around lost CIA documents and the sexual misadventures of the protagonists, is indeed too complex to explain. Suffice to say, its deliberate convolutions are hilarious as these characters plot against and react to one another in unexpected ways. The reveal of what Clooney is really building in his basement (teased as a spy gadget throughout the film) is a lowbrow sucker punch. “I guess we learned not to do it again,” Simmons ultimately decides, closing the file on this caper.

Thank You for Smoking (2005)

Maria Bello as Polly Bailey, David Koechner as Bobby Jay Bliss and Aaron Eckhart as Nick Naylor sitting around a table in Thank You For Smoking
Image via Fox Searchlight Pictures

Jason Reitman’s debut is the first of several satires from the director, including Up in the Air, which dealt with corporate downsizing. Thank You for Smoking is a pitch-black comedy about corporate lobbying that is jaw-dropping and funny in equal measures. Aaron Eckhart plays Nick Naylor, the vice-president of the “Academy of Tobacco Studies,” who peddles research questioning the link between smoking and lung disease. The research is straight out of the science-denier playbook, financed by Big Tobacco to inject doubt into any debate and stymie legislation. The activities of the various lobbyists are so blatantly manipulative that they could be taken for over-the-top caricature, except their methods are only too real.

Made in 2005, Thank You for Smoking’s satire has only become bleaker as we’ve seen Naylor’s tactics used again and again, most significantly in the climate change debate. Many characters, such as David Koechner’s firearm lobbyist, represent such cynicism that it’s hard to raise a smile considering events in the intervening years. Thank You for Smoking doesn’t so much suggest that the corporate lobbyists are winning out over public interest, rather that they’ve already won.

Grosse Pointe Blank (1997)

Minnie Driver as Debi Newberry and John Cusack as Martin Q Blank in Grosse Point Blank
Image via Buena Vista Pictures

A comedy for anyone who shudders at the thought of attending a high school reunion, Grosse Pointe Blank has hitman Martin Blank (John Cusack) doing just that. The awkwardness of explaining your life choices to classmates you never really liked is amplified here, as Blank is a stone killer. The film riffs on Cusack’s most famous role at the time, presenting a “What If…?” Lloyd Dobler from Say Anything, ten years on and having taken a very violent path. (Joan Cusack even appears as a surrogate mother figure, as she did the earlier film.)

Grosse Pointe Blank satirizes both romantic comedies and action films by mixing them in a way that was fresh at the time. Its superb action sequences (a karate battle by the school lockers, a kitchen shootout), are juxtaposed with Blank feeling out of place at the reunion dance and cautiously reconnecting with an old flame (Minnie Driver). It references the Bond films in an elaborate poisoning (recalling You Only Live Twice) and its use of the “Live and Let Die” cover by Guns N’ Roses (segueing into a supermarket muzak version in one of the film’s most subtle gags). The film’s black comedy calls to mind subsequent takes on the story, such as Barry, which is deconstructing the idea of a hitman as whimsical hero in its third season. Essential for anyone who likes their romantic comedies served extra dry, with a twist.

The Player (1992)

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Image via New Line Cinema

Opening with an unbroken tracking shot around a studio lot, The Player peeks inside the world of movie development exec Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins). Setting the tone is a pitch by (real-life screenwriter) Buck Henry for “The Graduate Part II,” imagined as a 90s-style thriller starring Julia Roberts. We hear proposals that are variously described as “Ghost meets The Manchurian Candidate” and “Pretty Woman meets Out of Africa” by writers touting the next Bruce Willis vehicle. The highlight is Richard E. Grant’s pitch for “Habeas Corpus,” a death row melodrama that requires “no stars, just talent” and an unhappy ending. Mills takes in the madness with a straight face, more concerned about a disgruntled writer sending him death threats and a murder he committed.

The Player boasts an incredible array of cameo appearances by Hollywood stars. Typical of the director, Robert Altman, scenes are layered with famous faces whose conversations overlap or occur at the edges of the action. We never really know whether an actor is playing themselves or a character in the movie until they speak. One thing is clear, the Hollywood elite were lining up to be part of this oh-so-accurate send up of the industry of the time. The film skewers everyone, from the studio heads down to the writers, with a dry wit that is offset by the film’s (deliberately) hokey thriller plot. It’s hard to pick a most valuable player in The Player, but Whoopi Goldberg is a standout as a trickster cop who gets under Mills' skin. Inevitably, film-with-a-film “Habeas Corpus” is rewritten with a happy ending and… you guessed it… Julia Roberts and Bruce Willis as the leads. The Player is a perfectly pitched satire of films and filmmakers in the 90s.

Network (1976)

Network

When sacked news anchor Howard Beale (Peter Finch) delivers an on-air rant (“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!”), he becomes a ratings hit. Like other films of the 70s and 80s (such as Martin Scorsese’s King of Comedy) that predicted an age of follower-driven media content, Network depicts the end of a way of life. Beale becomes a popular sensation and an apparent voice of reason, but he's easily manipulated by the corporation, billed as the “mad prophet of the airwaves” on a revamped news show that includes a psychic. When Beale starts criticizing the network, its chairman (Ned Beatty) intervenes to give him a new “corporate cosmology” that ultimately leads to his undoing.

Paddy Chayefsky’s Oscar-winning screenplay is an early satire of ratings-driven media and the ability of the corporation to turn dissent into a commodity. Seen through the eyes of Beale’s exasperated friend (William Holden), Network makes bleak predictions about the future of news reporting and entertainment in general. In its best scenes, such as a group of terrorists arguing over their percentage from a TV deal or Beatty’s ridiculous sermonizing, it’s hard to know whether to laugh or marvel at how prophetic the film was.