2011 In Film: Is It Just Us, Or Is The World Ending

This year has not been particularly kind to youth on the big screen. "Kids suck the life out of you," John C. Reilly drunkenly opines to other terrible parents in Carnage. But at the movies it's increasingly the other way around: The world is sucking the life out of those who stand to inherit it.

In 2011, our onscreen alter egos were besieged on all sides by cults, sexual predators, terminal illnesses, space aliens and wayward planets. We experienced crises of the romantic, familial and existential varieties. The most vaunted member of our ranks, Harry Potter himself, straight-up died.

Mr. Potter was resurrected, of course, but for every happy-ending Harry we saw this year, there were plenty of millennials who met less cheery fates. The movies of 2011 were trying to tell us something deep and troubling: A world in darkness is dealing a cataclysmic hand to the next generation. Or, to put it another way, the kids are no longer all right.