A sequence in which it is shown that, while time is passing, the protagonist is feeling sad and alone. Opposite of the Good-Times Montage. In fact, some films will juxtapose a Sad-Times Montage with a Good-Times Montage earlier in the film, only with different music. Can overlap with the Lost Love Montage, with both sides of the lost love being sad, separately. Especially if there's an overlap with the Lost Love Montage, a Cradle of Loneliness may be part of it.
See also Happier Home Movie, which the protagonist may watch in lieu of this. Contrasts with Boredom Montage, where the montage focuses on the protagonist getting bored rather than sad.
Examples:
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Comic Books
- Discussed in New Mutants: Lethal Legion. When Cerebella talks to Escapade in the first issue, trying to work out why she still feels down after the team's victory over the cult who'd previously imprisoned her as a Brain in a Jar, she wishes she could take the montage option.
Cerebella: I'm sorry. I'm being boring. I wish I could just montage this @#$%.
Films — Animation
- In 5 Centimeters per Second, Makoto Shinkai will make you cry over a montage.
- Shrek 1: One such montage shows Fiona's preparation for her wedding with Lord Farquaad while Shrek spends time in his house, heartbroken due to thinking Fiona didn't love him. It's set to the John Cale cover of "Hallelujah."
- Puss in Boots: The Last Wish: After he resigns himself to a life of no more adventuring, Puss heads to Mamá Luna's cat shelter. There, he struggles to adapt to the routine of a well-cared (if slightly humiliated) housecat. We see him getting disciplined for trying to do stuff like a human (peeing in the toilet and cooking bacon in a pan for breakfast), which forces him to do the same and other things like a normal cat (using the shared cat litter box, eating cat food pellets, wearing blue mitters, and sleeping buried by a sea of cats). Throughout the process, he grows an unkempt beard.
- Up: The first minutes are two people getting together and marrying. Then there's one thing after another, and the montage leads into a sequence of sad moments as Ellie falls ill and then dies. The final scene is Carl returning to his home, heartbroken and alone.
- In Madagascar 1, we see Marty, Melman and Gloria walking sadly through the jungle while Alex isolates himself in the jungle so he won't hurt his friends, all set to "What a Wonderful World".
- In An American Tail where Fievel is walking around in New York alone, searching for his family.
- Open Season had this when Boog and Elliot have their fallout and Boog tries to find his way home single-handedly just as it rains. All of it is set to the song "Where I Belong" by Pete Yorn.
- After Verne alienates his friends in Over the Hedge, he gets this. The song "Still" sung by Ben Folds does not help.
- In GOAT, this happens after Will and the rest of the Thorns' fallout with Jett after during the Semi-Finals when her selfishness caused her to hurt her teamates and nearly drown Will, which led to them quitting. And now the Thorns and the people of Vineland are facing their Darkest Hour once everyone found out Flo sold the Thorns to Sunken City. The song playing the background is "Don't Dream It's Over" by Bryant Barnes.
Films — Live-Action
- Ernest Goes to Camp has the "Gee, I'm Glad It's Raining" scene.
- The characters in Shortbus have a sad fucking montage.
- The entire scene of "Without You" from the movie version of RENT.
- A montage appears in Good Morning, Vietnam, with images of American war atrocities played against, again, "What a Wonderful World".
- Get Ready to Be Boyzvoiced: After their rejection by the American music label, the band members are seen giving interviews lamenting how everything they've been doing up to that point has been for nothing, set to an instrumental version of "In the Air Tonight".
- The Twilight Saga: In the second film, after Edward Cullen leaves her, Bella Swan is reduced to a catatonic depression that is glossed over by an orbital shot of her sitting at her bedroom while staring at nothing, as months pass and seasons change.
Live-Action TV
- Sad-Times Montages set to various covers of "Hallelujah" are practically a sub-trope all their own. Other examples include:
- The O.C. (the Jeff Buckley version)
- The West Wing
- ER
- And Scrubs.
- Usually happened on Buffy the Vampire Slayer when things went wrong in the lives of Buffy and her friends — which was often.
- Neatly played with in one episode, however, when Spike has been around after breaking up with Drusilla and basically ends up causing trouble for everyone, which ends up spoiling a lot of different things for different people. By the end of the episode, we see a montage of all the characters looking angsty and wistful... and then we see Spike, who has solved his problem and is currently driving away as happy as Larry, bopping to the Sex Pistols' cover of "My Way".
- Variant: Another episode had three different women hurt and disappointed by their respective partners, and ended with a shot of all three walking around different sides of the same campus park, but without taking notice of each other - so, actually a bad times non-montage.
- The end of pretty much every episode of Ally McBeal.
- Misfits brings out one of these close to end of its very first episode, with all five of the main characters trying to recover following the events of the day: Nathan gloomily watches his mother and her boyfriend enjoying themselves; Alisha resigns herself to an evening alone thanks to her newfound power; Kelly lapses into depression over being dumped by her boyfriend- not long after finding out what he really thought of her; Curtis watches old footage of his past athletic triumphs, evidently trying to use his time-travelling powers to undo his mistake; Simon at first appears to be enjoying himself, given that he's standing in the middle of a cluster of friends and smiling... and then it's revealed that he's made himself invisible and is standing in between groups of people in a desperate attempt to assuage his own loneliness. A good look at his face a moment later shows that it isn't working.
- Played for laughs in The IT Crowd when the shirtless Roy gets locked out of the office building. Lacking his wallet and keys, he turns into a homeless derelict, begging for enough change to make a phone call until Jen finds him again. All of this happens in two hours time.
- In the finale of Mimpi Metropolitan, Bambang leaves the dorm for seven days. Those days are shown with a montage of his friends in Jakarta missing him.
Theater
- In On the Town, the "Lonely Town" ballet expresses Gabey's feeling of being lost in New York City.
Video Games
- Road 96: Mile 0: After Zoe and Kaito part ways, Zoe is shown sadly making her way north in a sequence of shots, walking along the road at night, falling asleep on a bench, hitchhiking, and eventually arriving at the Night Skies campground, while the track "Alone in the Dark" by Will Cookson plays. Depending on the choices you make during the ending, Zoe will frantically attempt to talk to Kaito again while at the campground to no avail.
Web Animation
- Mr. Men In Real Life depicts the misfortunes of the cast of Mr. Men through such a montage, with highlights including Mr. Grumpy joining a group of extremist Muslims, Mr. Bump being beaten by his wife, Mr. Sneeze having contracted AIDS, Mr. Chatterbox about to be whacked by a mob, and Mr. Nobody overdosing on alcohol and pills.
Web Comics
- This page
from Everyday Heroes, showing how Jane felt after Goldie was killed.
- Gunnerkrigg Court. Kat and Alistair part without a proper goodbye. As a result, on this page, Kat gets progressively more sad, until Annie decides to intervene.
Western Animation
- Mocked in Family Guy when Peter has one of these after getting into an accident and having to use a wheelchair - it's revealed that the montage was only a few minutes.
- Futurama: The ending to "Jurassic Bark", doubling as a Time-Passes Montage, depicts Seymour sitting in the same spot by Panucci's for twelve years, desperately waiting for Fry to return, until he eventually passes away in the same spot.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has one during Twilight's BSoD Song "Find a Way" in "Magical Mystery Cure", as Ponyville degenerates into chaos and ruin due to the Mane Five's' cutie mark switcheroo.
- The Owl House: Played with in "For the Future". The Creative Closing Credits portray the descent of the Boiling Isles into chaos in the three months between the failure of the Draining Spell and the return of Luz, her mom, and the Hexsquad.
- The Simpsons uses this frequently. A notable one occurs in "Million Dollar Abie", when Grampa becomes a pariah and faces rejection from various townspeople to "Nobody Loves You (When You're Down and Out)".
- Solar Opposites: This happens at the end of the Season 3 finale "The Fog of Pupa" when the Solars were forced to give up to give the Pupa structure and are now miserable, especially since Terry and Korvo have miserable job at the Rake Company with the song "Once in a Lifetime" by Talking Heads playing the background.
- South Park:
- The episode "Raisins" has one after Stan learns that Wendy has broken up with him, set to Cinderella's "Don't Know What You Got (Til It's Gone)".
- The "Landslide" sequence at the end of "You're Getting Old."
- In The Venture Bros., after Hank and Dean are killed, the first episode of Season 2 opens with a montage of characters looking depressed, Doc breaking down, fleeing the compound in the X-1, and Brock tracking him through various exotic locales as Doc "finds himself". Unusually for most montages of this type, the accompanying music is an upbeat techno track, which undergoes a Diegetic Switch as Brock finally catches Doc at a rave.