Worried about the job market or stuck in a toxic workplace? These two films can feel like ‘catharsis,’ a work psychologist says

Feeling discouraged about your job or job search? Two recent films can be surprising.

Park Chan-wook’s “No Other Choice” and Sam Raimi’s “Send Help” imagine what happens when workers in bad situations, whether it’s the current job market or a toxic workplace, are pushed to their limits, with murderous consequences. They offer a cathartic, if violent, perspective on labor angst and despair in the zeitgeist. Part dark comedy and part horror, they touch on the chronic stress of the workplace but are especially in the moment.

Lazy hiring means many workers feel overwhelmed, and many job seekers are struggling to find work. Last year, US employers added just 181,000 jobs, compared to 1.46 million in 2024, making it the worst hiring year since 2020, and the worst since 2003 outside of the recession. As of January, 1 in 4 unemployed people, about 1.8 million Americans, had been looking for work for more than six months, according to BLS data.

Meanwhile, those who have jobs are struggling to lose them amid economic uncertainty, the adoption of AI, and strikes. The job cuts announced in January hit their highest monthly numbers for the first year since 2009, according to a report from global firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. And the rate of voluntary resignation of workers – which can indicate the degree of their confidence in the labor market – is set to decrease to 2% in 2025.

In this context, movies provide “a way to feel in control of something you can’t control,” says Alicia Grandey, co-author of “Emotionally Charged: How to Lead in the New World of Work” and professor of psychology at Penn State University. Movies make the stress of our work feel “distant and manageable, like you can turn it off.”

It can be a welcome distance for many who feel powerless in the job market and at work today. The fear of losing a job can be “paralyzing” and feel “powerless over the situation,” career and leadership coach Phoebe Gavin previously told CNBC Make It. The fact that “a job is the most important way to show your value” as a person in the United States, Steven Vallas, professor emeritus of sociology at Northeastern University, previously told Make It, “can really combine those feelings of shame and anxiety about unemployment.”

The extreme settings of “No Other Choice” and “Send Help” are part of their magic.

“It’s taking these feelings that many, many people take to extremes, to realize that they’re not true,” Grandey says. “You can enjoy this dynamic change, you can still relate to the character, and realize that it’s high-end fantasy, but overall, it’s catharsis, it’s coming out.”

And then, he adds, “when you go back to the real world, that difference doesn’t seem so bad.”

“No Other Choice,” an adaptation of Donald Westlake’s 1997 novel, “Axe,” follows a middle-aged Korean man, Yoo Man-su (Lee Byung-hun), who is fired from a paper manufacturer after taking over the business. When his job applications for new positions don’t go through, and his family starts to feel the pressure on their middle-class lives, Man-su starts killing his fellow competitors to increase his chances of getting a job.

He tells his first character, “I’m sorry, but you have to disappear so I can live.”

The film talks about the desperation of job seekers today, the competition they face and the zero-sum calculus that dictates the job search of most candidates.

In June, for example, LinkedIn said it had seen a 45 percent increase in the number of requests sent on its platform in the past year, with up to 10,000 requests sent every minute. In the fourth quarter of 2025, the ZipRecruiter survey found the lowest Outlook Index – measuring how applicants think the job market will move in the next six months – since the survey began in 2022, with 39.5% expecting a decrease in available positions during this period.

On-screen as it is, even those with roles feel uncomfortable in their roles. The job squeeze has made headlines in recent months, a phenomenon that describes workers “holding on to their jobs for dear life” amid global uncertainty, fears of AI disruption and a tight labor market, Korn Ferry consultants wrote in August.

When Choi Seon-chul, a hotshot at a rival paper firm says he’s overworked, Man-su tells him to pass out so the higher-ups can hire Man-su to help break up the work. But the bosses didn’t hire Man-su to help, Seon-chul replies; they just burned Seon-chul instead.

“No Other Choice” also addresses concerns surrounding AI-related job disruption. In Man-su’s final interview in the film, the committee says that the employer uses automation and plans to cut jobs soon. Man-su can only smile and agree, “Of course. How can you go against time?”

Spoiler alert: In the end, Man-su gets a job, where he is the only person among many machines in a sterile factory. He cheers and pumps his fists before getting to the point of acceptance, acceptance. This time we see his reward is a bad job, and one may be headed for unemployment there.

Even the usual markers of career success, such as finding a long-sought job, are disappointing.

We see that frustration at work in “Send Help.” The movie sets the stage for the film’s angst against women, where fed-up women end up exploding, becoming a disaster.

Employee bee Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams), has been snubbed for a promotion, robbed of her job credit, and otherwise challenged by a toxic workplace filled with cronyism, all led by her evil boss, while the baby CEO Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien). When Linda and Bradley are the only survivors of a plane crash on a deserted island, she sees an opportunity to get back at her boss and get revenge for the way she was treated.

“It’s a reflection of everyone who’s been mistreated at work,” Grandey says.

There is a clear repetition of the manager-report power and the roles of these two men in the office, where Bradley as CEO exerted power over Linda, who had hit the glass ceiling in their corporate boys’ club. On the island, Liddle, a hopeful “Survivor” competitor, aims and feeds them, hunting pigs to really bring home the bacon, while a sullen Bradley tries to spell “HELP” in the sand but can only manage “HEPL.”

As Linda reminds him, “We’re not in the office anymore, Bradley.”

In both films, the protagonists feel so disillusioned with the existing system of finding, maintaining and succeeding at work that they believe their only hope lies outside these systems. Man-su, of course, goes the wrong way in his killing. Linda sometimes hides from the rescue team, afraid to return to the area where the Bradleys of the world stepped on Linda.

He closes “Send Help” with a bold, if unpleasant, suggestion: “There’s no help coming, so you better start saving yourself.”

In the real world, employers and job seekers don’t find the results as surprising or supportive as Man-su and Linda do. But others are putting themselves in categories they’re unhappy with or feel like they’re sending job applications into a black hole.

“There are huge seismic changes” happening in the market and around the world, Grandey says, “that are pushing everyone to feel insecure at work.”

The compatibility of the players’ concerns “allows us to feel more in control and empowered, because we can feel like them in that two-hour period,” Grandey adds. “And we have to go back to our lives, but we carry a little of that empowerment with us.”

If you have a mental health problem or about mental health symptoms, you can contact the National Mental Health Helpline toll-free at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).